The Attention Mal-Economy and My Brush with Terence Tao

I've been shocked, repeatedly, now in 2023 with how darn hard it is, anymore, to get any kind of praise (or even engagement) from others anymore, online.

Forget gaining subscribers, or paying customers (yeah right!). Even just getting Likes or upvotes. Forget upvotes, even just getting views or reads.

Why am I shocked?

Well, I'm on a planet with (supposedly) 8 *billion* other human beings. Therefore when I share something online, of reasonable quality and value, that I designed/built/polished/delivered -- and therefore is a reflection of *some* amount of care, willpower, skill, and experience, I assume, and also frankly of *generosity* on my part ("Are you not entertained?!") -- that I do expect to get A LITTLE BIT of a fistbump back, in exchange for it.

Nope.

Time after time the various stats dashboards indicate that my stuff bombs.

Utterly bombs.

I have theories why. And its complex. I believe its not due to any one single thing. But rather to a confluence of several factors, all adding up. And by now in the year 2023 we've seemed to reach a kind of critical mass of them, all leading to "The Perfect Storm" effect when it comes to the battle to get attention.

In part I believe its because we're all now in a kind of "Attention War" against each other. And therefore also all in a kind of "race to the bottom", together. And some are playing Dark Cards from their hand that let them cheat. Cards that only they can afford (meaning having the excess wealth to draw from, like to pay, for example, for "social media amplification" services, premium influencer networks, bot farms and the like). Or, cards that the rest of us are simply unwilling to play, ourselves, out of ethical objections.

I don't know what the solution is -- other than to "give in" and start doing the *same* kinds of cheating that the social media psychopaths are all already seeming to do, themselves. I'd *hate* to go down that road. It feels wrong. And would just lead to the continuation and growth of the same anti-patterns we're getting bit by. A person might win a little in the near term by taking that path. But we'll be much worse off, collectively, I believe, in the long term.

If anyone has ideas for real fixes to this problem, feel free to chime in via comments.

thanks

(update in advance: *crickets chirping. cuz 2023*)

ps. If anyone cares, The Thing that set me off today, triggering me to write this, was something I saw on Hacker News this morning. There was a story about how some "tool" had found a flaw in a math paper by Terence Tao. (A tool: you know, just another standin for a human, whether for good or bad.) If you don’t know anything about him, he's a mathematician, was once a child prodigy, even got to meet the legendary Erdos, etc, considered brilliant, and is widely admired as possibly one of the world's best living mathematicians.

Now... I myself don’t have the expertise to judge that last part directly, but, I will trust the judgments of others that *do*. (Personally, my own 3 primary professional skill sets/areas are centered around computer programming, writing English, and game design, and in roughly that order of descent.)

Anyway, why did I bring up this Tao thing? How is it related to the topic of my blog post. Good question. Well, you see it was because the story about "Finding a Flaw in a Terence Tao
Paper!!!" (not its literal story title, btw, but its takeaway) thing made the front page of HN. Lots and lots of folks would metaphorically *kill* to make the front page of HN. Its like the techno-geek social media equivalent of winning the lottery. To land a piece of yours (or a story about yourself) on the front page of HN. Because you get tons of eyeballs, many of them from folks in your field, many with Money, and many who are Hiring in one way or another. Its a nice little feat to aim for. Myself I've aimed for it many times and failed. Always failed. No matter what I've tried.

Anyway my point -- and I do have one, haha -- is that several years ago I happened to be reading a math post online by Terence Tao -- hosted on his own math blog -- and while digesting it I realized there was a problem with it. A flaw. In his logic. In his stated logic anyway. In the sentences he crafted to convey his reasoning. The takeaway was that he simply could not conclude what he ostensibly was concluding, based on those sentences. Now, I'm no genius, nor am I mathematician, but I *am* a writer and I know that everybody makes mistakes from time to time. Even if only a typo or mispaste. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt that it was an honest mistake. That there was no fundamental problem with his underlying math or logic, only in the process of "serializing" it out into the form of English, for his blog post. Hey, it happens!

Anyway, I told him about it. What I believed the glitch was and what I guessed he *intended* to say, instead. Within hours he replied back (IIRC) with a comment where he confirmed I was right, and thanked me for pointing it out. And he fixed it.

Easy peasy! And no great drama required. I was glad to have helped, however minor.

No "geek fame" or bragging rights for me, however. No front page of HN!

Social media in 2023 is a circus clown show at best, and a terrible dystopic Attention War at worst. Have no illusions about it, folks. And never expect any kind of "fairness" in outcomes.

TL;DR: I helped Terence Tao fix a flaw in the argument portion of his math post. No big deal at the time. No fame for me tho! loltears