exploring the inner workings and dynamics of companies building products engineered to hook us, addict us, and hijack our attention to sell more ad inventory
Sometimes we don’t quite process that billions of people on the planet get unlimited entertainment, voice and video calling, maps, restaurant reviews, weather, news, an encyclopedia, mail, messaging, and more for *free* just because 1-2% of us click an ad every now and then.
The reason we’re so increasingly intolerant of long articles and why we skim them, why we skip forward even in a short video that reduces a 300-page book into a three-minute animation — even in that we skip forward — is that we’ve been infected with this kind of pathological impatience that makes us want to have the knowledge but not do the work of... See more
what if the apps you used helped you keep control over your attention and more intentionally use your time. how many times have we opened twitter/instagram/etc with an intention only to forget about it 15mins later, still sucked down the rabbit hole? sublime is an idea baby, but if we succeed, it's because we helped you live more intentionally.
I Didn’t Want It to Be True, but the Medium Really Is the Message