Competitive attention markets degrade quality while profits shrink.

Evidence

Once a commons that fostered the amateur eccentric in every area of interest, the web, by 2015, was thoroughly overrun by commercial junk, much of it directed at the very basest human impulses of voyeurism and titillation. To be sure, there were exceptions, like Wikipedia, a healthy nonprofit; Reddit, still a haven for some of the spirit of the old Internet; small magazines like Verge, Vox, Quartz, and the Awl; even some efforts to reboot blogging, like the Medium. Likewise, faced with an existential crisis of relevancy, traditional news media, so long allergic to the Internet, dramatically improved their online content over the decade. But these bright spots were engulfed by the vast areas of darkness, the lands of the cajoling listicles and the celebrity nonstories, engineered for no purpose but to keep a public mindlessly clicking and sharing away, spreading the accompanying ads like a bad cold. As the clicks added up, what was most depressing perhaps was that all this was for the sake of amassing no great fortune, but in fact relatively paltry commercial gains, rounding errors in the larger scheme of commerce. The idealists had hoped the web would be different, and it certainly was for a time, but over the long term it would become something of a 99-cent store, if not an outright cesspool. As with the demolition of Penn Station, a great architectural feat had been defaced for little in return. But as so often in the history of attention merchants, when competition mounts, the unseemliness soars and the stakes plummet. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1078

Categorization

• APHORISMS: The closing line — when competition mounts, unseemliness soars and stakes plummet — is a durable observation about attention markets, not just a factual report.
• XREF: Ties directly to the reader’s attention-industries thread; the Penn Station comparison echoes a recurring Wu theme about great things destroyed for little gain. — connects to: Market competition erodes profits but increases rents. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 468; Winning the attention race did not make BuzzFeed profitable — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1073; Competition among attention merchants drives content to ever more lurid extremes. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 49 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Competition among attention merchants drives content to ever more lurid extremes. #expands (0.90) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 49
• Even Vogue capitulated because attention value had detached from taste quality #exemplifies (0.75)