Free-market economies are founded on the ideology of supply and demand. When it comes to attention there’s a very finite supply and an ever-increasing demand. The demand for attention as a resource may be higher than any other. Unlike money you can’t make more of it or save it up, what you have is what you get, there are no freebies. In a world, where people, corporations, and jobs are all constantly bidding for our attention it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.
The finite nature of attention can lead to “FOMO” or the fear of missing out. FOMO is caused because there are only so many things we can actively give our attention to. Therefore, we are bound to be left out eventually from something we just don’t have the attention for. Furthermore, this is where some corporations step in with practices that feed off of FOMO to get your attention. I like to call this cycle the Instagram cycle since that’s where it’s most easily observed. How it works is, either you’re invited to something and cannot go or you’re not invited, people then proceed to post pictures of how fun and exciting it was making sure to document the event and show that they’re there, someone on the FOMO side then observes the image and feels left out, so what do they do in response? Most of the time the response is as follows, they see the image, are saddened by it so it initiates the revenge posting phase of the cycle. In this phase the person who was left out for whatever reason either does there own fun event or goes to some exclusive fun event with friends and is sure to post it, all the while making sure it’ll be observed by the same people who were at the event they missed out on, this creates the cycle and feeds into social media companies increasing market share of the attention economy.
The overwhelming nature of how selective our attention is does not only contribute to the social media cycle depicted above but also shows how oblivious to the limited supply certain industries are. The primary example I can think of at the moment is the over-saturation of streaming services, which inevitably will cause many to fail. Think back to streaming five years ago, there was Netflix and there was Hulu, as well as some exclusive premium channels like HBO which are slightly different, but essentially the same thing. Now, think of streaming today, there is HBO Now, Hulu, Netflix, as well as, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube TV, CBS All Access, Apple TV, and more in the works. Streaming services most definitely have their pros, specifically two things, exclusive shows, and convenience. The market started with Netflix as a convenience thing, streaming was so much more convenient than regular TV and movies, however, as a result of over-saturation, the only thing keeping most viewers around are exclusive shows. Therefore, we see an interesting trend with newer streaming services like Disney Plus, where as soon as their big-ticket exclusive show is over (The Mandolorian ), many people cancel their subscriptions. Where the market survives is with specific niches or conveniences, it was founded on convenience and convenience is the only thing that can keep this over-saturated market alive. The best example of convenience in modern streaming is with Amazon Prime Video since it comes ‘free’ with Amazon Prime.
Overall the attention economy looks just like any other free-market economy. Our attention is our buying power, and companies are competing to increase their market share in a field where there isn’t much more room for growth. Already we see companies like streaming services hitting the ceiling of the attention economy. Finally, we have to ask ourselves where our attention matters, and what FOMO means to us, because what it boils down to is it’s not just companies competing for our attention, but our friends and our families, and it’s our job to determine with whom our attention lies.
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