Getting people’s attention has never been easy, but social media made it a nightmare. Someone reading a book 20 years ago had few other distractions in front of them. Today your phone offers an Olympic competition for your dopamine.

The solution for many writers has been a combination of clickbait, pandering, and fear-mongering. The loudest voice

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.  (Herbert A. Simon)