Artfully Mindful

(Un)Mindful Social Media

• D. R. Thompson • Season 2 • Episode 26

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What if your constant urge to click on that flashy headline is more than just curiosity? Could it be reshaping the very way you think and interact with the world? Join me, Don Thompson, as we explore the magnetic pull of clickbait and its profound impact on modern media and our attention spans. From the evolution of traditional TV commercials to the rapid churn of social media content on platforms like Instagram and Facebook, discover how advertisers have mastered the art of keeping us engaged through fleeting, superficial content designed to elicit quick emotional responses.

Together, we’ll unpack the broader implications of this trend, questioning whether our shortened attention spans are a result of genetic changes or clever manipulative tactics. Are we losing our ability to think critically and deeply about important issues, or are we simply falling prey to a market-driven strategy aimed at maximizing consumer clicks? With decades of media observation, I offer thoughtful insights into how clickbait shapes our daily interactions and cognitive processes, shedding light on what it means for the future of our collective engagement with meaningful content.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, don Thompson here with another podcast for you, and today I'm going to talk about something that might seem a little odd and that will be clickbait. What is clickbait and why does it exist? What is clickbait and why does it exist? I have to say that I've noticed over time since I've been around for a few years, a few decades really, and I've had the experience of watching media has developed a new form of entertainment which is very short, concise and requires a very short attention span. You don't really need to focus on it very much, and that is sort of. The underlying idea behind clickbait is that you can click on something and you can look at it and you can get some kind of an emotional surge from it or some kind of a entertaining feeling, or it'll convey a thought or whatever, and Instagram and Facebook and other platforms thrive on this sort of clickbait. Now I call it clickbait. I don't know if I'm exactly using the term right, but what I mean by clickbait is something that has a momentary element of satisfaction to it. It's telling you something. It's either got a message, it's got an image, or it wants you to click on the message or image and takes you to something else most likely to buy something else, a product, something to purchase. So my thesis behind clickbait and its whole evolution of the way that social media tries to move our attention from one thing to another very quickly, is it's very driven by the market and by the need for advertisers to have an increased click-through rate.

Speaker 1:

In the old days, in the old media, there was advertising. Of course. Let's say, if you're watching TV I mean typically TV you would have a commercial and let's say the commercial was one minute and that commercial would happen, you know, maybe 15 minutes into the show. And then you moved into platforms that were devoid of advertising. So you had streaming media and you had other platforms, some of which were devoid of advertising, particularly if you subscribed to the platform. So a subscription would kind of buy your way out of having to watch the advertising. And YouTube is a really obvious example of that. If you subscribe to YouTube you can avoid the advertising, but if you don't subscribe to YouTube you need to put up with the advertising but you get it for free. So it's a trade-off.

Speaker 1:

And the point here is that clickbait the idea of moving through social media quickly that media has become ever more, shorter, quicker is a a a afor for the advertising. You need to get more ads going, if indeed you are in a situation where you can have ads, you know, given to you or promoted to you. So I would say that, as I've observed the evolution of media mindfully, by the way, I think, hopefully, over the course of the development of the media over the past few decades there's this constant tendency to shorten the attention span. And a shortened attention span again has a couple of benefits for those people that like to manipulate us into buying things. One is that they can put up more advertising, they can put a clickbait that you can click through to purchase something and you don't think too much about things. What it promotes is this kind of shallow thinking process where you don't really think too much, you just kind of move from one thing to the next in a sort of superficial way, in a shallow way, and you don't really think very critically about anything. And this is, you know, a good thing for those that don't want you to think critically about anything. They really just want you to buy something.

Speaker 1:

And so the unfortunate reality with this happening is that people have a shorter attention span and people always complain about the shortened attention span of modern people. People are getting a short attention span because they're flawed, because they're genetically predisposed to have a short attention span, because that's the devolution of the genetic makeup of humanity. I somehow doubt that. I think the people are pretty much the same as they were 2,000 years ago, you know, and there are always people trying to manipulate other people in a variety of Machiavellian ways, usually for profit, in today's world, in today's modern world, and to really distract you from things that might be important. You know, and if they can distract you, if they can disconnect you from others, in particular, if they can get you isolated, if they can get you isolated in a room and interacting with social media and the only way that you can interact with others is through social media well, that creates a situation that's very interesting and very controllable, very controllable by the people that control the platforms Facebook, instagram, youtube or whatever. The people that control the platforms really control humanity, at least, certainly in the United States, that's the way it seems to be. So the question becomes Do we like that? Do we like to be so manipulated and so controlled? In fact, we're so manipulated and controlled we don't even realize that we're being manipulated and controlled.

Speaker 1:

We think we're being given some kind of freedom freedom of expression, more freedom of expression. Through social media, we can serve up our ideas in a very, very free way. But is it really free? Isn't it at some kind of a cost? The cost is that you have to sign on to the platform, even if the platform is free at a certain level. Maybe they have another level where you can subscribe to the platform, but the point being here is that somebody controls the platform. Somebody controls the platform and somebody who controls the platform.

Speaker 1:

If they want to remove you from the platform, they could do that. They can certainly do that, and we've seen that happen in culture, in cancel culture. We've seen that happen. People with unpopular views are eliminated. Now, sometimes it might be a good thing.

Speaker 1:

Do we really want, you know, fascistic, hitler-like ideas being propagated on social media? Well, maybe not, and certainly that's been the accusation of some of the in quotes, liberal platforms that are, you know, eliminating the more right-wing messages, and I would say, however, the overarching reality is that both the messages of the left and the right are eliminated. The left being really more socialistic ideas. Those are also eliminated. We just don't hear about it as much and a lot of times in the United States these ideas don't get any play at all because people aren't really thinking about them at all. It's been really squeezed out of the consciousness of the populace.

Speaker 1:

Any kind of a socialistic idea is immediately discarded or it doesn't even come up because the mind has been so conditioned to the fact that the way things are are normalcy, the way that things are are the way to go. The way that things are being primarily that we have markets and we have advertisers and we have products and we have entrepreneurs and we have people that are trying to start businesses and trying to succeed and make money. And this is the way that the American system is set up. The American system is primarily a vehicle for people to make money in a free market, and that's really the belief system. Is that belief in this free market and this connects people?

Speaker 1:

If you drive across the country and look for what is it that is the culture that connects people. It used to be the church, you might say so you would go from town to town and you would see a Methodist church and perhaps a Lutheran church, and then you go into the South, and then you see the Southern Baptists or other kinds of churches in the South. So the churches used to connect the community. Now what you see is you see this cookie cutter, you know strip mall type stuff. So you see the Starbucks and you see the Walmart and you see a handful of businesses that dominate the American landscape in terms of the selling of products. This has become the new culture in the United States. This is what binds the United States, is this culture of commerce, and it becomes really inculcated into people's consciousness.

Speaker 1:

And I say this, hopefully, in a mindful way and mindfulness, you know. The downside, you could say, is it makes you think about things in a way, because you step outside of yourself and you look at things a little bit more critically. I think you just notice things. Sometimes you feel you notice things that people don't necessarily notice outside of those academics or intellectuals or perhaps meditators that think about these things. You feel like you're sort of like a lone wolf out there thinking about this stuff, but in reality perhaps there are other people thinking about this and they just don't say anything. So I thought I would mention it here on this podcast.

Speaker 1:

I think there were an incredibly manipulated people in the United States and that you know, clickbait is a form of manipulation. We're being manipulated into a short attention span. We're being manipulated in that way and, believe me, I partake in it. I partake in it because I sort of get distracted and just move through my Instagram and move through my Facebook or move through whatever platform. I'm looking at see what my friends are posting and inevitably there's going to be clickbait there. There's going to be somebody trying to sell you something and you know, maybe you click on it, maybe you don't, you know, depending on what it is. Do you Should you? Probably not, I don't know. They're just trying to sell you something. They're trying to manipulate you into something. Unless it's really useful for you, why do it?

Speaker 1:

But it is a way to shorten the attention span, to make you consider the fact that you are easily distracted, or do not consider the fact that you're easily distracted, and to just be easily distracted to be rather shallow in your approach to life. You're just kind of skirting the surface. You're not really experiencing life at all. You're there in the online platform sort of experiencing things in a very superficial way, in a cursory way, but in a way that the advertisers love because they have FaceTime with you. They can put things in front of you that they like to put in front of you, so that you can see them and react to them and perhaps buy a product. So I'll leave it at that. I'll keep it rather short. I don't want to overburden you with this topic, but I do think it's worth considering.

Speaker 1:

Why is it that we have this supposed short attention span in today's world? Why is it that we're the victim of these clickbait situations? messages , tmessages, the churn of the media. We don't watch things, we don't read books that are to be time-consuming. We don't watch things so much that are going to be time-consuming. Maybe we do. Maybe we go to a movie theater and watch a movie. That's the equivalent, I guess, of what used to be reading a novel in terms of a commitment of time. But oftentimes in today's society we're asked to quickly move through social media in a very, very speedy fashion, and I'm telling you it's the churn is what's necessary, the advertising is what's necessary and the short attention span is what is necessary.

Speaker 1:

And the effect of keeping people really disconnected. People are more disconnected today than they used to be in terms of a sense of community. If you have a sense of community, it's virtual, and a virtual community is always under the control of the people that provide the platform. If they don't like what you're doing, they can get rid of you. Now, a lot of that again has happened on the right, but it could happen on the left, it could happen anywhere. So you know, we need to be mindful of that, I think, mindfully aware of these things. That's my vote, at least. So, again, I'll leave it at that and thanks so much for listening. I'll look forward to talking to you soon. Have a great one. Bye-bye, thank you, thank you.