2 thoughts on “Discussion: The War for Your Attention”

1. Keep up the great work!

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2. Brilliant conversation, easily one of the best I have heard to this year, and I listen to a _lot_ of podcasts from this corner of the internet (alternative / conspiracy / truth). In fact it was so thought-provoking that I have taken the time to clip some of my favourite sections and I’ll include them in a future episode of my Clip Show series.

   One part which stood out to me in particular was in regards to screen addictions, and how even those of us who realise that our attention spans are being affected by the screens, still struggle to put the fgn things down, it seems to be getting more and more difficult to even watch a god-damned movie without checking our phones. A generation ago even a small child could watch a film without needing to do something else, now adults — including would-be ‘awake’ or learned adults — find ourselves wanting to check our phones mid-film, and for what?

   A lot of us seem to understand, at least to some degree, that we are dumbing ourselves down, in real-time, and yet the pull of the phone is so strong, our thinking patterns have already been so altered, that we find ourselves getting ‘bored’ and thus checking our phones more and more often, even when something else is supposed to have our attention (be it some other task, or a movie, or a conversation with friends, or whatever the case). It’s a serious issue, and for most of us it is only getting worse, not better.

   For these reasons it was refreshing to hear both the General, and Ethan, speaking so candidly about their own phone addictions. In my case, I have tried to ban myself from toilet scrolling, and I don’t seem to be able to go more than a day or two before I somehow justify it to myself again, and the cycle repeats. As if I can’t sit there for a few minutes each day without some form of information being beamed into my head. It’s ridiculous, man.

   I am certain that my attention span is worse now than it was a year ago, and it was worse a year ago than the year before that, and so on. For example, I used to be able to work on an article for hours and hours without a pause, these days I seem to feel some need to check my email inbox or my reddit alerts or whatever regularly, every hour or so, and again, for what? It’s straight up addiction, call it dopamie or whatever, the point is, some part of my mind is now conditioned to checking things which don’t need to be checked. It didn’t used to be like this.

   All across our corner of the internet, I have witnessed a massive drop in engagement. Fewer people leaving comments, and of those who do, fewer leaving genuine, thoughtful comments. This isn’t just happening on my site, I see it on every site / platform which I frequent. It’s across the board. For a while there I thought it may be due to some kind of truth(er) fatigue, after the madness of 2020 -> 2022, and the failure of the doomer prognostications of a mass die-off to eventuate, these kinds of things, I figured maybe some people were just tired. Now I think it goes way further than that. People are just too addicted to instant dopamine (or whatever you want to call it) to think and type out a comment now. ‘I’ll do it later’. No, you won’t, because the moment you think to yourself, ‘now I’ve got time to type that comment’, your brain will remind you there is something to ‘check’ i.e. doomscroll.

   Again, this is happening quickly. We are watching and experiencing a dumbing-down in real-time. All of us. I think even a lot of the normies can sense that it is occurring, but they are powerless to do anything about it, as clearly are so many of us who like to think of ourselves as ‘awake’ or enlightened or learned or whatever.

   Then throw in the rise of chatGPT, holy smokes. I am seeing people use chatGPT to write their comments for them, I’m seeing people use chatGPT to write their social media posts for them, I’m even seeing people use chatGPT to write their whatsapp messages for them. It has gotten way out of hand and we are most likely only in the early stages of what is going on. It may only be a year or two before those of us who _ever_ take the time to write detailed posts / articles / emails ourselves, just our own thoughts and our own typing fingers, are the infinitesimal minority.

   Kids at school who have never had to write an essay by hand will most likely go their entire lives without _ever_ writing a long-form piece themselves. Imagine that, going an entire life without _ever_ structuring one’s thoughts into something for the purpose of expressing oneself to another human being. That generation is already in school right now as you read these words, some may have already graduated if their schools and parents were bullshit enough. Any parent who lets their kids develop this kind of techno dependence is a parent in name only imo, but that’s another topic for another day.

   The point is, this is happening, we know it is happening, and there’s nothing any of us can or will do about it. Most of us can’t even go more than a day or two without doomscrolling on the toilet ffs, even when we try. If I can’t even get my own mind and habits into order, what hope do I hold for the masses? None. It’s over, folks, and anybody telling themselves otherwise is high on their own supply of copium. The borg is here, and we assimilated into it so much more quickly than I could have imagined back in 2014 when I first got into this alternative / conspiracy / truth stuff.

   Is it all doom and gloom? No. People can and will still lead happy lives. Some might even maintain a form of creativity, they’ll paint or draw or produce music or what have you. Fewer and fewer will do of their own accord, of course, as more and more turn to ‘AI’ to ‘help’ them. But it seems to be in our nature to think, at least to some degree, and to desire to express oneself, and to hear and read and see other people expressing themselves. Beyond that, people will still eat and drink and enjoy time with family and friends — again, less than in the past, and less with every passing year, but it will remain to some extent, at least for the rest of my natural life.

   Everything is going to be okay, it just won’t be the okay I had expected or imagined, even just a few years ago. And I’m still processing that, adjusting to it, trying to make peace with it. I’m not fully there yet. In fact I’m still kinda in shock at how fast this has all happened. But in the meantime, I truly appreciate hearing fellas like the General and Ethan discussing these kinds of things, and acknowledging the effects the changes have had on their own lives and habits and thinking patterns.

   To anybody who read this comment all the way to the end, well done. If you did so without having to ‘check’ something else even once, then super well done. I hope you realise that this indicates your attention span is already in the top few percent of western people alive today, most likely all people alive today. I assure you that I wrote this myself, without any ‘help’ from AI. This is JLB expressing himself to you, to anybody out there who might be able to understand what I’m trying to convey.

   Thank you, the General, and thank you, Ethan. If I ever make it back to Australia, I hope we can catch up for a coffee or a froffie. And if any of us, mid conversation, pulls out our phone and begins scrolling, I swear to kek…

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