How much of your attention can you spare?

I've been thinking about how important our attention is becoming, and how willingly we divest it towards things that don't really, well, they don't deserve it. It seems to me now the most valuable asset you have is your attention (if you weren't clever enough to buy Bitcoin in the golden days, maybe). I started thinking about what kind of attentions there are.

Tokenized Attention

Something that's really bugging me about platforms like Medium lately is essentially the quid pro quo nature of it. The sense that people are reading you and commenting on how "brilliant" your stuff is so you'll do the same. And I wonder where that differs from Hive as an ecosystem, because I'm sure there's people who apply this mentality to Hive and yet, for me, it has never been problematic here.

I reckon Medium is more of a writers' space, whereas Hive is everyone's space. You're not here necessarily because you like to write poetry or are working on your next novel and are trying to make it big or whatever. You're here because maybe you don't fit anywhere else, or because you're alive and wanna tell somebody about it who maybe is as weird as you.

Which is important because it allows for diversification. If we're all competing (in a sense) on who has the cleverest turns of phrase or the biggest, brightest imagination, there's bound to be frustration and fakery. I mean. It's just natural. Places like Medium, it seems to me, are trying to be the new journalism, the new literary world, since both of those have long collapsed, at least in the traditional sense. Except those are worlds that are bound to be fraught with rivalry, covetousness and other such nasty feelings. There's bound to be a hierarchy, a pecking order, and so on.

So there, I've noticed attention is being tokenized. I will give you a piece of my attention so you give me a piece of yours, and we basically perform an equal service for each other.

Attention as an Escape Hatch

Then you have basically any other social media. I recently installed a bunch of them, like Instagram and the much reviled TikTok which just seems atrocious to me, and it's terrifiyng to think how many people waste entire lives on such a place. I tried opening it a few times but am very put off by the immediate blast of sound that hits you. It's interesting from a psychological perspective though, it just assaults you from the get go, it gives you no chance at all to escape or even retain your thought. Because if you're maybe in a conversation or just thinking your things and I start yelling at you and bombarding you with loud, obnoxious noise, it's very unlikely you will retain your thought.

And to me, that's the most dangerous way to use attention, because how many of the things you're thinking about, how much of your own discriminatory and deductive process can you afford to trade for the sake of someone selling shoes or I don't know Botox or whatever these people on TikTok sell?

I'm also deeply mystified by how these platforms work. Like, I put a video of me dancing on both and it had hundreds of views quickly and I wondered, well, who has nothing better to do than to watch that? Or like who's watching these stories? I mean personally, since i'm using them to promote my yoga classes now, I definitely get the use, but what's the use for you as someone who's just watching these things? I don't get that. Like why would I sit viewing what some random person I don't even know is doing?

There, I think, we're using attention as an escape hatch to carry us into a different reality, and I'm not sure that's a good thing, honestly. Because I do think you only get one roll around and I do intend to make mine as fucking amazing as I possibly can. Certainly not spend time watching what other people are doing.

Attention as a Ladder for Growth

And then, there is the use of attention as (I think) it should be used. Because you're dealing with a limited resource, and as with all limited resources, you have to think which way you can best use it to reap the most reward. Now, presuming you're moderately elevated, you understand that reward is a spiritual and intellectual term more than anything else, so how can you use your attention to grow most?

And to me, without being corny (again), that's Hive. Because while it can be true on other platforms and people will often say they're learning stuff and growing from other platforms (and sometimes even do), I think it's much more a raindrop then here. Like maybe you watch a video where you learn a new skill or idea or something, but that comes bundled with 5 videos of cats or girls doing their outfit or something. Which, I just think they're built in such a way that the house always wins, you know? In the sense that they will always take more than they give you.

Whereas with Hive, I don't think that's true. First of all, there's no one trying to sell me anything here. If I read what someone is doing on Hive, they likely won't be trying to shill something, a service or a product. They're also not monetizing my attention. I mean Hive is built in such a way that they (my creators of choice) could be monetized without me having to waste a single ounce of my attention on them through auto-voting and other such.

Which means the only reason I am "wasting" that attention after all is entirely voluntary. I want to know.

And that's the rarest, best thing you can orient your life towards. That and love, obviously. But I hope you're orienting yourself towards that, anyway.

How do you parlay your attention online? And do you find it's paying off for you?