Attention is...

 A meditation on attention, how it works, and what it is...phenomenologically

What exactly is attention, anyway? I woke up this morning with the idea to make a blogpost entitled "Attention is", on what attention means to me. And here I am, doing it. Give me a prize. This Nicole, this my new body. No here miles on this here new body. *the intrusive thoughts*

I feel like it's true, we live in an attention society. Attention is the currency by which we tokenize our affection for each other. When we watch someone's video, or linger on someone's photo or reel, we are effectively and affectively "giving them attention". But what can they do with this attention? They can neither use it to buy things, nor can they feel it physically, the same way I can feel someone's eyes on me when they are watching me in real life. They can feel it virtually in the form of likes, but most of the people who give a post attention or even a view do not actually like it (at least for me, and I am salty about it). How is this attention then felt? Is there a virtual equivalent to feeling someone's eyes on you?

I guess the equivalent would be seeing the people who have viewed your story (the panopticon), or watching the view count on a tweet incrementally go up. But I feel like attention is also something that has inverse proportions. For example, for a micro-celebrity who gets tens of thousands of views, to a celebrity celebrity who gets millions of views and likes, I get a sense that the amount of attention is so unfathomable that even millions of views and likes doesn't feel like anything that tangible. It probably just feels more like a chore, actually making the post that is getting all that attention, to an actual celebrity who is used to it. 

I think the modern TikTok-ification of everything makes everyone feel like they have the potential to be and feel at least like a micro-celebrity. I feel like I have personally had the experience of being a small-time celebrity myself on TikTok. I have occasionally posted the TikTok that will get a couple 10k's of views or likes. And it does feel good, I guess, not even "at first" or "at least" or any qualifiers, it does feel good. But I guess it doesn't feel real, in a sense. It's hard to quantify attention from that many people, it's hard for me to comprehend that many people seeing my post. Now, if some people write some cunty comments, that's another matter. That makes me feel seen. But the actual view count is just somewhat unfathomable to me, and I feel like it doesn't translate view-for-view-for-feeling into "attention" per se.

I feel like I'd rather get 10 views from oomf's than 100,000 views from strangers. And 1 view from that special someone than 10 views from oomf's. But we are heretically not supposed to talk about that.  

In addition to the attention that I get, there's also the attention that I give. #it'sgiving. (Omg not the "in addition", not this like a school essay). It's also true that I have a limited amount of attention, and the attention that I give to certain tasks, like doing my accounting homework, and to certain platforms, like YouTube, TikTok, or Instagram, reduces or increases my "attention span". 

I recently actually watched the first three minutes of this little asian boy talking about how to hack your dopamine and make studying feel fun. And he was like talking bout how you shouldn't wake up and go on YouTube first thing in the morning. Which I lowkey sort of just did, and now I don't feel like writing anymore, lowkey, and I literally just want to go on YouTube. He also said he used to watch porn first thing in the morning and I was like...........damn, lol.