It's Crowded Out Here.

The web is incredibly crowded.

There are millions of other people, companies, good & bad actors vying for every second of the attention we choose to spend online each day (to subscribers of this email, I am one of them).

The average American spends 2.5 hours PER DAY on social media. That is like about 1/6th of your awake life. And every day that portion increases.

Gary Vaynerchuck refers to this as the Attention Economy. Much like the stock market, spending time consuming online content is literally like selling your attention on a public market, where vendors can ‘earn’ it by producing more and more compelling content.

And that’s just how it is in the year 2024. A mere ~20 years since the popularization of internet communities like Facebook, and a mere ~8 years since TikTok popularized short-form vertical video.

Imagine what the world will look like in another 20 years — AI and globalization will have automated and outsourced most of the mission critical jobs, leaving pretty much just jobs that require creativity, charisma, and artistry.

We’ll only really need to work maybe 20 hours per week anyways, universal basic income will cover the expenses, and the average person will be free’d up to spend more like 50% of their wakeful time consuming content.

And maybe that’s okay…? I know I enjoy watching funny TikToks or reading informational Tweets, but like any addictive substance — after a while it makes me feel gross.

Maybe there will be regulation that prevents people from watching more than X hours per week… but that seems very un-American. Or perhaps a powerful anti-social counter culture will emerge to help people break free from the noise.

To me I think there’s an easier, more natural solution. It’s honestly very simple:

1. strive to produce more than you consume.

2. participate in smaller, more localized/niche communities

I think that addresses most of the bad parts of social media consumption. The bad parts are 1) “wasting” your time by being passive, and 2) not using it as a tool to connect with your peers.

Humans are inherently creative creatures. We want to make things, which is why we feel weird just sitting on the couch doing nothing for TOO long. Not saying you can’t relax every once and awhile, but there must be a balance. And the ideal balance is producing slightly more than you consume.

By that I mean: Tweet. Write a stupid daily blog like this — I’d love to read it. Post stupid little TikToks about building AI apps for finding coleslaw. It doesn’t have to be world bending, it just needs to off-set some of the consumption

The thing that holds most people back from posting online is a fear that they are just a small drop in an ocean of content. And that is a valid fear — social media has become incomprehensibly massive. EVERYONE in the freakin’ world is online. Which is incredibly intimidating. And tbh it wasn’t meant to be that way.

Which is why number two is important — participate in smaller, more localized niches. This could be a Discord gaming group. Or it could be a weekly Catan Zoom call. Or it could be fantasy football, or a LinkedIn/Facebook/Reddit/Twitter community.

Reducing the SIZE of the circle makes it easier to connect with others. When the circle is the size of the entire world it can paradoxically feel a bit more isolating.

So there we have it.

Offset the battle for attention by capturing some yourself.

And maybe in next blog I’ll share a bit more about how I try to do it myself.

Cheers ✌️

Ramsey