How The Attention Economy Fried the Brains of Millennials
A warning to Generation Z and Generation Alpha
When millennials like me were growing up, culture was defined by the music we listened to, movies we watched, and books we read. Today, culture has merged with technology and is primarily defined by social media algorithms, clickbait and slop. Arguably, there is no common culture anymore. Perhaps that is not such a bad thing after all.
When I grew up, the American culture apparatus told me and my peers that the peak living experience was to order big bottles of liquor and party in overcrowded, dark night clubs. Consuming excessive amounts of alcohol and smoking weed was fun and normal. College was all about partying, drinking games, and trying to lose your virginity like in American Pie, while schoolwork and reading books were reserved for nerds. It was cool to be a loser, a drug addict, an alcoholic, a gang member, or a stripper. It was cool to do extremely dumb stuff and film it like the guys from Jackass did. At the same time, boys learned from romcoms and Hollywood movies that the nice guy would always win the girl’s heart in the end by being sweet and sensitive, but as many men from the Millennial generation can attest to, myself included, that was an awful strategy.
Why did American pop culture during the late 90s to early 00s encourage young, impressionable teens and children to start an alcohol and drug addiction and glorify becoming a stripper or a gang member? Why was a self-proclaimed loser like Eminem or a teenage sex idol like Britney Spears elevated to God-like status by the American media? Because it was profitable, of course. Their messages caught people’s attention. That’s why the radio blasted songs about homicide and drug use and billboards of a 16-year-old Britney Spears in underwear were put up all over towns to entice boys going through puberty and sexual predators alike. No one bore the social and cultural consequences except for parents. Freedom of speech, after all.
“You can find me in the club, bottle full of bub’
Look, mami, I got the X if you into takin’ drugs
I’m into havin’ sex, I ain’t into makin’ love
So come give me a hug if you into gettin’ rubbed”
“In Da Club” by 50 Cent was at the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart for 9 consecutive weeks in 2003. It’s a banger of a song that was blasted at parties, hairdresser salons, television stations, practically anywhere, all the time. Like a propaganda message in the time of the Soviet Union. But consider the lyrics. If a coworker asked you after a lunch break where they could find you later, and you answered them like 50 Cent in the song, most workplaces would have you fired on the same day.
That’s probably exactly why gang, stripper and drug culture had such an appeal for millennials. It broke with norms, gave the children and teenagers an excuse to act out, and stripped parents and teachers of authority to tell them it was wrong. The empty suits in the American entertainment industry understood too well that they could catch young people’s hearts and minds by validating and catering to their worst behaviors and instincts.
The social conditioning experiment the American culture machine ran on the youth during the 90s and 00s has a radically different character today. The entertainment engines on Instagram and TikTok are physically addictive, not just viscerally alluring. Many people experience drug-like withdrawal symptoms without daily dopamine hits from social media and chatbots that are teaching people how to think and act. In my youth, the cultural algorithms were owned by MTV and Hollywood, today they are owned by Meta and TikTok. Even though the latter kind of algorithms are not always as decadent as American pop culture was in the 90s and 00s, they are more addictive, isolating, and all-encompassing.
The American social engineering experiment must end. The country will for sure not survive another president like Trump, no matter how amazing AI could be in the future or what tech leaders envision. Other countries can no longer afford to participate in the American attention economy either. It’s time to opt out for good.
This post was inspired by this video:
