Short Attention Spans
"As with primitive peoples who believe that eating fierce animals will make them fierce, they assume that watching quick cuts in rock videos turns your mental life into quick cuts or that reading bullet points and Twitter postings turns your thoughts into bullet points and Twitter postings."
Every day people throw their hands in the air, blaming the Internet for corrupting the Millennials, today’s teens and twentysomethings, saying the younger generation has the attention span of a gnat.
No, this is not true. Kids are much better informed than we ever were, they can riff on not only Lady GaGa, but BP and the oil spill and Toyota and every other big story that appears throughout the Web, where they surf incessantly.
Do not bemoan the lack of focus, speak to the real issue, you’re angry that kids today are not paying you enough attention!
But don’t blame them for this. In a world of readily-available stimulation, where you can flip the remote or click a different link if you don’t like what you’re experiencing now, it’s really damn difficult to keep the attention of the public with mediocre product.
Some people address this problem by adding bells and whistles, by doing their best to dazzle Web surfers. But this is akin to a wreck on the freeway, you slow down to check it out, then you forget it. Which is why someone can have a hit record today, and be a clerk at 7-11 tomorrow. Used to be, getting into the public eye gave you a place in the firmament, people paid attention to what you did next, but today Lee DeWyze can win "American Idol" one day and put out a stiff single tomorrow. Does everybody really think the "American Idol" audience is unfamiliar with the original U2 version of "Beautiful Day"? Sure, it’s almost a decade old, but with media at your fingertips, it’s not like an oldie is relegated to a station no one listens to, a hit lives on forever.
Assuming you truly had a hit. And a hit lives longer if there’s context. If you’ve got a string of them, you have an identity. Marketers call this a brand, but I don’t know anybody who wants to cuddle with Procter & Gamble, but there are millions who want to get up close and personal with not only the members of U2, but Justin Bieber.
And one reason Bieber is so big is because he’s everywhere. But to think he’s going to last is like just signing up for MySpace. Didn’t you get the memo, the site is history!
Today’s kids are constantly winnowing the wheat from the chaff. They don’t refrain from buying the entire album because they can’t focus on fifty minutes of music, but because they don’t think anything but the hit is any good.
And it’s not like they play one song and turn off their iPod, they put it on shuffle, and play their personal hits, which drives the industry batty. The music industry is based on selling an overpriced album so you’ll go to an overpriced show. But why? Can you tell me why a consumer should do this? Especially when there are so many entertainment options?
Everyone’s fighting for your attention. And people are angry if you jump in front of them and demand it. It’s akin to being cut off on the freeway. You want to beep the horn, project the middle finger, you’re anything but open to being nice to the driver. But somehow, musicians believe if they spam a large group of people online, they’ll gain a huge audience. Why? The Web is littered with failed sites. People move on elsewhere.
You can’t truly multitask, just like you can’t truly speed read. These are myths perpetuated by hucksters needing to believe in their behavior, that they’re better than you, like the people bragging about getting so little sleep. Research says more sleep yields better behavior! Then again, facts have a bad reputation in today’s society, where everybody builds his own Bible, determines his own science.
But don’t blame the kids, and don’t blame the Internet. The Internet democratizes access to information. Suddenly, the big label project looks no better than the indie. But neither may compare to FarmVille or a game on the PS3. Both of which can fascinate users for hours.
Yes, if someone’s truly interested, if they’re hooked, they’ll give you untold hours of attention. But you’ve got to be really good.
People don’t dedicate a lot of time to train-wrecks, they invest in quality. But that’s harder to come by. Which is why everybody’s blaming the audience.
