Audience attention is generative of greatness in performers

Evidence

These cheering onlookers have fellows far and wide: in the stands at Little League games, on skating rink bleachers, in elementary school auditoriums, and clustered around stages in leaky bar basements from Cleveland to San Francisco to Tampa. What connects these people is the uplifting power of their joint attention. They are there to watch and listen and cheer for somebody they love. Anyone who has ever risen to greatness atop a mound or a stage has done so because of the generous and exuberant attention of people like these. What do we call them? Easy! We call those people SPECTATORS—and beyond them (in the Reddit threads and fan-fic subcultures) we see the wider worlds of the FANDOMS. These are the well-staffed armies of those whose love and care manifest as time and presence and entanglement—with their people, their games, their stars! — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 414

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Polemical strategy’s opening move determines whether an audience will listen; Spectator attention transforms grueling endurance events into triumphant experiences — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 413; Attention from audiences provides genuine affective and psychological benefits — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 518 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Polemical strategy’s opening move determines whether an audience will listen; Spectator attention transforms grueling endurance events into triumphant experiences — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 413; Attention from audiences provides genuine affective and psychological benefits — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 518 (+1 more)