Explaining The "Attention Economy" And Why It's Killing Creators

I had planned to write this up over on my sister blog The Literary Mercenary, but I know that this blog gets far more eyes on it, and this is a topic I feel quite strongly about. Not just because it affects my life, but because it is the way the entire publishing and entertainment industry works, and so I feel it's important for as many people as possible to really understand this struggle, their place in it, and what the creators they love need from them in order for us to stay out of the grave for one more day.

In case you haven't heard the term, we're all stuck in the Attention Economy... and it's drowning a lot of us.

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The Attention Economy: What It Is, And How It Works

The short version, as Coursera explains, is that the attention economy is just that; attempts to get people's attention (their engagement in social media parlance). There are only so many hours in a day, after all, and there's only so much content someone can consume in that time period. With millions of books, thousands of TV shows, decades of archived films, and untold hours of uploaded videos on the Internet, there's only so much that people can look at, and be engaged by before they run out of steam, and give-a-damn.

This is not, strictly speaking, a new phenomenon. It's the same basic principles that were used by TV and radio stations, as well as by movie studios and publishers in days gone by. People only have so many hours in the day, and with all the things they could be doing with what free time they have, how do you make them engage with what you're making? Especially since that engagement is what determines whether you have enough to eat this month, or if you have to pack it in?

After all, if you sell more copies of a book, then you make more royalties. If you can prove you have more people listening to your radio show, or watching you on TV, then you can sell more advertising spaces and get more sponsorship. The concept isn't new... but like so many things in our day and age, it's been pushed to such an extreme that the magnitude of it can feel insurmountable.

Gimme, it's mine!

That last part is important. Because your attention has always been a resource... but now it's more limited than it's ever been before, and there are more people using more tricks to try to get it through means that feel like something out of 1984. You receive notifications for every app you use, social media blasts you every day, advertising blares before nearly everything you consume, and there is so much happening so fast that you can only absorb a small part of it before you're utterly spent. Add to that all the misinformation, cickbait, and out-and-out bad actors stirring up drama solely because more eyes on them means more money in their pockets, and it's like being at a rave, in a concert, being held inside an active combine harvester.

Your attention is valuable, and this economy turns every minute you watch a video, every click of the Like button, every review you leave, and every follow on a page into a transaction as you signal what you want to see more of... but at the same time, that economy moves the goal posts for creators, and makes it even harder for us to reach our perpetually more tired audience. Because it also refines your searches, your feeds, and what you see and hear based on your previous activity. So if you don't take control of your own behavior, you're only ever going to see and hear the same things over and over again, because that's what this modern media landscape (and the algorithms that power them) are designed to do; keep feeding you whatever it is that will keep you reading, watching, or playing.

Attention and Exposure

I've said this before, but creators are like gladiators. If the audience isn't watching us, and isn't cheering for us, then no one cares what we do, or what happens to us. The more you cheer for us, and the more you follow our careers, and talk about us, the more successful we become. Your attention, your raised voices, make or break whether we live to fight another day, or whether we die on the sands to the indifferent silence all around us.

And that is true... but it's not the entire story.

There is no signalling for mercy in this economy.

Take a moment, and think about the creators you follow in the TTRPG space. Maybe they're bloggers, or YouTubers, or podcasters. All of those watched hours of content, all those reads, all those listens, as well as the likes and comments on social media, those are worth something in the attention economy... however, it is often not worth as much as you think.

It is, to use a dreaded word to every artist out there, exposure.

Consider that Weird Al Yankovic, arguably one of the most accomplished musicians of an era, was paid $12 for 80 million streams on Spotify. Consider the fact that, according to Descript, YouTubers need to get hundreds of thousands of people to subscribe to their channels, and to get hundreds of thousands of views on those videos before they make anything approaching a living wage. And that's on top of the fact that YT doesn't pay creators at all until they have at least 500 subscribers and 3,000 hours of watched content on their channels... until you hit that point, the only person making money is them. Over on Vocal, if you're a Vocal+ member, it takes 90,000 reads on your articles just to make $500. And that's the good rate.

We are competing for eyes and ears every day, yes... but to add insult to injury, even if we get the input and attention from people that the platforms and publishers want, that's still no guarantee that we actually get anything out of it. Because unless that attention is mystically transformed into dollars through ad revenue, sponsorship deals, or merch sales, it's the same as getting a million upvotes on Reddit.

Utterly useless if you need to pay your rent.

As I said in Writing Isn't What Makes Writers Succeed, this is a two-pronged problem for us. Because we need a sizable audience to know about us, and our work, and to give us all the things that make social media happy (clicks, follows, likes, etc.), because when that happens it means we get promoted by the algorithm. Which means that more people will see us, which means more people will find out about us and our work. But even if you manage millions of shares and a huge following, that exposure is no guarantee of income... and it's exhausting pursuing fame, but then having the powers-that-be refuse to give you fortune to go with it.

Which is why, as a consumer, you need to know the value of your attention, and your power, but also its limitations, and the reality creators you love are dealing with. Because as I've said, your actions are all tallied on the board by the machines that run the media landscape. They count your likes, your follows, your retweets, comments, and all those other social transactions. At the same time, if the 700 and change people following my Facebook author page all gave me $5 a month on my Patreon page so I could keep doing what I'm doing, I would never need to bother with social media again.

Just saying.

I want to end this with some words of commiseration. Because I know it is frustrating as someone who just wants to play a game, or just wants to watch videos or listen to podcasts that you are constantly bombarded with the knowledge that your support is what determines whether or not a creator can afford food, and pay their rent. You are often more interested in whether a novel is entertaining, or a comic is funny, than what your impact on the creator's life is going to be.

I get it. Feeling responsible for other people, even if you have a parasocial relationship, is exhausting. However, this is the unfortunate reality we live in. If you want to see creators you like keep making games, videos, podcasts, music, art, or whatever other product you want to see from them, they need your support in order to make that happen.

It is your decision when it comes to what kind of support you want to give, and what you are comfortable with. But there is no secret hand of fame and fortune that will pluck only the worthy and the talented from the dirt and ensure their success. 50 Shades of Gray isn't a bestselling record-breaker because it was an amazing work of literary brilliance... it got where it is because people bought copies, talked about it, left reviews, and supported it. The same is true of Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, and every other rich fraud, dodgy host, and terrible person who made fat stacks of cash.

It wasn't the quality of their art. It was the support of their audience, plain and simple.

On that note, if you haven't heard about the changes of on the Azukail Games YouTube channel, a fairly recent update talks about some of the things you can do to help support us if you want to be sure we keep making videos going forward!

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