Attention, please

why the attention economy is making us into seekers of the superficial

Entering the Kingdom

by Mary Oliver

The crows see me.
They stretch their glossy necks
In the tallest branches
Of green trees. I am
Possibly dangerous, I am
Entering the kingdom.

The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees–
To learn something by being nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.

But the crows puff their feathers and cry
Between me and the sun,
And I should go now.
They know me for what I am.
No dreamer,
No eater of leaves.

---

“The dream of my life
Is to lie down by a slow river
And stare at the light in the trees–
To learn something by being nothing
A little while but the rich
Lens of attention.”

This is the paragraph that has had me in a choke-hold for years. To learn something by being nothing a little while but the rich lens of attention.

I read this poem for the first time shortly after beginning my social media ‘career.’ I was able to see immediately how that type of lens of attention that Oliver was speaking of was technically no different than the one I was employing on socials, but the quality, depth and spirituality of it was like night and day.

❀ Some musings on the notion of attention ❀

1. Attention is something that we can be - embody.

2. Attention is also something we do - give.

In some ways, attention is all we really have. Things outside of our awareness don’t disappear but the things within become vividly alive. The richness that Oliver was talking about was in that narrow space. This is why she called it a lens. Like the lens of a camera, what is within the scope of observation is what gets captured. Everything else is out of focus.

One of the manifold ills of big tech is the fact that it has mined human beings for this one precious resource. It has robbed many of us from being able to finish books, it has made completing projects much more difficult, it has splintered our ability to retain information, it has shifted our already edgy nervous systems into more disquiet, and it has enslaved our brains to need more and more validation in order to produce dopamine.

In a recent Atlantic article (sorry, I know, it’s behind a paywall) about the attention economy from the perspective of someone who was a shepherd of it - a news anchor for MSNBC. In it I learned that führer Elon Musk purchased Twitter for 44 billion, but not long after he learned that it was worth much, much less (now it is hovering around 9.4 billion). When asked if he regretted such an unfathomable overpayment he admitted that he did at first, but as the author of the article, Chris Hayes, cleverly said - Musk had, since the purchase, become ‘Twitter’s main character’ and so no, ultimately he didn’t regret it.

Because what he really prized above and beyond his ludicrous wealth is attention.

Being Twitter’s main character has created - or maybe more accurately: unearthed, encouraged - the monster of Musk because he has an endless stream of attention pointed his direction. The more problematic he is, the more people talk about him. It hearkens back to the quote, “there is no bad publicity” - especially in an aeon where attention is in and of itself the commodity. When you have numerous sets of eyes on you, it acts like a sort of laser of power. But the thing is, once that laser gets inevitably drawn away elsewhere, what power is left? Who are you without it?

Frodo Baggins getting lasered by Sauron, but then Aragorn and co draw its gaze away

❀ We live in an age of roving eyes ❀

Something that was fascinating to witness over my social media career was how at first, posting one’s art was (as much as it could be) for art’s sake. IG acted as a gallery, and people were actually happy to see your creations. Somehow, a select few artists and other creators have managed to keep the eye of Sauron off of themselves, but the vast majority - myself included - became entrenched in the ever-unfolding expectation that it was no longer about the work or the projects or the products. It was about you. You were the commodity. This was demanded by where the attention went. Nothing more, nothing less. Try as you might to bend the collective will towards something else, and you fail. The power is in where the attention goes.

Now, of course, this has always been the case - again: in many ways, attention is all we have. It is the pinpoint of where our consciousness journeys from moment to moment. But the quality of attention has changed due to the fact that, more than ever before, it has become a commodity. You thought that those repetitive commercials during your favourite TV hours in the 90s were bad for your health? How about training your brain to doomscroll to the point that it cannot retain anything - unless what’s on the feed can penetrate the burnt-out landscape of the mind? And how absolutely bone-crushingly obnoxious does it have to be in order to penetrate that barrier?

This is what has turned artists into ‘influencers’ and ‘content creators’ (oh, how I loathe both terms). This is what has turned CEOs into megalomaniac billionaire narcissistic sociopaths. The greed of the more. The incessant hunger. Our inner selves are hegemonized into superficial seekers of the next hit. We no longer dive into the spiritual depths that we once did - we can’t. Our chemistry is vehemently bent towards what we know will mentally get us off. We’re essentially drug addicts. And as artists, writers, creators - we have to stoop to lower and lower levels of advertising ourselves in order to have the economy bat an eyelash at us. This is why so many of us (especially perimenopausal) women are ejecting ourselves from these platforms. We’ve started seeing how our very souls have become products, subject to the fickle gaze of the attention economy. We know deep down that at any moment that gaze could rove and be snatched from us. It’s all so fucking vapid. We’re seeking deeper waters.

Attention has sucked the marrow from authenticity. It has us craving applause for every thought, word, and deed. But the thing is - it’s never enough. There’s an incessant insatiability to it. You may perform well metrics-wise one day, gaining all kinds of attention. But you have to wake up again tomorrow and do it all over again if you wish to attain the same - or much larger - level of attention. On and on and on this goes into mortal finitude.

Is this the metric by which you wish to live your life? Personally, I am attempting to embody Mary Oliver’s lens of attention. A deepening, a softening, a broadening, a widening. Back where quality greatly outweighs quantity - this one precious resource, healing from being commodified.

Or, at least, I’m trying.

Until next time,

Love and wolves.

D xx

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