A bipolar culture of egotism and passivity left the web ripe for capture

Evidence

For in its totality the web seemed to be bobbing in the crosscurrents of an aggressive egotism and neurasthenic passivity. Thus trapped, it was suddenly vulnerable to capture by anyone with a promise of something different or better. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1091

Categorization

• SEED: Potential essay angle: how each new attention technology becomes ‘vulnerable to capture by anyone with a promise of something different or better’ — the cycle of platform seduction.
• XREF: connects to: Internet self-representation conceals a capitalist infrastructure producing the self as commodity; The early internet’s value lay precisely in sheltering niche subcultures from mainstream attention; The internet’s promise of niche escape collapsed into a mass culture of short-form content — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 522 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The internet’s promise of niche escape collapsed into a mass culture of short-form content #exemplifies (0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 522
• Internet self-representation conceals a capitalist infrastructure producing the self as commodity #corroborates (0.82)
• The internet functions as a factory producing the self as commodity #corroborates (0.80) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 18
• Neoliberalism absorbed countercultural self-fashioning into self-optimization via the neurochemical self #expands (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 421
• The early internet’s value lay precisely in sheltering niche subcultures from mainstream attention #exemplifies (0.72)