The Monday Media Diet with Matt Klein

Matt Klein (MK) is head of foresight at Reddit. I was delighted by some of the contrarian takes and restraint in here. Enjoy. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a cultural theorist and strategist, trying to make sense of our moment.

My background is in psychology and film studies, and have since blurred them, analyzing our personal and collective relationships with media.

I currently advise on social shifts for investors, the press, U.N. and world’s largest brands, and help author strategies to navigate emerging change. By day, I’m currently Head of Global Foresight at Reddit.

I also write a publication called ZINE, unpacking overlooked trends.

Describe your media diet.

My diet is laughably strict given that I feel my livelihood is dependent upon distilling so much. It’s more of a regimen…

No Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Discord, etc.
No cable
I watch more YouTube than anything
I keep newsletter subscriptions and Twitter follows below a threshold, then purge anytime I add new sources (...also inbox zero)
Weekly unread articles go into Instapaper, then once a month, I set a day to get through those unreads
Constant NTS Radio, random Spotify playlists or FM jazz radio while working
Few non-fiction books simultaneously (some print, some Kindle)
Only a handful of podcasts, but each listened religiously
A few (mostly indie) theater films a month (Nighthawk, Angelika, BAM)
Handful of monthly Letterboxd watchlist watches (on-demand)
Two simultaneously ongoing TV series (one heavy, one light)

What’s the last great book you read?

Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy (’98) in America by Laura Kipnis
Extreme Self (’21) by Coupland, Obrist, and Basar

What are you reading now?

No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior (’85) by Joshua Meyrowitz
The Agony of Eros (Untimely Meditations) (’17) by Byung-Chul Han
30-Second Philosophies (’10) by Barry Loewer

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

I skim. I then rip out the pages of long reads until I get to them. As for print books, I review the index, which I think is an under-used, overlooked outline.

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

McLuhan: Timeless, prescient understandings of our media, which can help anchor us
Rushkoff: Timely, analyses of our relationship with tech to regain our humanity (Start with Team Human)
As for who people should be watching: Andrew Callaghan’s Channel 5 News

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone?

Open (meditation app)

Plane or train?

Plane. And I never buy Wi-Fi. I bask in oblivious airplane mode bliss.

What is one place everyone should visit?

I had the privilege of living in Copenhagen for a bit and still think it’s one of the most effortlessly cool places in the world
Hiking: Joshua Tree. Mt. Rainier. Devil’s Bridge Trail in Sedona, Arizona
Techni Salon in Manhattan for a haircut by Kit

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

I’m in these all day. My recent favorite…

There’s the Betty Crocker story that goes: With business tanking, General Mills and consumer psychologist Ernest Dichter intentionally left out eggs from their cake mixes to increase participation and decrease the guilt of house wives because mixes with eggs were “too easy.”

Supposedly, Crocker’s new “just add fresh eggs” mixes saved the business. This story is used all the time by innovation and marketing strategists as a revolutionary insight: Sometimes less convenience is more valuable, and irrational contradictions can make sense.

After hearing this story retold for so long, I grew suspicious and wanted to know if the corporate tall tale was legit. After literal weeks of research, it turns out it’s BS.

In reality, fresh eggs just made better cakes, patents for eggless mixes were filed years before this story supposedly took place, cake mix sales weren’t actually tanking in the first place, and it was in fact icing decorating and expressive personalization that had a more noticeable lift on the cake category.

I think the real lesson here is how good we are at manufacturing our own realities and the inconvenience of truth. Stories don’t have to be true to be effective – they just have to sound right or confirm our existing biases.

The world we perceive is manufactured from the stories we believe. (MK)

Friend of WITI and contributor Emanuel Derman wrote the excellent memoir, My Life as a Quant. Now, he winds back the clock from the world of physics and financial markets with a memoir of his youth in Brief Hours and Weeks: My Life as a Capetonian. The hardcover and Kindle editions are available for pre-order at Amazon, for delivery next week.

“Brief Hours and Weeks awakens many memories of Cape Town, the city of our youth, a half century ago. The chapter on the lonely Mrs Gold is a Triumph.” — JM Coetzee, Nobel Laureate

“What a delight. It succeeds in writerly craft, narrative, evocation of people, and not least in authorial courage and candor.” — James Grant, author of ‘Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian’