The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
The real crisis isn’t that we are overwhelmed by other people’s suffering. We are collapsing because we have learned how to witness it without entering it, without letting it rearrange us, without making space for it to mean anything.
Tamara • The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
“I’ve cried harder watching a movie than I did reading about someone’s loss, because the movie asked more of me. Because it slowed me down.”
In all of this I am complicit.
We are taught to equate speed with sophistication, reactivity with intelligence, and multitasking with mastery... but it’s all a pathetic farce. You cannot worship in three tabs. You cannot grieve in snippets. You cannot seduce someone while checking your notifications. You cannot raise a child, or a question, or a consciousness, in a room where pr... See more
Tamara • The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
This is spritual starvation pretending to be modern life.
Most people don’t want to be perceived, they want to be approved of. And those are not the same thing. Real attention interrupts the curated self instead of confirming it. It creates the possibility of rupture, of exposure, of being mirrored back in ways that aren’t always flattering. And in that sense, to be deeply paid attention to, without agend... See more
Tamara • The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
Do we know what we look like when we’re not performing? to really be seen versus to be liked or followed etc.
we have become so allergic to presence, so habituated to fragmented attention, that stillness now feels like failure and eye contact like a threat. Attention, once the invisible pulse of love, art, learning, even political consciousness, has been broken down, bundled, and resold to the highest bidder, not only making us distracted, but emotionally ... See more
Tamara • The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
Our attention was the last remaning act of devotion not co-opted by ego, ideology or spectacle.
We scroll past vulnerability like it’s spam, skim grief like it’s a headline, offer heart emojis like they are spiritual currency.
Tamara • The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
It’s how we remembered the world mattered. That we mattered, back when we didn’t produce or optimise or achieve. We showed up .
Tamara • The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
role of the ritual
Sacred rituals once taught us to slow down, and it was not an aesthetic choice back then, but a spiritual imperative. To kneel not out of submission, but to remember we are not the centre of everything.
Tamara • The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
role of the ritual
But to pretend this is only a tech problem is to let ourselves off the hook too easily. The deeper fracture is cultural, even moral, we have confused information for intimacy. We know everything (birthdays, breakups, miscarriages, panic attacks, war zones, ceasefires, climate collapse) and yet we feel almost nothing. We scroll past vulnerability li... See more
Tamara • The Attention Economy Is Making Us Emotionally Poor
The apps want your gaze, and they want your compulsion, your anxiety, your late-night spiral, your muscle memory. They are not satisfied with being looked at, they want to rewire what you look for . Your boredom becomes their goldmine. Your loneliness, their leverage. You are not the customer – you are the raw material, which is terrifying! And the... See more