Fortune Magazine reported last year that of all the photographs ever taken, 10% were captured in 2011. Social media site Instagram has gained over 100 million users, and Facebook users continue to share over 250 million photographs every day. Though these numbers only take into account photographs, they appropriately reflect themes in Richard Lanham’s The Economics of Attention. Lanham’s work asserts that though people consistently cry out against rampant materialism, the materialism we see so often today has shifted from its traditional meaning.
Materialism of the past was associated with the simple acquisition of goods. Goods, quotes Lanham, that must be produced, assembled, bought and used – for these goods, “‘You’ve got to dig it, grow it, or build it; everything else is just fluff.'” Lanham quotes this sentiment about the “stuff” with which materialism was traditionally associated. Now, in contrast, people are preoccupied by “fluff,” or everything that is intangible and that most likely could be expressed over the Internet. This fluff means information, or photographs, or articles or news stories passed around the Internet to finally reach the consciousnesses of people around the world. People everywhere, to an extent, are less concerned about the acquisition of goods and more concerned about producing and sharing this “fluff.”
Perhaps this concern for “fluff” has contributed to such high rates of photo sharing online. Taking this case as an example, Lanham would attribute this high level of photo-sharing to people’s desire for attention. Concern for promoting one’s appearance online fuels activity on social media sites such as Instagram and Facebook. “Traditional” materialism also had to do with promoting one’s image as a status symbol or fashionable figure. Buying brand-name clothing or expensive products gave the impression of importance to onlookers. Thus the drive for this type of materialism was about the consumption of goods, but it was more about how those goods gave an impression to others. Social media sites take this type of materialism to a whole new level. Allowing users to instantly share photos of themselves and their lives contributes to a drive for more attention – more of the new kind of materialism. Gaining “followers” or “friends” on these sites is itself a quest for attention. Photo-sharing gains importance as the sharers gain a following. Likewise, the number of followers a person has lends a kind of importance to the person being followed.
Sharing trends in 2012
These trends all contribute to what seems to be an abandonment of the materialism with which we once were familiar. Yet social media has driven people to harness the traditional materialism to attain this new type of materialism that exists on the Internet. Our attitudes, our efforts and our daily actions depend on or are inevitably influenced by the drive for attention. This drive has never existed on such a scale, but it never could have without the existence of social media.
I really like how you used Lanham’s explanation of economizing our attention in a new way. Instead of how people need to focus their attention on the important information, you suggested that we consider ourselves important when we gain attention from others. Your connection to social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter is relevant and very true, as many people use the attention they receive from these to measure their importance.
Good point that social media are new outlets for what we used to call “conspicuous consumption,” or the attempt to gain attention through visible materialism. Now people are trying to show that they have friends and a life worth reading about. Photographs have become a very cheap commodity in terms of the time and material costs necessary to produce them, so people take and share more of them to create value, which is now measured by the quantity of attention.
You should link to the publisher or Amazon page for this book.