High Tech Energy (Attention) Vampires
It is interesting to observe that any endeavor where attention is one of key metrics or key drivers. Regardless of the company size end up in the same hell pit of attention craving and optimization for it. Even small single person blogs that teach us to be a better person, engineer, or somethings are prone to that. Many of them, those I used, slowly became “Energy Vampires” to me constantly seeking for my attention.
An “energy vampire” is a person who leaves you feeling depleted both emotionally and mentally after you’ve spent time with them. It’s not a clinical term, but more a colloquial shorthand used to describe a kind of person who drains your energy. And it’s not quite as mysterious as it sounds.
From calm.com. There is also a nice list of energy vampire traits, and symptoms of an exposure to a such creature including “avoiding social contact” and “Overwhelmed by negativity” and how to deal with them.
Here was a large chunk about the history behind it, reasons, and psychology. But it was so overly confident, and boring piece of writing that I deleted it… I’m grad I did it.
High-tech companies are a little bit different from humans but the point remains. Sooner or later they becomes just another way to distract you for life.
Today, I’ve added a few more names to my very personal list of vampires. Substack which defines itself as “The home for great culture” and a few Telegram channels.
The Substack app, following the path of the pioneers of attention eaters like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, was deleted from my phone and unsubscribed from a few authors there since they we bombarding my email during the night so I can see they writing first in the morning. In Telegram I moved to Archive a few channels.
The good part is that with each iteration it is easier to recognize the dark patterns and be more intentional about where my attention is going.
I’m grateful for the lesson though :)
Update
I have to admit that I’m the part of the problem since I tend to subscribe to a lot of interesting things at once and then I don’t have bandwidth to handle all incoming updates. Treating subscriptions as bookmarks rather than a call for immediate read eliminated the discontent.
PS: State sane, safe, and sound. Cheers y’all.