Always Be Grifting: Week Notes #29
It’s been a slow start to the new year. I’d given some serious thought to a year-in-review style post but having spent much of the last two weeks reading similar notes from other bloggers I decided against it. The informal meta analysis of other notes shows just how similar a set of concerns, objectives and ambitions are shared by the writers. I don’t know if I found it interesting, reassuring or depressing. There was an awful lot of ‘consume less, scroll less, produce more’ type jazz. So, if I or indeed anyone reading this, was looking for a set of instructions for the year ahead then maybe those are it: consume less, scroll less, produce more.
I’ve tried to take a genuine break from work and work related stuff over the last couple of weeks. To the point above, about less scrolling, on occassion - on autopilot - I’ve found myself absent mindedly on Linkedin. Pleasingly, a lot of content still in feed seems to be dated. It’s two or three weeks old. The feed, as a device for harvesting attention, is particularly effective. Despite not having anything new to offer it’s users - the feed never ends, it cannot be completed or finished. It just keeps going down, all the way to oblivion.
The little time I have dedicated to work has been spent thinking about attention. On two or three occassions I’ve read articles lamenting the fact that Gen Alpha (not even Gen Z) have shortened attention spans. As if we’re dealing with some sort of evolutionary shift taking place before our very eyes. My own experience of Gen Alpha - in the form of my son - would suggest that he has plenty of attention to give the things he finds value in. Much like any other type of consumer from any other ‘generation’. The real issue perhaps, is that the way much of the marketing and communications industry thinks about attention. And the fact that it is not especially scientifically or biologically accurate, but rather is a self fulfilling prophecy. Rather than admit that distractions - much of which the industry itself is trying to leverage - as opposed to a diminishing capacity for attention is the problem, we seek to double down on our desire to pollute media with ever less subtle forms of advertising or ever more intrusive forms of advertising as the answer to this challenge.
In some instances, like Youtube for example, the viewer is now placed in the context of a hostage negotiation. Watch this advert now, or face more interruptions later a warning on screen now tells us. In other places, like online news, the user experience is so ‘enshittified’ as to be unusuable.
The topic of attention sits at the heart of perhaps my favourite long-read from the Christmas break. Casual Viewing by Will Tavlin, details how the modern streaming industry has emerged from media businesses of the late 90s and starts to unpack the issues that the media and marketing communicaty will face as our TV media starts to be controlled by global, technology businesses like Amazon and Netflix. These businesses, unlike legacy linear broadcasters, aren’t necessarily interested in engagement with individual shows, their goals are sometimes less clear - and editorial values don’t seem to hold much sway here either. These changes aren’t just affecting TV but music too. Spotify have been found to fill playlists with muzak that approximates the songs we all know and love, selling consumers some weird form of grey-market product which fills their pockets rather than the pockets of the artists whose work they are mimicking.
Five days into the new year and I’m going to suggest that ‘Grift’ as my word of the year. I have this nagging sense that this year is going to be marked by consumer dissatisfaction as the ‘value equation’ they receive as part of their exchanges with a wide variety of big companies stops to stack up. We’ve had ‘shrinkflation’ in the last 12 months - with brands using inflation as an opportunity to either reduce packing sizes or increase prices. We’re seeing the ‘user experience’ in many ad funded media environments become terrible and I think many people are slowly waking up to the fact that we no longer own our phones, our video or our entertainment or our computer programmes, but instead pay a fee each year for continued access. And if the publisher decides to change the terms of our user agreement, there is very little we can do. We rent access to things under the guise of ownership. As Gethin Jones brilliantly summarised: it turns out it’s not the communists that are going to end private ownership. And that’s before you get to the economics of Generative AI, youtuber's pumping and dumping shite-coins and Musk’s DOGE initiative which is almost certainly an attempt to divert more taxpayer dollars into his (and his friend’s) already bulging pockets.
Sadly, in all walks of life - you don’t have to look far for consumers or employees getting a rough deal at the hands of late stage capitalism.
Reading
Casual Viewing by Will Tavlin is vital for anyone working in media or marketing or attention.
Ploughing through Gliff by Ali Smith and enjoying the dystopian, black-mirrorishness of it all.
Understanding DOGE as Procurement Capture by Anil Dash. Link here
Loved CharliXCX’s manifesto for Brat.
Forget subtext, people don’t even get surtext by Terence Eden.
Watching
I will knock out a list of the films and TV I watched last year at some point.
Since the break, I’ve been able to start a few new things, namely: The Agency and Landman and Skeleton Crew with P.
Wallace and Gromit was the best thing on telly over Christmas by a long shot and have re-watched it a couple of times now.
Doing
Tidying the house, tidying the garden. All in prep for the return to work tomorrow.
Have managed to build up a head of steam on the exercise front. Slowly increasing sets and weight in the EMOM routine I’ve been using. Getting some KMs under my belt, been hitting a lot of golf balls and also played a bit of Padel. Moving and sweating is good.
