Endless attention harvesting inevitably triggers adaptive backlash and loss of enchantment

Evidence

Let us pause here to remark a major recurrent dynamic that has shaped the course of attention industries: “the revolt.” Industries may have an inherent tendency to “nestle everywhere,” but when the commodity in question is access to people’s minds, the perpetual quest for growth ensures that forms of backlash, both major and minor, are all but inevitable. The minor version I shall refer to as the “disenchantment effect”; this describes what happens when a once entrancing means of harvesting attention starts to lose its charm. Our ability to ignore things is adaptive; with enough exposure it can make us indifferent to any stimulus, until, say, a poster that was once arresting becomes one we can see through as if it did not exist. It is because of this effect that the attention merchant’s approach is always trending in the direction of going too far, almost to the point, sometimes even reaching it, of causing shock. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 71

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces and defines the core recurring concepts of ‘the revolt’ and the ‘disenchantment effect’ that frame the whole book’s argument.
• XREF: The disenchantment effect parallels the notion of habituation and advertising banner blindness studied in modern attention research. — connects to: Email’s adoption functioned as large-scale operant conditioning preparing users for later attention harvesting — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 656; Video games monopolize attention automatically without requiring intentional focus — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 682; No attention capture strategy outlasts the disenchantment effect indefinitely — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 852 (+5 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that the attention merchant is structurally forced toward overreach because enchantment wears off is a genuinely paradigm-shifting frame for media history — the backlash is not incidental but logical.

Broader Connections

• Audience backlash against attention capture can trigger industry-wide regulation and reinvention #expands (0.95) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 72
• Overcommercialized attention harvesting provokes strong social backlash #exemplifies (0.92) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 69
• Self-commodification in the attention economy creates an escalating spiral of exposure and attack #exemplifies (0.82) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 207
• Attention-economy distractions accumulate to erode autonomy and selfhood #exemplifies (0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 403