The Wisdom Wall

“The reason fame makes people go crazy is because we're not conditioned properly to deal with social attention from strangers. What we have done is democratize the madness of fame for everyone. Now everyone can have an inflow of social attention from strangers at a scale in ubiquity that was completely inconceivable for…”

“And I basically think that the TikTok model, which is like short form video married to machine learning is the, like, The way that slot machines outcompete everything on a casino floor, I just think that, like, outcompetes everything.”

“there's a little bit of the, this, this reversing, like, what will sell out there? What will get attention? And then you reverse engineer and make that content, as opposed to, I have this to say. I want to write this poem. I want to make this song, like, I want to make this thing.”

“A reporter at the New York Times is insulated from that. Like, they have a salary. Their livelihood doesn't go up or down. Like, there's a certain degree to which traffic is a coin of the realm institutionally, but they don't have, like, a direct monetary incentive in maximizing attention.”

“The TikTok algorithm has no purpose other than that attentional purpose. And this is true even of, like, media companies, even NBC News or ABC News or Hollywood producers and directors. Like, they want big hits, yes, but they're also, they're also human beings that have, like, I like to make comedies. I want to launch…”

“Trump's core insight is that attention's the most valuable resource, and getting it at all costs is the best way to dominate politics, and he's set himself to doing that in a bunch of novel ways.”

“I think it's possible to do good work in any medium. Like, there are people who do great stuff on TikTok, great stuff on Instagram Reels. There are people posting on Blue Sky and X and Threads that I, like, learn from. There are amazing YouTube videos that I've learned a ton from. So, like, I think it's important to…”

“one of the things you learn is that attention and attentional flows and interest are these sort of forces that are outside your control. They kind of, like, move in and out like the wind, and then you try to do with them what you can.”

“The better you are, the more you can do obscure topics. I think now that I've done this for 12 years, I'm probably better at getting people's attention for things that they wouldn't otherwise pay attention to. I think Rachel Maddow is, like, amazing at doing that.”

“just because you have these sort of algorithmically optimized versions of our attention on one, in one channel, doesn't mean that all the other appetites go away.”

“I always compare it to food a lot because I think attention and hunger function similarly. They're like, they're both biological inheritances, but also reflections of our deep identity as humans. And, you know, I think we're kind of in the, like, late seventies recipe cookbook jello salad casserole era.”