Welcome back to Episode 4 of Lately. We’re inching closer to a full-blown launch of this newsletter. Stay tuned, and, if you’re reading, please continue to provide that closed loop feedback that has been so helpful.

My business is marketing, but my dirty little secret is that my only active social media accounts are on LinkedIn and Strava. (Two very different, but equally douchey, kinds of social media flexes).

Fighting for your attention is just an impossible battle on TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, designed to be doom-scrolled from a phone. Curation or consumption in moderation is nearly impossible, except for those with massive willpower. Following your friends or an amazing Instagram account about modern art is great, but you will inevitably get sucked in to the algorithm and kill mindless hours per day. For many, including myself, being up to date on social media is no longer viewed as a worthwhile tradeoff for the attention hijacking.

With the rise of people bringing attention to social media and screen addictions, and trying to fight them, I have been thinking a lot about content. Even though I’m off most social media, it’s impossible to avoid content. Content consumption is nearly synonymous with entertainment in modern life, so, couple with my job, I still feel like I have a good perspective and pulse on what’s happening (despite a few of my buddies saying I live under a rock).

I’m not here to say social media is evil or anything. (I mean it is, but that’s not my point.) What I’ve been thinking about are ways to categorize and identify the kind of content you’re consuming and understand how you’re interacting with it to consciously protect your attention instead of waking up an hour later after doom-scrolling AI slop. I’m not going to judge anyone’s taste, but I think it’s objectively important to lessen the doom scrolling, and consume savvier

To do this, I’ve tried to distill content down into two key parameters.

The two axes are those two parameters: Engagement (X) and Thoughtfulness (Y), with four quadrants in a grid.

Probably the easiest to explain is the Brain Rot Zone. Content that is consumed only, scrolled by and not engaged with, and lacks any thoughtfulness or quality. It’s slop. It’s not worth sharing. AI has turned this content into something more widely consumed in the algorithms. It is the tornado to your attention span, and designed to keep you hooked, but not actually engaged. No one is surprised that those who primarily live in this zone are on the road to depression among many other untrialed symptoms. At this point, I’m not surprised by any brain rot study on social media.

This is probably the most important content to consciously recognize to protect your time and attention. There’s no shame in indulging in this zone to kill time or relax, but being conscious of the time spent is key. I think we all agree this zone should be limited.

I think that this mostly exists on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok - the 3 most addictive of the social media platforms with doom-scrolling and auto-populating content from the algorithms.

I got this idea from my guy and future subscriber, Timothee Chalamet, when he made waves talking about how no one watches ballet and opera. It caused quite the hubbub!

I’ve personally never seen an opera, as I’m sure many of you have not either. I don’t know a single fan of the opera. It doesn’t mean they’re not out there. I guess I’m just not in any opera circles.

Now, I wouldn’t say I’m closed off entirely to the idea of the opera. I could be convinced! And it doesn’t mean I think it’s crap. I am incredibly impressed by the talent, skill, and requirements to perform in the opera. You gotta have some serious pipes! It’s just not my thing, and it’s for a very niche audience.

To me, the Opera Zone content lives on Reddit, Twitch, Substack, Patreon, and YouTube. Indie, likely low-budget but very high-skill and time-consuming that serves a specific niche, and requires paid resources, moderators, or donations to keep it going. It’s a great part of the Internet, and I think that almost all successful artists & creators have to start here for dedication.

I think the Opera Zone is the smallest of all the Quadrants because it requires fervor, time, skill, and resources, but doesn’t get the output you’d expect. That doesn’t mean I think all great things must be mainstream or highly engaged with. It is just a fact in the content creation world - at some point, creators need to eat, and that usually requires diverting that attention to other endeavors.

I think this is a really fun zone to consume content in if you find your Opera. It’s the ultimate area for the modern age hipster to find the next big thing or niche topic. It’s the magic of the modern internet - bringing people together over obscure topics and interests. Content created and consumed for the love of the game.

This is an obvious one. Art is high quality and valuable. I measure this as savvy content that is highly engaged with, viewed, and/or distributed. I don’t think that this zone is the end-all-be-all or is completely superior, but it’s an undeniably wise zone to consume most of your content in.

Not all content in the Art Zone is popular. Not all is heavily engaged with. Not all is well-distributed. But it’s at least 1 or 2 of those - and it’s undeniably thoughtful and valuable to people to consume. The engagement level as a reward, in some way, reflects the inputs required to create it.

This could be actual art, it could be newsletter content, it could be thoughts or philosophies, music, movies, or a number of other mediums. It exists and is objectively valuable for an audience. The art itself is worthwhile for the materials it took to make it, the real estate it takes up, and the bytes and electricity and fuel running the data centers to keep that digital content alive.

Art is everywhere online. We’ve all seen hilarious sketch artists on TikToks, excellent videographers on YouTube, great shows on Netflix, and Twitch streamers that are legitimately fun to watch. I think the main problem is that consistently creating Art is difficult to maintain.

Creating savvy, valuable content is very hard to do. It requires a lot of effort and likely many years to get to that point. Like I said before, I think a lot of these folks are/were in the Opera Zone, and worked very hard for not a lot of output. Once you reach this Art Zone - you’ve got a following and are creating a lot of value. The easiest trap to fall into is to leverage your audience to reach more people through the platform algorithms and monetize.

And the easiest way to do that? Hack the algorithm, which likely reduces the thoughtfulness of your content, and leads you into…

We all know what this is, but it is the hardest zone to detect. I have a couple definitions for it:

The first is the content that naturally sells a dream by leveraging a following of some sort. It naturally tends to be from an influential person and skew toward business, as that’s where there’s money to be made: crypto, gurus, the stock market, capitalizing on the “Silver Tsunami”, dropshipping, selling commodity products, and moneymaking of all kinds. The Grifter Zone is the content spewed from creators that lack any depth, but reach tons of people and/or creates a high level of engagement. Twitter and LinkedIn are the obvious forums where many of these creators congregate, but it’s infecting more and more parts of the web:

My second definition of the empty but widely distributed Grifter content is from the larger organizations. Netflix and Hulu fall into this category by creating long-form video content based on an algorithmic approach to capture attention and be straightforward. Pop stars hack our ears like this all the time too (this article is from 2011). Often, it doesn’t stink, but it’s not all that good either.

It almost seems inevitable for the quality of content to diminish over time. People are people, and making a buck by leveraging what you’ve already built is hardly something I can blame someone for doing. But, for individual creators especially, it does seem like you either die the Artist or live long enough to see yourself become a Grifter. At some point, it becomes an incentive to cash in and ease off the gas.

I think this is the most dangerous zone to consume in, because it’s the hardest to detect. You are consuming empty slop, but engaging with it. It’s widely distributed, but it’s not good. It’s almost a trick on your psyche. Indulging in guilty pleasures is a not-so-fine-line with being full-on grifted by content that seems valuable based on its distribution or engagement levels, but isn’t.

I’m constantly working on curating my content and being mindful of which Zone I’m consuming content from. I don’t think life always calls to consume Art, but hopefully we can agree it doesn’t call for over-consuming Brain Rot or Grifters…

Don’t let me rain on your parade. Read and watch what you want. Just be mindful!

Sincerely,

Zander Barth