You always hear about the attention economy, this idea that our attention is a scarce and valuable commodity. These days it seems like there’s so much competition for our attention it can be overwhelming. But what makes attention valuable in the first place? Why do people work so hard to get people’s attention? For one thing, we can only focus on so many things at any given time. This is why they say attention is a scarce resource. But attention can also drive economic value. For businesses and content creators, it’s crucial for generating revenue, because the more attention you can attract, the better your chances of achieving success.
But attention can work the other way as well. What we give our attention to can influence our decisions, how we feel, what we learn, and so on. Freely giving your attention to the wrong people or ideas can lead to negative effects, and with social media, this can happen at scale as any piece of content can quickly go viral and influence public opinion and cultural trends.
I bring all this up because I’ve been thinking it’s time we start being more stingy with our attention. If our attention is so valuable, why are we so eager to give it away for free? We usually trade it in exchange for some piece of light entertainment, or the latest news, but what if we could monetize our attention? I remember there used to be platforms where you could get paid to watch commercials, but that business model never made any sense to me. If someone needs to make money by watching commercials, they probably don’t have much money to spend on the products those commercials are promoting, and what’s the purpose of making a commercial only to show it to people who can’t afford what it’s trying to sell.
But what if we could come up with a better model?
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