Capitalsm is Saving Us?

I like to get mad at capitalism just like any debt saddled, underpaid millennial but I realized something today. Big tech companies have been raking in profits by retaining our attention. They pursued the most profitable routes to do so and before we noticed they'd taken over our lives. Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, YouTube were for many how they spent /most/ of their day! Now the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way and from what I can tell it's for the same reason we got there to begin with, profit motive.

There's something simple in the way companies seem to misunderstand the attention equation. People don't “love Netflix” they love easy access to shows and movies at a low price. People don't “love YouTube” they love videos by creative people who have something interesting or entertaining to say. They don't “love Facebook” they love easily connecting with their friends and family. You get it. Each of these companies thought that they were the product, the reason users came back. They lost sight of a fundamental truth: nobody needs them.

Youtube is the latest example of this. Adblock has come under fire as Youtube tries its best to recoup likely significant losses caused by viewers not seeing ads. This is a real problem for Youtube and it’s not unreasonable for them to try to fix it. However this enters them into an arms race with adblock companies. What I find interesting is where Youtube loses the plot. Let’s say someone loads up Youtube and they realize that Youtube has the ball in the aforementioned arms race meaning the video won’t play. What will the user do?

A) Watch the ads and then watch the video

B) Literally anything else

Yeah.

Basically Youtube created a “do something else” banner that pushes people off the platform. Youtube customers installed adblock for a reason: they don’t want to watch the ads. Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix have all done similar things. Facebook in trying to be the everything website has made their platform nigh unusable for what people actually enjoy. Twitter made their platform unusable by gutting reliable trends and algorithm then replacing it with a pay to play system. Netflix cracked down on password sharing. Again these things all make sense especially in a “line go up” world. As any platform gains in popularity competition sprouts up and profits dwindle as they all fight to maintain relevancy. The actual effect of these battles for people’s attention is kind of unexpected though. People don’t switch platforms or go out of their way to access the apps or sites they’re used to, they log out.

This is what I mean when I say capitalism is saving us. I used to use Twitter for 10 hours a day! Unhinged behavior. Since it became “X” I can’t even remember the last time I opened the app. I was booted out of my shared Netflix account and I didn’t fix it. I didn’t realize that it had actually fixed itself at some point until I tried it randomly after getting curious about how Ace Attorney Woo was going to end. I log into Facebook and I get bombarded with horror stories about injured animals or people and I log out immediately. Now I “post” to Facebook through Instagram if at all and check comments maybe once a week just so I’m not leaving people hanging. Youtube? Well I pay for Youtube Premium since I find the value worth the cost but if I didn’t have premium I betcha I’d be off doing literally anything but watching Youtube. I can’t stand the ads. It’s why I spend so little time on Twitch, I can’t afford to buy turbo right now. It does a weird psychic damage to me that I’d rather avoid than endure and I’m certainly not alone in this. This year I spent more time on my gaming back catalog, reading, and enjoying the outdoors more than ever. Being a new father contributed to this shift too, sure, but I’m not interested in hopping through hoops to use an app that annoys me either.

There’s a quote from Gabe Newell that often comes to mind when I think about companies vying for customers: “We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem…” He goes on to outline that pirated games offering a more compelling service is what drives people to it. It’s not that your price is too high or not low enough, it’s that what your offer is inferior. I think the same thing is starting to happen with our attention as consumers. We’re realizing, in no small part to the profit chasing of these tech companies, that our attention and time is valuable. That there are more compelling things to do than watch an ad, or try to circumvent ads altogether, or find a alternate platforms. We could go outside, eat a home cooked meal, take our dogs out to play, finish that RPG we’ve been putting off, read a new book, read an old book again. Companies have worked so hard to grip our attention that we’ve slipped between their fingers and people are recognizing they weren’t really enjoying themselves that much anyway. Capitalism accidentally set us free. Now it’ll have to pivot to bicycles or something. Maybe paddle ball will catch on again. I could go for a game of hacky sack if I’m being honest. See you on the tennis court, I’ll be the chubby guy with roller blades in my bag practicing foot stalls.