Last night, Jake Paul fought Mike Tyson in an exhibition match. I refused to watch it, even though it was on Netflix and I already have a subscription. Jake Paul is one of the leaders in the attention-seeking economy. He’s figured out a way to thread the needle, arranging fights which make everyone mad, because they want to see him get beat up. He never fights a young boxers in their prime, it’s always one-step removed: former MMA fighters, older boxers, amateur boxers, etc. I watched 30 seconds of the highlights this morning, and it was a boring fight. Tyson was a shadow of his former self, barely doing his famous bob, barely using his footwork. But, I digress…. 😛
It’s all part of something bigger going on in society, and I think it’s the crux of the attention economy. It used to be the case that we would read the authors we like, listen to the music that our friend told us about, look at the works of the artists we found pleasurable. But, in the last 20 years, a new source has crept in. The algorithm. We still listen to our friends, and the experts, but they’ve been diluted. We’ve given the Chimpanzee, dopamine hit part of our brain more control over what we watch, what we buy, who/what we vote for, etc.
Personally, I think the pinnacle, the high point of my happiness was when I used RSS feeds with Google Reader circa 2010. I had curated a wonderful list of low-volume, high-quality sources of information. It was better than the traditional media (ABC, NBC, etc) with their late-night advertisements because I could control it. It was way better than the dopamine-fueled rage that social media algorithms breed when you let them select for you. I think Martin Fowler is touching on something similar here.
We want to blame the algorithm, but we need to blame ourselves. We are the ones that submit ourselves to the dopamine hits. We are the ones who have the responsibility for ourselves. I’m not saying that social media posts, TikTok reels, and YouTube videos aren’t addictive, they are. I’m also not defending the attention whore’s like Jake Paul who cash in on it all. But it’s our responsibility to go spend time with our family, grow plants, ride bicycles, or do something with our time that’s way more rewarding.
We can hate Jake Paul for taking advantage of it all, we can rant about The Algorithm, or we can hate ourselves for being too week to resist – I recommend none of this. Instead, I recommend rejecting it all, on purpose. Do it on purpose. Reject it all…on purpose.