Was Here

Staring Into the Abyss of the Attention Economy

If you’re reading this, it would mean the world to me if you commented or connected, in some way. Yes, a funny way to start out considering I’ve said nothing just yet.

But, maybe that’s what I’ve been craving. Connection before content.

I want to speak from the societal zeitgeist but, instead I will speak for myself: I desperately need community and I am currently falling into the arms of a lover that I know is no good for me. That lover is Instagram.

Instagram lulls me into what at first seems like a sweet reverie but, is in fact more akin to a wakeful a sleep paralysis demon cradled in your palms, staring back with glowing eyes. This demon siphons off your focus, your spare moments and turns them into currency only it can use within the attention economy. Every day is a battle between you and your phone, and your tablet and your laptop and your desktop and…well, you get the idea.

The attention economy: Where looks and likes have become currency — livelihood for a few, hypnosis for the rest.

I have been on instagram, logging an embarrassing amount of hours of my time and energy into the doom scroll. The last couple months, especially as my health has been in decline, I have taken to donating my time to the attention economy for the hopes of any small return on my investment there.

My instagram is so close to monetizing, I whisper to myself as I look at the umpteenth meme about the affair at the Coldplay concert.

I have been asking myself what it is that I am looking for as I stare into the abyss— and the abyss stares right back, endlessly offering me content in trade for my attentions.

What am I looking for? Community. The knock on your door and can so and so come out a play? type community. The neighborhood street hockey league type of community. The hanging at the skatepark and seeing your friends type of community that I grew up with in the late 90’s and early 00’s. The community that we had before covid. I am longing for the type of built-in friends that used to exist before the abyss of the internet opened up and we were instantly all brought together and at the very same time brought so much further apart.

I don’t think I’m alone in the nostalgia for earlier times. I see social media pages made by young people dedicated to decades they weren’t alive for. The nostalgia for the Blockbuster Video style community that we used to have feels universal. It’s an ache that has been growing, in me at least after getting into sex work. Once covid hit, I was broken of so many habits that lead to social and community interaction for me. The isolation of sex work and living a life that is predominantly online is real. Add a helping of neurodivergence along with chronic illness.

Loneliness isn’t just a male epidemic. It’s a side effect of the scroll. And maybe, just maybe, connection begins with leaving a mark.

I think we are all suffering from loneliness. I think we are all suffering from alienation. We are all suffering from the monetization of our hobbies and hustle culture. We are suffering under systems that don’t seem to put humanity first, or second for that matter. We are suffering, collectively.

Collectively, I think we could end one another’s suffering if we but asked so, I’ll go first: If you are here, if you have read even one word from one sentence of the title of this essay, leave your mark that you were here.

Yep, just like the cliche graffiti tags: “[insert name] was here” you see in rest stop bathrooms.

Aili was here.