The real battle (for your attention, but not only that)
I don’t usually love belligerent analogies, but sometimes they can be useful.
I’ve just stumbled upon an article about attention war in chess-related online media, aptly titled The War on Attention (and written by BenjiPortheault).
Then I went on reading a few comments, and one especially stood out to me:
We tend to paint the attention crisis as an “us vs them” […] it really is more of a “me vs me” situation, where my perspective and attitudes and ego and shortcomings are the things that actually make me do what I hate (in this case compulsive media consumption).
(For context: it is comment #15 by gregornot.)
I had to stop right there to start writing this.
Because I thought, the real battle always takes place within ourselves. There is no battlefield outside.
BUT!
We do invite warriors in, and then we fight.
And I say “we” not only because I am referring to you and me collectively, but also because I am hinting at the fact we all are multifaceted and complex.
We all have several different wants and needs, and they sometimes conflict. This is what makes even possible for us to want something and do the opposite.
Now this is the general stuff, and it applies to everything we do.
BUT (again)!
In this specific case, the warriors out there are extremely eager to enter the battlefield. And we all know which parts of ourselves they’ll always side with.
What I’m saying is: we can’t brute force this war with sheer willpower. Yes, we ultimately have the power to decide. But we need some strategy to win.
We need to know that there are metaphorical warriors out there, that they’re out to get us, and they’re much stronger than us: if we let them in, it’s over.
And they hide in the last places we would think of.
Their most powerful weapon is subtlety: they make us think we are in control.
Social media is just a tool, it’s up to us to use it correctly.
For many years I fell for this innocent-sounding – yet faulty – reasoning.
But what is just a tool, really?
A pen is just a tool. You can use it to write.
Well, you can also misuse and try to drive a screw with it. Or you can use it creatively to hit that too-small-for-your-fingers reset button on your router.
This is all possible because the pen is truly neutral. It does not have any agenda. It leaves your sense of agency intact.
On the other hand, some “tools” can be engineered to hijack your agency: social media, YouTube algorithm, clickbaiting titles, sleazy marketing, you name it…
And this is why I love RSS and open protocols such as email (which you can use with any provider and software of your choice), as opposed to newsfeed and centralized instant messaging apps (which lock you into their own platform).
I thought this topic was especially interesting because it can easily relate to several other subject matters and even aspects of ourselves.
Of course, if you want to share your take on it: I’m all ears, as always. ✉️