A Zero-Sum Attention Economy

(maura)

Are there not limited hours in a day, a month, a year, a life? Do most people not have to budget their money? And their time? Can you consume every piece of art available to you right now? Is a horse the new frisbee???

Seriously though. Of course all these resources are limited. To think otherwise is to live in a dreamland of privilege that will inevitably be punctured by a rude awakening. (Perhaps it will come when you have to attract an audience of your own to something that you put your whole soul into, in which case I'm sorry.)

Seriously, this is like the defining problem of my cultural experience over the past 5 years or so. How can anyone trying to keep up with culture possibly deny resource and attention scarcity? There are just so many options in so many mediums, both to experience/discover and to support with my (extremely limited) time and money. I don't know how many Kickstarters by friends and/or artists who I respect I have failed to back over the past few years, but it's a lot. And that's not even getting to any of the almost infinite amount of worthy stuff out there that I don't happen to already have a personal connection to.  

Which, I'm basically just not making personal connections to much new stuff anymore, because I'm completely overwhelmed by choice and perpetually months to years behind on checking out new records, games, movies, tv shows, books, etc. I effectively can't participate much in the broader cultural conversation anymore, because I don't have enough money, time, and mental bandwidth to keep up with the unrelenting stream of the new. Attention is the coin of the realm, and deflation has set in big time.

Is this a generational turnover thing? Are people who grew up with this unprecedented access to cultural superabundance just so used to it that they don't think about what they might be missing? Or, for us fogies, is it that once you get into your 30's, you begin to realize that your time is limited and precious and you can't do everything? I've realized that, but I don't think I've exactly accepted it.