Another twist of the attention economy is that attention itself has become the currency that determines what's "real" in our collective consciousness, which is similar to the top of a pyramid being the source that builds out the whole pyramid itself.
At least in our modern world, anything that has become trendy, relevant or not, has been able to capture attention, loads of it, enough to have a relatively large amount of people to accept it as important or true, regardless of its actual merit.
Most of the time, a viral dance eclipses genuine scientific breakthroughs in the public's awareness.
In another sense, between contributing to the spread of information and verifying it, the former is much easier, faster, and more rewarded.
Because sharing takes one click. It's seamless. Fact-checking takes time, effort, and specialized knowledge.
Someone can post "they're putting chemicals in the water" and it'll reach millions before anyone thinks to ask which chemicals, which water, or whether it's even happening at all.
I think this age of connectivity we live in will have those who are fundamental focused thinkers a hard time, in terms of getting it right, with regards to what actually matters and what will actually happen.
If you're the person doing deep analysis on economic fundamentals, studying supply chains, reading Federal Reserve minutes, etc. you could predict one thing.
But then if a tweet from an influential figure shifts sentiment overnight, the market moves based on that narrative instead, and suddenly your fundamentals-based prediction seems wrong because narrative overpowered reality and not necessarily your analysis was flawed.
I've learned to loosen myself a bit from the "this doesn't make sense bandwagon so therefore I will not engage with it" type of rigidity.
There's a type of intellectual humility required now that seems almost uncomfortable. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that something is happening and mattering even if it "shouldn't" by traditional logical standards.
Many Realities
Evidently, there's also this increasing divorce between fundamental versus narrative-driven realities, I think we're living in both simultaneously. The old rules still exist somewhere, but there's a new layer of reality operating on different physics entirely.
My mind is both tired and not tired with the sentiment about being "this close" for almost everything to turn south. Be it generally with the world, and going down to the economy, social culture, and political stability.
If I can remember correctly and based on observations, it's been almost a decade living through this sentiment as a cloud of sorts that's always there when one looks up. Still the expected rain hasn't rained yet, nor has the sky fallen.
Of course, I'm no longer in that business of trying to time when things will break.
Maybe they will, maybe they won't, maybe they'll break in ways we don't expect while holding together in the places we thought were most fragile. The latter scenario is something I've given a bit more thought lately.
Perhaps that perpetual state of bracing for impact is itself part of the attention economy's business model.
Fear and urgency capture attention better than anything else, so we're fed a steady diet of it, until we can't tell the difference between signal and noise, and then the trump card is pulled out in a way where the actual crisis, when it comes, will be dismissed as just more noise.
Staying engaged without becoming consumed is a balance that feels harder to strike with each passing year.
Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.
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