The Hidden Forces Shaping Your Online Experience: A Look at the Attention Economy

We're living in time where people will pay to get the attention and there's an entire economy built on just attention. One thing that's most valuable on the internet is content but if anything that comes closer to content is attention.

I spend everyday on the internet but instead of just consuming content I sometimes pay more attention to observe other people behaviour on the internet and how they're getting sold those things while doomscrolling. So let's go in depth of how this entire attention economy works.

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The Reality of Attention Economy

The internet is where this economy exist and entire world is on internet and access it daily like it's the part of their life.

And in this attention economy we have multiple social media platforms where you'll see different kind of trends.

The trends always change over the time, today you see this and tomorrow it'll be a different trend.

Sometimes you'll say this is cringe or the worst trend you've ever seen on the internet but it'll be trending anyway because it is getting that attention from people no matter if it's hate.

Attention span of people on internet

There's two types of people on the internet: one with short attention span and one with long but the longer ones are less and internet is feeding them content that is making that attention span shorter.

_{image by An Le Dinh from Pixabay}

Back then in 2014-18 we used to watch YouTube videos no matter how long that video was - it was still fun and we could consume that content entire day

Because just before YouTube era we used to watch television and our attention span was literally at it's peak during that time.

Over the time this attention economy is started building up and people attention span became shorter and shorter.

Now majority of people prefer to watch Shorts, insta reels or tiktok videos because they consume content with less than a minute and doom scroll.

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Making money from attention is a life hack

Now These big brands knows people pay more attention to shorts and these big marketing firms usually spend time on internet analyzing trends and where people are showing interest, their attention is literally the reason most of these brands are becoming huge.

_{image bysiampura from Pixabay}

People say "marketing" is difficult or complicated but in reality it's never been this easy as it is now just because of the internet.

Even a bad product can thrive if it's getting attention from the people. Like recently even in the movies you'll see they do what people are expecting, making cameos and doing what fans want - marvel did the same thing with Deadpool and wolverine, movie plot was meh but all that attention was enough to make it a billion dollar r rated movie.

Memes Get most attention

Now people are running their business by marketing it through the memes. There's a new trend every other day, if you're doing business you just need to catch up with that trend by being creative or stupid to get people attention and boom it'll start making money.

I have seen a lot of businesses who have hired interns for marketing just based on how creatively they can follow the trend quicker from others.

Some of restaurants are famous because they've this waiter or waitresses who made a random video that got popular and now they do use that as marketing.

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Crypto is also attention economy

The finest example that's Infront of your eyes is crypto where we see one memecoin getting attention and money flowing into that coin.

_{image by u_ffpdw8rof2 from Pixabay}

Than the attention slowly dies and shift to another coin like Ai to RWA and RWA to layer 2 coins.

This is how quick things happen in the attention economy and one reason it is becoming shorter and shorter is because of our attention span.

So, it makes even more sense why this bull cycle was short.

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Wrapping Up...

In the end it's just my study and observations about how quickly trends are changing over the night and making money is only possible while the trend is at it's peak.

Our attention span kind of needs a hard reset, to make things better again but again we're on internet consuming content and buying things that are getting sold to us on the internet.

I would love to know what's your thoughts are on this in the comments.

fin.

Your support is much appreciated. Don't Forget to hit Upvote, Comment and Re-blog.

_{Thanks for reading.Greetings.}

All the content and images are mine except indicated. No copyright infringement intended. 23/08/2024.

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