The Battle for Attention
LinkedIn shows that I have six notifications, I know that none are interesting, but I click on them anyway. Like an empty fridge, I always fall for it. If I don't read it, it will start sending me emails.
Speaking about emails, I am unsure when I last had a real conversation using them. Most of them just want to tell me that their company exists.
“We are updating our privacy policy.” — We both know that's not why you are emailing me. No one, not even you, cares about your privacy policy.
Email shadow advertising also takes many forms: like “How did we do? Give us feedback that we won't ever read” and “Your package has updates! (It is transit city that doesn't matter.)”
Social media
When we talk about attention, we always think about social media, which tries to get you addicted to it somehow.
If you want to test this, create a new account on Twitter / TikTok / Instagram and see what the algorithm feed "seed” posts are. They are always quasi-nudity, religion, public fights, hustlebros, or politics.
It is bad even when there is no algorithmic feed. Some years ago, Reddit's “all” page was used to entertain and have interesting news, but not anymore. If I open my Reddit /r/all page, all the posts are about <x> destroying the world, but what can I do?
None of those posts offer anything interesting or actionable. Most are rage-bait relationship stories written by AI and “clever comebacks” at a boomer politician who doesn't even know what an “ecks” is.
It is bad, even for creators
The problem is that it didn't even click with me until I started a startup, but attention is more valuable than short-term financial success.
Views and signups are cool, but it is better if the user returns to you daily and you spend a lot of time in your app. Later, you can figure out how to turn this attention into money.
There is no limit to wealth, but there is to people's lives and how much of it they spend on your app.
Using the software before it uses you
If you want to show the world something you made, you need to gather that attention—“Build and they will come” is BS for anyone who ever created something.
And if you want that attention, you need to piggyback on existing platforms to try syndicating some of their attention. But they will always get the last laugh when they rug pull you, when “your attention” is stolen back into the “platform's attention.”
For example, if I post on LinkedIn with a link attached, no one will ever see the post because LinkedIn doesn't want people to click links that get you out of the website.
If you are a YouTube creator, you know that the people subscribing is not enough—you have to ask them to hit the bell. The algorithm sometimes won't prioritize your videos to your subscribers and will prefer random videos instead.
Ironically, even Substack (this platform) does this. When I go into Substack.com, my home is not the dashboard but other unrelated people's blogs, which are nothing close to things I care about.
What can we do?
The only way out of this hell is to treat your time as a currency. “Time is money” is now on a whole new meaning. Now, your time is someone else's money.
Now, I have the same disregard for people who want to steal my time as I do for people trying to scam me out of my money.
Send me an AI cold email, and I report it as spam. Have fun getting deservedly banned by GMail. Mobile notifications are a privilege not given to any social media. Attention-seeking spam keeps coming in, but I slowly push it out.
Nowadays, I limit my social media to Subscribed Subreddits and Hacker News, but honestly, I can't resist sometimes going to Reddit's /r/all page and my local news websites and regretting it.
But like a diet, I know I might improve if I consume fewer garbage products.