Rawen's Musings

Whenever someone utters the word economy, what comes to your mind? Bunch of out-of-touch people in clothes more expensive than someone’s house, plotting on how to harvest your organs in the most innocent-looking way? A circle-jerk of wannabe “business people” masturbating over graphs and non-sensical numbers?

Well, I’ve bad news for you because I’m not going to talk about these ghouls. Or maybe I will but I’m afraid your image is very narrow because, believe it or not, every single one of us can fit this description. And I’m here to yet again put a mirror in front of many, to some extent everyone.

First things first, the word economy isn’t some new age concept or some cool buzzword that some demented influencer came up with. Economy has been with humanity since the dawn of civilisation and since the very first humans had some form of organisation besides “Me want this. They have what me want. Me kill them. Me take.” And even stupid thing covers the exact thing I want to talk about; Supply AND Demand.

This concept right here is the very foundation of economy. Someone can provide something and someone else wants something. An interaction between these two, be it individuals or groups, is then called a trade, service or whatever fits the description of the action. Put all these together and you have, surprise surprise, an ECONOMY. This applies to bartering, this applies in hard capitalism, this applies in communism, libertarianism, fascism, anarchism … this concept is completely apolitical.

And yet, we the people completely and utterly suck at it. We create over-abundance of something nobody wants. We demand things that are either impossible to create or in a timeframe that’s impossible to achieve. We arbitrarily play around with “value” of things and services to exert power. We hoard means of exchange, undermining and kneecaping the very concept in the process by greed.

But I’m not here to talk about money and/or wealth and how utterly face-fucked this system is. As mentioned in the title, I’m here to talk about a different asset. It’s an asset everyone has, everyone wants, everyone can provide and everyone (myself included) is colossaly bad at handling it or specifically, its mean of exchange; ATTENTION.

That’s right, my dear audience, we’re in an attention economy. This system has “exploded” with proliferation of social media networks. These basically gave everyone a global poster wall or megaphone to spread any message, be it the good kind or bad kind. With this, everyone has been given a new form of currency, attention. And it’s one weird kind of currency because it’s self-replicating and thus infinite. Kind of like fiat currency (sounds familiar?) except that one doesn’t really want to self-replicate (or more precisely, it’s not desirable by the controlling parties to do so). There’s also another weird aspect of it which is that you don’t really pay with it but instead use it as a marketing vessel or an investment. You provide attention to something and by that you invest in this weird form of stock. The dividend is then paid back in reach and sometimes a significant real world consequence and not just “internet points”. That’s the supply part of the equation. What is the demand part? Creation. And here I have to use the utterly slimy term “content creation” as a general term for written word, visual work (drawn art, videos etc.), audio work, brainrot, slop, memes etc. Anything that can spread around like wildfire. And you, the creator, are on the demand end, with attention being your price and/or value. Does this make sense? What if I told you that we’re also customers and marketing teams in this mess? How? By engaging in the consumption of the goods provided. Every like is a payment. Every view is payment. And every repost is both a payment AND a marketing act.

And it’s the last point which is both extrememly important (creates further supply of attention) and at the same time dangerous like standing next to an open nuclear reactor (creates further supply of attention). Because by spreading the “product” of choice, you increase its reach and thus its message. And it’s this spread in which we the people cut our own branches right from under us with utter recklessness. And those who want to intentionally profit from it know this very well and play on our very basic emotions such as fear, anger, sense of belonging etc. to make this act easier and further their goals while using you as an unpaid marketing intern.

But what does it have to do with supply and demand? Look just a little back up at what I said about reposts. By spreading the message, be it directly or by possibly the most insidious approach called “quote-dukning” (seriously, this shit is akin to killing your enemy by shooting yourself in the head in the process”), you’re increasing the supply of “outrage content” AND increase the demand for it not only by engaing with it but also by adding your own demand for personal attention into the mix. This results in a “positive feedback loop” and if you have any knowledge about electical signals or signals in general, you should know that positive feedback loops are really really bad in such systems because they’ll eventually bring the system down. Don’t believe me? Well … open your eyes and ears or whatever sensory organs you use to preceive the world around you.

So … what to do? Well, it’s an economy and believe it or not, YOU are in control of it. Or at least your part of it. You can in fact control the supply and demand in this mess of a system. How? By engagement of course. What you engage with IS what ends up in demand and gets its supply increased. Want to increase supply of, I don’t know, pictures of plants? Find artists who draw or paint these and give them reach. Or nature photographers who capture stunning moments of reality. Give them your attention. It may seem like a little but it only takes one moment, one single post to spread like uncontrolled wildfire.

Same thing goes for the opposite, decreasing the supply and demand. Obvious rage-bait? Skip over it. Drama that doesn’t even remotely affect you? DON’T jump in. I’m emphasising this one because it might seem tempting to jump in on a witchhunt but believe me, these more often cause harm to the cause and have a strong tendency to backfire (Steffo and Finn have a nice read on this here). Let the parties involved “handle” the situation. Not to mention unsolicited advice is a form of abuse, depending on the context.

There are of course, just like with everything, exceptions to the guidelines above, especially the latter one. This applies to things that require public attention even if they don’t immediately or even remotely affect you. Not to mention if you’re in the thankless position of a journalist or a moderator in which case you’ll likely be exposed to the nastiest stuff imaginable (please, take care of your mental health as much as possible so it doesn’t end up being your demise). In situations like this, it’s absolutely necessary to pay attention to the framing and make sure that you don’t accidentally spread the bad thing while trying to “debunk” it. A charming Kirby-themed post about this was circulating around BlueSky with a neat mnemonic “Eat their framing!”. This is why quote-posts are so tricky and why quote-dunking is more often than not harmful.

Alright, enough of ranting. What I created here isn’t exactly a set of guidelines but more a frustrating picture I keep seeing around the social spaces. Yes, world is a rage-inducing place to live in. But it should be in our best interest to make it a better one by demanding and spreading good things instead of being unpaid propagandists for the trashy ones. We have the tools and ironically it’s the tools of those who probably want us quiet. So, and this is especially for the people for whom the word “capitalism” is like waving a rag in front of a furious bull, time to be our own oligarchs and influence the world by our own passive wealth.

R.R.A.