Leary saw the attention industries as his mortal enemy

Evidence

Leary forecast that enormous resistance would meet those trying to take his advice. “The directors of the TV studio do not want you to live a religious life. They will apply every pressure (including prison) to keep you in their game. Your own mind, which has been corrupted and neurologically damaged by years of education in fake-prop TV-studio games, will also keep you trapped in the game.” He was right in seeing that American commerce, and the attention industries in particular, would view what Leary advocated as a mortal threat. But he seems not to have anticipated that just as he had appropriated the tools of advertising for the promotion of his cause, the side of the advertisers might just as easily appropriate his cause for their purposes. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 544

Categorization

• SEED: Strong article angle: counterculture co-optation—how the rebels who used advertising’s tools were themselves absorbed as content by the attention industries.
• CANDY: Lovely compact irony: Leary used advertising’s own tools to promote dropping out, and advertisers in turn co-opted him.
• XREF: connects to: Leary called for a total rejection of all attention-harvesting authorities, not just media — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 540