Attention

Attention, please! For anyone or anything that needs to interact with us, the first thing they are going to need to do is catch our attention. So much so, that we live in a day and age where even the economy is termed to be the attention economy.

And there is nothing more attention grabbing (and entertaining) these days than the content industry. Therefore, let’s take a look at the direction we are moving towards as a society, and whether or not it looks favourable to us.

Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.

T. S. Eliot

Electronic devices have opened the world up to so many new possibilities, avenues and even realities. In a moment’s notice, we have the ability to travel through time and space. As a matter of fact, we don’t really have to experience any negative emotions at all.

At any moment, we are just a couple of taps away from a huge surge in dopamine in our brains. For those of you who don’t know, dopamine is the feel good hormone. So whenever we are feeling alone, conscious about something or negative in any way, it’s easy to make that go away.

Most of the people I know (including myself), use their cell phone to make everything fade to the background. Feeling alone? Call someone. Don’t know something? Ask ChatGPT. Feeling bored? Watch a movie or listen to music or consume content on one of 6002 social media apps out there.

Really, the possibilities to keep ourselves engaged and entertained are endless.

Now, there are a few things we could discuss after the previous point.

We could talk about why these endless possibilities are a problem in and of themselves. We could talk about why there are so many social media platforms out there (short answer: capitalism). But I feel like there is a bigger, more important topic I would like to discuss.

What I want to focus on today is the content industry.

Now, what exactly is the basis of the content industry as a whole? Here’s how I have understood it. Content is nothing but recorded information, (ideally) for varied purposes and through varied media. The medium could be written, visual or audio, while purposes could be information transfer, education, business and of course, entertainment.

However, when we think content today, a large majority of it is centered around entertaining the audience, and a large percentage is visual in nature. Think videos, reels, images and so on.

The impact of the entertainment industry is so rampant that the other industries which are using social media platforms for advertising and marketing themselves through content, like education and business, are now being forced to incorporate entertainment value in defining the quality of their content.

Have you ever thought why?

I can imagine a sea of people screaming because entertainment grabs attention. Hence the term attention economy. Whatever grabs our attention is most likely to convince us to give them our money in exchange of the product or service they are trying to provide. Simple.

However, there are a couple of issues which I see with this concept of attention economy.

The attention economy should be supported by longer attention spans

The issue with content these days is that we are now forced to believe the shorter the content, the better. Let’s take a look at how video content has evolved.

YouTube Videos (10-60 minutes)>YouTube Videos (4-10 minutes)>Reels (<=1 minute)>Reels (15 seconds is far too long)

In today’s world, whatever garners the most attention and is the fastest, is what people consider to be true. Coming to decisions used to be a process, now it’s instinct. Don’t get me wrong, there are places where making quick decisions is better, but in general, the world is now a much safer and place, and that should afford us the luxury of time and patience.

Ideally, technology and automation should leave us with better ability to make these decisions with more patience, but it’s the exact opposite. We’re making decisions faster than ever, money in the global monetary system is flowing faster than ever.

No one should be shocked to realise that this flow of money is very closely correlated with how the focus of our attention changes.

Part knowledge is always dangerous.

How many times did our parents remind us of the simple fact that whenever we make a decision, it should be based on varied sources of information? But since the duration of the content has reduced so much, it is almost impossible to understand everything one might want to in just 15 seconds.

These days, the kind of information that is flowing on all channels is nothing but a part of the entire picture, and the fact that the attention economy is growing so much, it has become almost impossible to be able to connect the dots and stitch together the entire picture together.

The consumption of content is just supposed to be a way to get introduced to a concept. This needs to be deeply supplemented by research before we reach any decision. This is as true for a consumer’s journey in a marketer’s funnel as it is for forming an opinion or belief about a political leader or an economic policy.

Conclusion

There are two things I implore you do today.

1. Make sure any decision you are making isn’t solely based on a single piece of content.
2. Think about something for more than the 15 seconds it takes to consume that reel or Instagram post before you form an opinion on anything.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one.