Attention is better spent on intended audiences than on context-collapsed crowds.

Evidence

What if we spent that energy instead on saying the right things to the right people (or person) at the right time? What if we spent less time shouting into the void and being washed over with shouting in return—and more time talking in rooms to those for whom our words are intended? Whether it’s a real room or a group chat on Signal, I want to see a restoration of context, a kind of context collection in the face of context collapse. If we have only so much attention to give, and only so much time on this earth, we might want to think about reinfusing our attention and our communication with the intention that both deserve. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 596

Categorization

• DEFINE: ‘Context collection’ is named here as the countermove to context collapse — a concrete redirection of attention for the defense against the withdrawal misreading.