Attention.

Attention.

It's the most important thing, and the only thing, you'll ever own. Sorry to say there's a good chance that you, dear reader, don't currently own your own.

You've never owned your own.

This reality, filled to the brim with sophisticated attention traps built by the most brilliant behavioral scientists the earth has ever seen, is at war with itself. Every moment of every day, those more aware than you steal your attention away and turn it against you, without your consent, your knowledge or even your wellbeing in mind.

That said, I'm not here to spell doom.

Right now, something good is happening. A lot of somethings. A lot of really good somethings.

A Shift Has Occurred.

Call it the crumbling of an empire, a new world order, a new epoch of the cosmic cycle, or whatever other metaphor that happens to tickle you, the fact is that we are undergoing a rapid deconstruction of the old to make way for the ever-approaching new.

Just try to stop it, because it's coming and no amount of kicking or screaming is slowing this process down. The only thing you have to fight against it, to shape the world the way you want to see it, is attention.

Your attention.

That's why when I found out about Steem I was absolutely giddy. It's a platform with the potential to keep the attention on the people who contribute to it and build it up, with the value coming not from how much value advertisers can extract from it but on the quality of the contributions and the generosity of the community at-large. I hope steemit is the beginning of a new kind of marketing, that which focuses on adding value back into this world that sorely needs it, one where we can give without expecting anything in return, but know that we will be rewarded anyways.

What a fun experiment we have here. Let's make the absolute best of it.

As a writer and content creator, I won't lie: the idea that I can earn value for my work on a platform like steemit is something that feels good for my creativity and hopefully my wallet, too. However, that's not my focus. I would advise it shouldn't be yours, either.

We have a real chance to reclaim Quality of Thought, the kind of quality we've lost in the rush of corporate expansion hoping to claim our stake in the rubble of the Google/Apple/Amazon/Facebook-fueled internet takeover. The world wide web has become a crowded, hot and noisy pit of attention-strangling, SEO-optimized smart fibers, penetrating our spinal cords to better ragdoll us around by our cerebellums like sweltering meat puppets, casting shadows on the wall so we can dance to our own misery. "Like! Subscribe! Click!" scream the masses. "Like! Subscribe! Click!" The screams get louder, the dancing more furious, looking down we see our heels burning through the soles of our shoes and finally, in a heap, we collapse.

Sleep tight. Don't fight. The advertisers need those blood-shot eyes pearly white and ready for another day of consuming and perpetuating mind-numbing nonsense at your expense.

Source

So, thank you Steem. Thank you for the potential of an oasis in this Alex Jones-style fever dream of parasites and vampires, sucking our lives and creative power dry.

I'm ready to reclaim Attention.

Are you?