Our attention is finite and valuable. And it’s nearing its breaking point. In a new book, MSNBC host Chris Hayes explains how everything—from politics to media to technology—has come to revolve around the pursuit of it and how we’ve lost control of where we actually want our attention to go. Read more about Hayes’ book The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource at The Atlantic here. Get more from your favorite Atlantic voices when you subscribe. You’ll enjoy unlimited access to Pulitzer-winning journalism, from clear-eyed analysis and insight on breaking news to fascinating explorations of our world. Subscribe today at TheAtlantic.com/podsub. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the war for attention about?
When my parents are on the phone, it usually makes me feel like really bored and like makes me want to do something because I don't really have anything to do. And I'm kind of just like sitting there and like watching them on the phone.
Chapter 2: How are children affected by parents' phone use?
And what do you think about the amount of time that dad and I spend on the phone?
Well, I think like when they had landlines and stuff, you wouldn't spend too much more time on the phone and you would spend it on other types of devices. But now since it's all in the phone, so you wouldn't really be seeing like your parents like on a computer. You'd only see them doing that for like work or something.
That's our executive producer, Claudina Bade, and her daughter. We're hearing from them because when we talk about screen time or how phones are manipulating us, it's often adults talking about kids. But of course, it goes the other way, too.
Every kid is engaged in a kind of battle for their parents' attention.
This is Chris Hayes, my guest this week.
I mean, I think every kid notices how distracted parents are by the phone.
Who's the meanest to you about it?
My youngest.
Really?
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Chapter 3: What are the types of attention discussed?
Well, I mean, I think that, look, involuntary attention, I think, is probably necessary for the survival of species. So in that sense, it's fundamental. And I wouldn't say it's worse. The problem is, so let's say you're reading the book. You've made this volitional decision. And as you're reading the book, the little haptic buzz of a notification in your phone goes off.
Now, you notice that because it's designed to use the deep circuitry of compelled attention to force your attention onto the physical sensation of the phone.
That is a perfect example of the one-way ratchet of what I call attention capitalism, is that the more important attention gets and the more that people, corporations and platforms have sort of optimized for it competitively, the more they will try to use the tactics of compelled attention to get our attention. rather than to get the part of us that's volitional attention.
Now, of course, you still have human will, and in that moment, you're going to decide, am I going to take my phone out to see what the notification was or not? But that little moment, that little interruption... That's pretty new at scale. I think it's totally new at scale. And it's also just absolutely endemic to modern life.
It's our entire lives now is that wail of the siren going down the street, the clatter of the drop tray. There's very powerful forces attempting to compel our attention away from where we might want to put it in any moment because that's a kind of hack for them for getting our attention.
Right. You're a little less than aware of it. Like you're not thinking I want to look towards the waiter dropping the tray or I want to look towards the ambulance. You're just kind of reactive.
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Chapter 4: How does compelled attention influence our choices?
Yeah, you're reactive and you're in the you're at your sort of biophysical base. Right. You're the comparison that I use in the book. And I think this might be helpful for people to think this through is how hunger works. So with food, we have these deep biological inheritances where there's just universal deep wiring towards sweets, for instance, or fats because they are extremely calorie dense.
You can exploit that at scale as McDonald's has and other food operations. And find that you could basically sell cheeseburgers and salty fries and Coca-Cola all over the world because you're working on that deep biological substrate in people. But it's also the case when you ask, well, what do humans like to eat?
It's an impossible thing to answer because the answer is basically everything, right? It's amazing all the different things. And what we see in sort of modern food culture and the food industry is a sort of fascinating kind of battle between these twin forces, right? The kind of...
industrialized production and fast food that is attempting to sort of find the lowest common denominator, speak to that deepest biological substrate so that they can sell corn syrup to everyone. And then all of the amazing things that people do with food and what food means as culture, as history, as self-expression, as expression of love and bonds.
And I think basically there's a very similar dynamic that we now have with attention. where our compelled attention and our deep wiring is being extracted and exploited by very sophisticated, large and powerful economic entities. And yet we still do have this thing called voluntary attention.
And, you know, what's sort of amazing too about the internet age is like, and I say this in the book, like I've watched hours of people cleaning carpets, which I find totally compelling and almost sort of sublime and soothing. And I wouldn't have guessed that that was a thing I wanted to pay attention to. Like,
You know, the Internet has opened this cornucopia of different things you can pay attention to. So we're constantly in this battle between these two forms of attention that are in our heads and the different entities that are trying to compel our attention against our will and then our own kind of volitional attempt to control it.
Chris, were you high when you were watching videos of cleaning carpets? No.
Mostly not, occasionally yes, but mostly I have been sober while watching the cleaning carpets and I've still found them incredibly common.
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Chapter 5: Why is social attention from strangers problematic?
You mentioned Bo Burnham in your book, and the movie he made, Eighth Grade, when he talked about why he made that movie, he said that same thing, that, you know, he had a similar experience to you. He went viral at a pretty young age.
And then he realized that every eighth grader was having the kind of experience that he had had, which he found so alienating, but that had now become a common experience. Can you read a paragraph for me from your social attention chapter, which I think is relevant to this conversation?
Sure, I'd love to.
Just the graph that starts with the social media combination.
The social media combination of mass fame and mass surveillance increasingly channels our most basic impulses toward loving and being loved, caring for and being cared for, getting our friends to laugh at our jokes, into the project of impressing strangers.
A project that cannot, by definition, sate our desires, but feels close enough to real human connection that we cannot but pursue it in ever more compulsive ways.
That really hit me. It's a dark vision. It's like they tap into our thirst perfectly, but then just keep the glass of water just out of reach, you know?
Well, and I think that's because... there's something holy or sublime in actual human connection that can't be replicated. Like that, you know, the thing that we're chasing is something ineffable and non replicable.
And it's the reason we chase it because it's, it's what makes life worth living at a certain level is to be recognized and seen in relationships of mutual support and affection and care with other people. You know, that's it. That's the stuff of it. And it's, We are given a tantalizing facsimile that some deep part of us cannot help but chase, but it can't also be the real thing.
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Chapter 6: How has social media changed our need for attention?
Chapter 7: What parallels exist between hunger and attention?
The social media combination of mass fame and mass surveillance increasingly channels our most basic impulses toward loving and being loved, caring for and being cared for, getting our friends to laugh at our jokes, into the project of impressing strangers.
A project that cannot, by definition, sate our desires, but feels close enough to real human connection that we cannot but pursue it in ever more compulsive ways.
That really hit me. It's a dark vision. It's like they tap into our thirst perfectly, but then just keep the glass of water just out of reach, you know?
Well, and I think that's because... there's something holy or sublime in actual human connection that can't be replicated. Like that, you know, the thing that we're chasing is something ineffable and non replicable.
Chapter 8: How does fame affect our perception of social attention?
And it's the reason we chase it because it's, it's what makes life worth living at a certain level is to be recognized and seen in relationships of mutual support and affection and care with other people. You know, that's it. That's the stuff of it. And it's, We are given a tantalizing facsimile that some deep part of us cannot help but chase, but it can't also be the real thing.
When we come back, who exactly is benefiting from this attention economy? Why it feels so bad for the rest of us and what we can do about it. That's after the break. We're back, and we're starting with something that everyone who gets social attention from strangers eventually learns.
What you quickly find is that positive compliments and recognition, they just sort of wash off you. But the insults and the negativity cuts and sticks. I mean, do you not feel that way as someone who has some public profile?
Yes, it's happened to me. And I was so surprised at how hurt I was. And when I look back, I think, like, I literally don't really know those people. Like, there's just something so, oh, it's like ancient, the feeling. Like, you're being pillory.
or something like you're in the public square and it feels terrible and I don't understand why like I could just shut my computer and be gone but it does not feel that way internally yeah and I think you know I can think of days I spent in that haze you know when you come out of it you're like why did I let myself feel that way like why did I spend a whole day like why was I I could even think of moments of being distracted from my you know kids
Because I was sitting there and feeling wounded and hurt and ruminating on a mean thing someone who I don't know said online. And I'm distracted by tensions on that instead of like my wonderful child sitting on my lap.
Well, I think the lesson to learn from that is what you're talking about in this book is how vulnerable we are. Even when it doesn't make intellectual sense, there is some way that we're vulnerable. you know, vulnerable in this moment. We can't completely control our reactions and choose voluntarily not to pay attention to this thing. We don't have that kind of agency, not yet, anyway.
That's exactly right. You know, attention is the substance of life. That is what our lives add up to. It's in every moment we are choosing to pay attention to something or we're having it compelled, but we're paying attention to something. And that's what adds up to a day and a week and a month and a year and a life. And... It's also finite.
You know, this is one of the key points I make is that part of the value and the reason it's so valuable and the reason there is such competition for the extraction of attention is that unlike information, it's capped. It's a finite resource. It's people are figuring out how to take. one or two extra slices of the pie, not grow it.
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