Brad Barrish
@bradbarrish
Nerd
Brad Barrish
bradbarrish.com
As of September 2025, approximately 170 million Americans spend, on average, one hour every day in an app that is designed to maximize psychological grip. While Congress fixates on TikTok’s data collection usages, what hasn’t received enough attention is how the platform has successfully industrialized human attention itself.
TikTok Won. Now Everything Is 60 Seconds.
" Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. "
Howard Thurman
Thomas Klaffke • Aliveness: Reframing Productivity
I love/hate the idea of our environment making up for our lack of self-control.
Everything on TikTok is just kind of mediocre, because nobody watches anything for very long, so there’s no reason to make anything very good. And increasingly, this endless, relentless feed of bland mediocrity is eating every other type of cultural consumption in America.
A few cultural thoughts
I love the idea of building a world, not an audience. I just discovered Kening Zhu via Rachel Kwon.
It’s so easy to say that we’re all one world and that there shouldn’t be anti-Semitism, there shouldn’t be racism — it’s so easy to be lovey-dovey and peacenik. But I say this without any qualifications: I’ve never experienced any of that (hatred). Never. So every time I’m making an argument that has anything to do with race or misogyny or
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