Attention Activism: A Liberation Movement to Combat the Societal Attention Crisis

Did you know your brain will ask if it should be doing something else about four seconds into this episode? That's not a joke — that's the real documented average. And honestly, it's kind of the whole point.

In Episode 50, Val and Em go deep on attention — not the "just delete TikTok" version of this conversation, but the real one. The systemic, political, whose-profit-is-this-serving one. Val brings fresh insights from her Attention Activism 101 course with the Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA), and Em brings a fracking metaphor nobody asked for but everyone needed.

They also get into Em's "less is more" era, Val saying a meaningful goodbye to her grandfather and the existential questions it's cracking open, and a letter from a social media manager who builds lives AND works in the attention economy and is starting to feel like the villain in her own story.

This episode covers:

• (00:00) Tea & Crumpets — Em on "less is more" as a values-based practice; Val on consciousness, death, and the science-meets-woo rabbit hole she's currently in
• (07:00) Step Into My Office — a social media manager asks: is it possible to do this job without becoming this person?
• (13:00) The DSM — Attention Activism: what it is, where it comes from, and why individual willpower was never the answer
• (15:00) Surveillance capitalism, behavioral data, and the fracking metaphor
• (21:00) Spotlight, starlight, and daylight — philosopher James Williams' three-tier framework for what we actually lose
• (25:00) Attentional ecologies, flow state, hyperfocus, and why "good attention" is more complicated than we think
• (30:00) Who owns your attention? (And what does it mean that we pay it?)
• (34:00) Attentional debt — and how it shows up as burnout
• (38:00) What to actually do: dérive, app blockers, microdosing quiet, and the SOS framework
• (43:00) "...but for REAL" — the mic drop moment
• (45:00) Now That's What I Call— OKAYY! — music segment
• (49:00) Dumpster Fire Phoenix — SoRA's growing momentum + Val's Kindle era

...but for REAL: Losing your focus in a world that is literally engineered to fragment it is not a personal failing. It is the business model. Attention was never supposed to be this hard to fight for on your own — so remember that you don't have to.

Resources + Stuff Mentioned in This Episode

• Strother School of Radical Attention (SoRA) — the Brooklyn-based nonprofit behind the Attention Activism movement; Attention Activism 101 & 201 courses (please verify URL before publishing)
• The Attensity Manifesto — the movement's foundational text (please verify URL before publishing)
• Opal — app blocker Val and Em recommend
• ScreenZen — app blocker
• Jomo — app blocker (Val's current go-to)
• Brick — physical app-blocking device (please verify URL before publishing)
• Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — the book behind the surveillance capitalism framework Em references
• James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light — spotlight/starlight/daylight framework
• Natasha Dow Schüll, Addiction by Design — the casino/slot machine research
• Donnie Darko (2001) — where Gary Jules' "Mad World" first appeared; highly recommended if you haven't seen it
• "Reign Me In" — Sam Fender ft. Olivia Dean — Em's song pick (please add Spotify link)
• "Mad World" — Gary Jules — Val's song pick (please add Spotify link)

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