The Crowding Out Effect
Late last year, I made a commitment to shift from being a social media net-consumer to a net-creator. What that did, combined with many years of observation and the occasional dabble into creation, was reveal first-hand how people engage with content and more interestingly how the marketing industry operates on a philosophical level.
By ‘marketing’, I mean anyone who creates content — so yes, that includes you. Every post, every like and comment, upvote or click, even hovering over an ad too long, adds value to this industry — the industry for people’s attention.
If you’re actively trying to manipulate people into buying your polished turd, or if you do indeed have a superior product or Purple Cow, these observations are for you. If you’re naïve enough to think that scrolling feeds and absorbing content without publishing an opinion covers your, for lack of a better term, ‘digital footprint’, I regret to inform you that you are sadly mistaken, and the following is definitely for you.
1. Attention is finite.
That means it’s scarce. That’s why it’s valuable and that’s why people are scrambling for it.
So they…
2. Scream louder. ‘If you can’t hear me, I’ll just yell’
That means it’s an arms race for larger and larger megaphones.
The noise pollution is out of control and our only tools to clean it up are ‘unfriend’, ‘unfollow’, block or any other variation on what’s really ‘unsubscribe’.
So:
- The noisy survive and thrive — the way to win is to be the loudest or most cashed-up — money is a tool to amplify noise.
- The ostracised get stirred up — they become bitter and create a ‘new room’ or noise space — some develop mental disorders and obsessions with the digital world, commonly taking out their frustrations in reality — because the two are inextricably linked.
As a result, content creators are pumping it harder, attempting to justify themselves — sometimes because they enjoy hearing the sound of their own voice. Literally.
I’m sick of this.
And it begs the question, ‘How can we create a cleaner digital space, with less noise pollution and harassment?’ because if we haven’t faced it already, this is where things are going, it’s where they are today and if we don’t consider their impact, it’s as good as a faulty education system or brainwashing people (some readers may go so far as to say that that’s already happening, I do however remain firmly skeptical of all opinions).
There’s a reason why I don’t follow the updates of most of my friends, or the people they recommend.
That reason is ‘garbage’.
Garbage in, garbage out.
A popular phase in computing, implying that ‘incorrect or poor-quality input will produce faulty output’, acts as a valuable reminder of our daily digital harassment (and frankly unconsensual internet sodomy) that flows into what we then regurgitate.
It’s then, not much of a stretch to say conversely…
Quality in, quality out.
To help fix the endemic problem, you must become aware of and take action on three things:
- Your Time
- Your Garbage
- Your Output
Your Time
Exercising your creative mind, thinking bigger, laterally and philosophically, will help increase and expand almost every domain of life. What it will do for you here, is provide an understanding and awareness of time, its limitations and opportunities — from capitalising on knowledge, beauty in a moment and our common impending sentient defeat.
Actually do this! Sometimes it’s confronting, sometimes it’s hard, sometimes it’s time-consuming but if you don’t eject those mental roadblocks, stopping you from thinking bigger, you have a glass ceiling that you don’t even know exists.
Think bigger.
Your Garbage
Having developed a stronger self-awareness, creative process and robust cognitive framework, you’ll translate that into an objective perspective on your input content, which will allow you to cut out what isn’t going to help you.
Quality in.
Your Message
Structuring your output through a strong medium suiting your skillset and target demographic (after working to ensure the input in your life is of high quality) will then naturally ensue, because all your ducks are in a row.
Then finally, by having an authentic, honest message to polarise, you will inspire emotion and create consumers who love and hate.
No one has time for dishonesty and lies (that includes fact omission). Instead, you do you. Be real. Be honest. We all hear it, ‘be yourself’.
This makes intent clear from the get-go, so that no one wastes their time with muddy ideas. It’s honest, it’s authentic, and it’s real.
Like food, we all must digest content. It goes in, breaks down and reforms into some sort of output. The wider the body of knowledge, the more ideas and their complexity, the more interesting and beautiful the Frankenstein of an idea is produced.
Don’t just regurgitate someone else’s content verbatim — naturally, by consuming from a wide variety of sources, you’re going to form much more robust and interesting ideas. That effort is infinitely worth it.
If you do this, people are far more likely to listen.
You’re a product of your environment and so is your output. Whether it’s a product, service, content or otherwise.
So stay aware and focused on your time, input and output and elevate the quality of your digital environment. Crowd out the garbage.
