Exploiting attention is experienced as exploitation of the person themselves

Evidence

Indeed as we shall see, behind such impassioned backlash is very often an awareness that the exploitation of human attention is in some deeper way the exploitation of our persons. Buffeted by constant intrusions, we sometimes reach the point of feeling we’ve had enough, and that feeling is ultimately one the attention industries cannot ignore. In Paris, the municipal authorities did indeed take aggressive action, restricting the placement of posters, which they came to view as a blight, a weed in need of containment. Those limits still exist and are perhaps one reason visitors continue to find the city beautiful. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 73

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to today’s ad-blockers, cookie consent fatigue, and surveillance capitalism backlash literature (Zuboff’s ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’). — connects to: Attention enables individuals to become themselves, not merely survive — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 486; Attention is the most personal possession yet exists only as something to be alienated — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 20; Audience exploitation arises from users becoming commodities, not from literal work — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 327 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Exploited consciousness becomes accomplice to its own subjection through passive interiority #expands (0.85) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 572