I’m only half-understanding this post. I think I agree with the message. I’m fed up and angry with how draining and uncertain the world is, and the constant click-baiting over minor aspects that seem meaningless to the overall picture (USA perspective) are possibly a part in how things got this bad. Most days I wish I could “cancel my subscription” to the overall scene. Perhaps that exhaustion is why his writing is less than coherent, or why I’m not reading it well.
Most days I wish I could “cancel my subscription” to the overall scene.
This might sound a little preachy, and I don’t mean it like that, but… you can. Just stop engaging with it. Stop checking social media, “news”, blogs, videos and all the miriad other ways others try to capture your attention so frequently. Develop an attitude that, when you see an a link to “10 things you didn’t know about corn! Number 7 will shake your world!!1!11!”, you think “a) I probably do know them, and b) I’ve managed to live without them so far, so I’ll survive not clicking on this obvious clickbait”.
The same with news. You don’t actually need to read about the fresh new attrocity of the day, you’re already aware of the cascade of awfulness that’s occuring, so give yourself a break. You can always choose to catch up once a week or so to make sure you’re not too far out of the loop.
I’m not going to say any of that is easy, at least to begin with, but it is all doable, and the benefit to your wellbeing is likely to be massive. You don’t need to stop completely, but, at the very least, check these things only occasionally, and for a fixed amount of time.
Nah I get all that, and I was never one for drama-bait or click-bait slop. I don’t particularly care for trends or social media at all. That last tangent was a little too out of the scope of the original discussion and a bit of a vent. Shutting off the world doesn’t change the world around me; doesn’t change the instability and unpleasantness of it all; though I do it many days anyways.
For the bigger picture, I generally think TikTok and other social media is how racism and misogyny got popular. I’m old enough to remember when it seemed Leftist ideas dominated the internet. That fell, and I attribute much of that to the low-attention atmosphere and the way rage and hatred can remain captivating in that information ecosystem.
Again, this content is not something I subscribe to; but that doesn’t stop them from gaining relevance. So I’m sick of all the constant stress; the stupidity of the masses; the absurdity of this all. “Polycrisis” is a term I recall reading in an article; and that’s what I’m feeling.
Content is whatever. I fully subscribe to “Don’t like it? Find something else”. I just wish the bigger problems in my life and the overall changes in the wider world and internet could be “turned off” like a video or TV channel.
So… Just kind of a disjointed personal description of clickbait. (Then chooses to use “attention whore” three times while self-censoring it like a baby.) I’m glad to see people speaking out about how clickbaity things are, but I think putting it here only preaches to the choir, isn’t much more political than an “everything is politics” justification, and doesn’t add much of anything to the discussion.
all I could think about is how hot he is, and how much I want him to fuck me inside-out, so, attention economy, indeed
