Notes on the Internet, the Attention Economy, and Silicon Valley
A mishmash of insights
The Attention Economy.
Why are big movie stars starting podcasts? Why does a bigwig like Nonini have a You Tube channel? Why is 50 Cent a troll on social media, a GOAT of his stature?
It’s because attention has shifted. It has gone online. The audience is online. So these celebrities and influencers capture attention online and then direct it towards their products: movies, books, songs, apps …
All Publicity is Good Publicity
The attention economy: all publicity is good publicity (if you know how to wield it).
Observe: Kanye rants, stays relevant, sells Yeezys and albums.
Observe: Trump says and does everything that would make any other candidate lose the election, hogs all the attention, wins.
Observe: a sex tape can be the foundation stone of a billion-dollar empire.
For creatives and entrepreneurs, this is the best of times, because there is a high potential of going from rags to insane riches.
Observe: a girl dances to a music video on Tiktok, becomes a national celebrity overnight.
The Best of Times
If you want to know we are living in the best of time, consider how easy it is to slide into anyone’s DMs and get a response. Slide into your hero’s DMs or comment on their post and get a reply.
Furthermore, the internet has provided us with a ready stadium full of people who will listen to our song or read our book or buy our product etc. If you can grab their attention that is …
These smart phones we hold are incredibly powerful tools if used well. They contain more knowledge than all ancient libraries combined. They contain access to the entire world. They contain access to your heroes, people who would be otherwise inaccessible to you offline. When I think about it and compare it to the world before smartphones, it boggles my mind.
The Rich Get Richer
Nassim Taleb has coined two helpful words:
1. Mediocristan
2. Extremistan
The two terms concern how data is distributed in a curve.
In mediocristan, there is a semblance of equality, and in extremistan, there is extreme inequality.
For instance, every dentist makes a good living, but some dentists make more money than other dentists. But every dentist is making money. That’s mediocristan.
Extremistan is where there is a huge disparity between the least paid and the highest paid. In extremistan, most people are struggling to earn, but the ones who do make money make like almost all the money. For instance, most authors struggle to earn from their books, but somebody like J.K. Rowling mints an extreme amount of money (billions).
The internet is in extremistan. See, everyone is on You Tube with their channel, but only the top-tier channels are making serious money. The top-tier social media influencers make almost all the money. Only a few Instagram models are making top dollar. So most people are earning very little from the internet, but those who are earning are earning an extreme amount.
On the internet, the principle at play is “the rich get richer”.
Hacking Your Brain
Do you know that your brain can be hacked?
What do you think it is that advertisers do when they cunningly influence you to purchase their products? These guys know you better than you know yourself, they are masters of psychology.
For instance, they know a lot of men don’t have beautiful women hanging on their arms. So they make a car ad where a guy is driving a car with an incredibly hot supermodel sitting by his side. Message: buy this car and you will have a supermodel hanging on your arm.
Well, but a car will do that, you might say. But have you seen that advert which uses sex to advertise cooking oil? The one where the man and his woman are dancing salsa and then rush off to the bedroom, if I remember the storyline correctly. Sex sells.
But in the age of social media, our brains are being hacked on a more insidious level. These social media platforms have too much of our information and they sell it to advertisers. Plus their algorithms are designed to show you (advertise) products that you have been talking about.
You are chatting with someone about an obscure brand. The next thing you know that brand’s products are on your newsfeed. Witchcraft? No. Welcome to the age of intrusive tech companies.
Cambridge Analytica hacked your brains. Then they performed an inception (have you watched that movie?). And by inception (based on the movie), I mean they planted an idea in your head. Manipulation.
Don’t Be Evil
Guys in Silicon Valley are obsessed with power. If you have watched the show Silicon Valley, you can see this clearly with the character Gavin Benson — or in Season Three, when Richard turns evil. Or if you have watched the movie The Social Network.
They are obsessed with market dominance and are ruthless in destroying or absorbing the competition. They hide that ruthless streak by being likeable, wearing t-shirts to the office, having ping pong tables at work, and so forth.
In addition, they have the power that comes from knowledge — consider how much data they have on everyone in the world who uses their apps and phones.
Facebook bought out Instagram and Whatsapp and that made it unstoppable and unbeatable. Google (the entire company is called Alphabet) has so many acquisitions (including You Tube and Android), and Google Search is the only search that matters. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon (though this company is from Seattle, not Silicon Valley) … Dominance.
And I have not even talked about the psychological power they have over entire populations (see how Cambridge Analytica brainwashed voters).
And that’s why when I was thinking about where all these power and obsession with dominance would lead, I realized that the most evil man of the twenty first century won’t be a Hitler, a politician, like in the last century, no it will be a tech mogul, and he might even have a benevolent goal: “making the world a better place” (a Thanos kind of figure who is ruthless in his pursuit of the greater good).
Don’t Forget
If you aren’t paying to use a certain product but the owner of the product is still making money (just not from you), then you are the product.
Who is the Greatest Drugdealer of all Time?
Others: Pablo Escobar, Heisenberg, Gus Fring, Stringer Bell . . .
Myself: Mark Zuckerberg
Explain: Well, he deals in a drug called Distraction. In the new “attention economy”, attention is more valuable than gold, and distraction more addictive than crack. So he sells Distraction to his junkies, and in exchange they pay him with two types of currency: attention and personal information, which he then sells to the highest bidder (advertisers), thus making money seemingly from thin air. Truly he has revolutionized the drug trade!
And like any good drug dealer, he knows junkies are restless. They get bored using the same-tasting “product” all the time. One of his most potent drugs is the “Like”. And to ensure the addicts don’t get bored, he mixed it up into new forms called “Reactions” (he recently gave us the “Care” reaction). Other potent drugs: comments, shares, tags …
And we the users make distraction drugs to intoxicate each other: the memes and posts we make. And we don’t get paid for all the content we create for the platform, but he is consistently putting money in his pocket. Anyway, if it sounds like I am complaining, go back to the beginning of the article, where I was looking at the bright side.
Sincerely, your fellow Junkie.
Interesting Read
This is not the first time I am writing about this.
- Read more of my thoughts: Notes on Social Media, Memes, and the Internet.
- This post is also relevant: We are Machines.
