attention is sacred

I guess I meditate because attention is my art form. I’d even wager that much of what we call art — paintings, novels, poetry — are secondary, byproducts of rarefied attention. Attention, then is the primary art form.

And yet: as much as the Fediverse is different (the governing structures, the incentives, the moderation, the absence of ads and engagement tricks), so much of it is also unsettlingly familiar—the same small boxes, the same few buttons, the same mechanics of following and being followed. The same babbling, tumbling, rushing stream of thoughts. I... See more

Again, I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I spend too much time on the socials, my focus erodes to a point that I have trouble reading anything , much less keeping a page of Morrison straight in my head. Morrison didn’t write for the Elon Musk shattermind; she wrote for the Slow Zone. Anyone can read Toni Morrison, but I would argue that... See more

We have been co-evolving with ravenous attention predators forever. This is not a fight we can, or should want to, opt out of. We already live in a universe with church, slot machines, and Rhianna. The Sorrows of Young Werther. The Beatles. The bigger and more successful they get, the more boring they become, and the easier they are to ignore.