For as long as I can remember, social media gurus were harping on about the "attention economy."
And we are, in fact, in the Attention Economy right now.
but it's not going going to last long.
See there is a problem: it’s hard to monetize attention only.
There is no loyalty and no commitment to the content. The only party who is monetizing attention are the platform with ads. Maybe creator gets a small cut, but less than 0.001% of creators make serious income from attention only.
Why?
The "For you" feed decay.
It’s just noisy.
Everyone is competing with everyone.
And modern tech makes it even harder…
Because, AI can easily find and detect viral content, re-purpose attention-grabbing hooks, and re-create popular dopamine-hitting posts.
It can do this AT SCALE all day long.
The Attention Economy is slowly becoming "slop-at-scale" content automation machine. The Attention Grab Fatigue is the inevitable outcome.
A new large-scale study by Ahrefs which is also one of the most widely used SEO and web analytics platforms, has revealed that 74.2% of newly created web pages in April 2025 include AI-generated content.
And since recommendations are powered by AI algorithms - it's a machine manipulating the machine.
This is why our brains are developing selective blindness. The same way we learned to ignore flashing banner ads, we're now scrolling past the "brainrot" content that has become the new spam of social media feed.
The “For You” Feed should probably have “brainrot/spam” folder like a email inbox.
We're already seeing beginning of fallout.. the sparks of "social exodus".
Some people are quitting the platforms, declaring "I am quitting XYZ, it's just spam," in pursuit of closed and exclusive communities where trust hasn't been eroded.
This brings us to the question...
So what's next?
We are entering the Meaning Economy, where attention is KEPT based on the depth and diversity of the insights within the channel.
And we are already seeing it. This is the rise of the "Private Internet" - the Discord, Substack, Skool, and other private communities where members pay to be there or vetted by humans. These are the "smaller, high-trust ecosystems" that are replacing the "mass, low-trust visibility" of the public web, primarily social media.
Practically, we should see more places where real people (creators) expressing their real perspectives, which are relatable and human... often around joined interests or a handful of overlapping topics.
And AI cannot touch this.
Even though AI can explain things, educate, and pretend to be sympathetic, it cannot ponder subjective meaning the same way humans can. A 2025 study on AI and empathy confirmed that while AI can simulate cognitive empathy (recognizing patterns), it is incapable of genuine emotional empathy. It lacks subjective experience.
However, AI’s does not have the ability to truly “feel” empathy r. Unlike humans, AI lacks subjective experience, emotions, and genuine concern for others’ well-being. While AI can simulate cognitive empathy- understanding and predicting emotions based on data- it cannot experience emotional or compassionate empathy. AI-generated responses may be highly sophisticated, but they remain formulaic and lack authentic emotional resonance.
AI cannot provide perspective through a human lens with all its imperfections and biased context. Its "perspective" is based on training weights. It struggles to understand nuance, sarcasm, and cultural context.
AI's irrational "insights" are the hallucinations we are working so hard to eliminate.
It can only mimic feelings and emotions.
It fails at being raw.
Pay attention to the meaning, anon.