The True Cost of Paying Attention to Social Media

Your attention is the ultimate resource. It is the most precious thing that you have. Because when you pay attention, you're paying it with your life.

Because it takes time to pay attention and it takes you being cut off from everything else you could have been doing to pay attention to something. So whatever you pay attention to, it better be worth it.

It better be contributing to your well-being, your livelihood, to making your life better. Yet with social media and today's marketing style, it's all about harvesting your attention. The longer they can keep your attention, the better it is for them.

It's like they're no longer that concerned about pulling you down the funnel or putting you through a conversion system, turning you into a customer. Because all it takes and all that's important to them is to get and retain your attention. When they have your attention, you pay it with your life.

Money can come in at any time. They can just activate their brand and because you have paid attention to them, you will convert to become a customer, just like that. They have you by the balls because you've been paying them all that attention that is coming from your life.

When you pay them your attention, what do you get back in return? You get their influence. You get their propaganda. You get their messaging. It will all get stuck in your head.

It will occupy your headspace. So what are you paying attention for?

You pay attention to good things, things that will benefit you. The things that will occupy your head will be things that benefit you.

Is it a fair trade?

It sounds like a shitty trade to me but yet that's what they're pushing for and that's what all of branding and marketing is about nowadays.

So the lesson here is, number one, on the consumer side we need to be more responsible as to where we give away our attention.

Waking up in the morning and immediately turning on your social media, scrolling away aimlessly, it doesn't do well for you. It is an irresponsible thing to do. After all, we are all human beings with responsibilities and obligations.

Secondly, on the businesses side, the way we market has to be responsible.

We are already in this shitty playground where people just pull all kinds of hacks to get attention rather unethically. They work with the psychological loopholes that human beings have and they exploit it.

It's important to be aware of them as content creators and marketers, and to use them not as loopholes for selfish purposes but responsibly instead.

Market something that is of value because, it ties back to the very business model itself. A business needs to provide value. You see a lot of things today that actually makes things worse but they are marketed as something that is irresistible, something you need.

To me that is unethical.