While social media “experts” and marketing “gurus” will argue otherwise —primarily to retain their employment status—we’ve cracked the code on capturing and monetizing human attention. The smallest creator uses the same attention-based techniques as the companies worth billions of dollars. We all know the strategies that get people to click the video, comment down below, watch until the end, follow for more, and like and sub. We’re so good at distracting each other through digital media that—at this point— it’s not even impressive.
The engagement puzzle, the Fibonacci sequence of attention-based media has been solved. The cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the lamp, the herald is singing on high. If you addictify your work, thereby transforming it into content, “the algorithm” will take care of the rest and do whatever it takes to distract the subset of users who demonstrate preferential interest for whatever you’re offering. And eventually the clicks, comments, watch time, view counts, follows, likes, and subs you’ve been pining for will start to accumulate.
We fully understand how to weaponize our shared need for connection to sell adds or shill widgets and do so en-mass. We’ve thoroughly allowed the sum of human creativity to be imprisoned by platforms designed to maximize shareholder value. There is no new or novel quest for us to complete under the digital media category.
So I now ask can we please make something else? Can we peer beyond the walled gardens of our slop-filled feeds and see what lies elsewhere? I believe we can. And I’m excited to see what we’ll do when we regain the full strength of our attention, creativity, and sense of wonder.