There was a thing we used to do that Alex Steffen named as “attention philanthropy.” It was an agalmic exchange: the “economy of non-scarcity” where I, with my reputational reach, could gift you the attention of the people in my reach. Some of that attention would stick, your reputational reach would increase, and the game would play on. This is the Attention Economy I was talking about. This is also part of the “economy of abundance” and the confusing of the pricing mechanism that Paul Mason has been talking about. Perhaps we should have known the jig was up the day that Facebook introduced the mechanism of pricing the ability for your speech to reach every single person who actually previously selected to hear it. This is called Boost Your Post. While Facebook, obviously, is not (yet, haha) the entire internet, and they cannot be blamed for running their business as a business, it was a significant signal that the attention economy was a fragile little notion. You might even say that attempting to run an economy while not having control of the means of production is a silly idea, but an old woolly mixed-economy socialist like me can’t go that far.

The shape of internet culture has changed, and now I can’t give you good gifts any more. And it would take ten thousand of you to give me a gift. The attention philanthropists are a grey-market group now, living in the interstices as the big trucks roll by. Time for a new play.

(Still circling this notion. Or circling the drain. Take your pick.)