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Attensity!: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement
A rallying cry to fight the commodification of human attention, with the tools we need to reclaim our humanity, by a group of writers, artists, and activists in the vanguard of the movement
“A stirring battle cry on behalf of our shared humanity against the forces that seek to diminish and degrade it. Downright invigorating. Just what the moment calls for.”—Chris Hayes, author of The Sirens’ Call
We all feel something is seriously wrong. Our attention—that essential ability to give our minds and senses to the world—is being trapped, gutted, and sold out from under us by an industry of immense technological and financial power. The heedless exploitation of this vital capacity by a handful of tech companies is harming us all, reducing our very selfhood to that which can be quantified, bought, and sold—and shaking the foundations of our democracy.
To push back against this “human fracking,” we need more than individual willpower or isolated efforts. We need a movement of collective resistance. Such a movement is beginning to bloom, and in this radical, first-of-its-kind guide, The Friends of Attention show us how to join the fight. We meet welders, nurses, poets, and surfers, all of whom are engaged in attentional practices. We learn to seek out sanctuaries—theaters and museums, houses of worship, dance parties—where together we can take refuge from the frackers. Attention Activism takes our apocalyptic present, turns it on its head, and reveals new vistas of human flourishing.
Drawing on a rich legacy of critical intellectuals and the creative wisdom of diverse traditions, Attensity! calls on us to come together to defeat the greedy dehumanizing forces of brute instrumentalization—and re-enchant the world.
“A stirring battle cry on behalf of our shared humanity against the forces that seek to diminish and degrade it. Downright invigorating. Just what the moment calls for.”—Chris Hayes, author of The Sirens’ Call
We all feel something is seriously wrong. Our attention—that essential ability to give our minds and senses to the world—is being trapped, gutted, and sold out from under us by an industry of immense technological and financial power. The heedless exploitation of this vital capacity by a handful of tech companies is harming us all, reducing our very selfhood to that which can be quantified, bought, and sold—and shaking the foundations of our democracy.
To push back against this “human fracking,” we need more than individual willpower or isolated efforts. We need a movement of collective resistance. Such a movement is beginning to bloom, and in this radical, first-of-its-kind guide, The Friends of Attention show us how to join the fight. We meet welders, nurses, poets, and surfers, all of whom are engaged in attentional practices. We learn to seek out sanctuaries—theaters and museums, houses of worship, dance parties—where together we can take refuge from the frackers. Attention Activism takes our apocalyptic present, turns it on its head, and reveals new vistas of human flourishing.
Drawing on a rich legacy of critical intellectuals and the creative wisdom of diverse traditions, Attensity! calls on us to come together to defeat the greedy dehumanizing forces of brute instrumentalization—and re-enchant the world.
217 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 20, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 146 reviews
February 12, 2026
DNF. You remember that episode of South Park where Randy moves to San Fransisco and can’t stop smelling his own farts? That’s the people who wrote this book.
Pretentious, not a single piece of research seems to be put into this book? Stats thrown at you with no source? Like I want to be on board but it just seems like a bunch of people got together and just decided that they knew a bunch about something they don’t know that much about?
Message is good but the messengers are faulty. Screams NYC supper club faux activism.
Pretentious, not a single piece of research seems to be put into this book? Stats thrown at you with no source? Like I want to be on board but it just seems like a bunch of people got together and just decided that they knew a bunch about something they don’t know that much about?
Message is good but the messengers are faulty. Screams NYC supper club faux activism.
January 9, 2026
Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.
I went into this book genuinely excited. With such a timely subject and the promise of exploring how technology is shaping — and reshaping — our attention, I expected insight, research, and meaningful reflection.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t what I found. Rather than an examination of attention in the modern world, this book presents a collective manifesto, with each chapter functioning as a short statement or declaration. While the concept itself is interesting, the execution didn’t work for me.
For a topic of this importance, the lack of depth was disappointing. There is very little scientific grounding or research to support the ideas presented, and the format left no room for nuance or deeper exploration. I found myself wanting the book to engage more critically with the subject, but it remained largely surface-level throughout.
While I appreciate the intention behind this project, the execution didn’t meet my expectations, and I was left wanting far more depth and evidence for such a complex topic.
I went into this book genuinely excited. With such a timely subject and the promise of exploring how technology is shaping — and reshaping — our attention, I expected insight, research, and meaningful reflection.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t what I found. Rather than an examination of attention in the modern world, this book presents a collective manifesto, with each chapter functioning as a short statement or declaration. While the concept itself is interesting, the execution didn’t work for me.
For a topic of this importance, the lack of depth was disappointing. There is very little scientific grounding or research to support the ideas presented, and the format left no room for nuance or deeper exploration. I found myself wanting the book to engage more critically with the subject, but it remained largely surface-level throughout.
While I appreciate the intention behind this project, the execution didn’t meet my expectations, and I was left wanting far more depth and evidence for such a complex topic.
January 29, 2026
The more I think about this book, the more disappointed I am. The tone was weird, almost infantilizing, and I’m just not sure who the target audience is. I’m fully on board with the whole idea but still found myself distinctly un-rallied by this.
April 18, 2026
The style of this was made for 2017, and while grating, I still found some of it to be helpful
February 2, 2026
I liked the idea a lot more than the tedious execution.
Read
May 30, 2026This is one framework for hacked attention spans that actually leaves the reader kind of hopeful. Just like the obesity epidemic and the cratering of American public health gave rise to mass fitness culture and the proliferation of gyms and health culture, we’re still reeling from the early days of a new phase in the attention war and need mass movements to fight back. The authors draw on a wide range of activities to counteract the attention drain, from music practice to skilled labor to Bible memorization. Can’t wait to pay these guys a visit.
June 9, 2026
I loved this book… it zooms out the idea of “attention” from what we all think of as phone addiction and really opens your eyes to what parts of life and humanity are being sucked away from us constantly by the attention economy. Really made me think (and delete instagram)
October 9, 2026
There are a lot of reviewers on GoodReads claiming this is obnoxiously written. This isn't exactly wrong. The prose takes a lot of ostensibly wonderful qualities--sincerity, earnestness, erudition, ferocity--and overdoes all of them by about 18%. (The frenzied use of italics and ALL CAPS to INSIST and EMPHASIZE borders on ridiculous.) I get that this is a manifesto, and some of these rhetorical eccentricities are probably part of the genre, but it's also an unfortunate miscalculation. There's so much that's beautiful and sensitive and essential about this book that I'd probably be buying it for everyone I know if it weren't--um--also a little annoying.
That said: even my frustration with the style feels a bit like missing the forest for the trees. This book approaches the problem of attention exploitation with refreshing nuance and urgency. There are a lot of people talking about how phones are cataclysmically destructive--and they are; this is as grave a problem as exists in the 21st century--but none with quite this much giddy optimism and breadth and depth. Attensity understands the scope of the problem and the scope of the solution, and that's a real gift. It made me feel comforted and less alone, even if my company was frothing at the mouth with ardent self-righteousness. Grateful to have read it.
That said: even my frustration with the style feels a bit like missing the forest for the trees. This book approaches the problem of attention exploitation with refreshing nuance and urgency. There are a lot of people talking about how phones are cataclysmically destructive--and they are; this is as grave a problem as exists in the 21st century--but none with quite this much giddy optimism and breadth and depth. Attensity understands the scope of the problem and the scope of the solution, and that's a real gift. It made me feel comforted and less alone, even if my company was frothing at the mouth with ardent self-righteousness. Grateful to have read it.
March 11, 2026
Liked the contents of Attensity (the soundbites on attention-fracking, the need for "attention sanctuaries," and the resistance against the commodification of our attention that has historically lined the pockets of the world's wealthiest corporations), but they lost me with the packaging. My woo-woo radar gets activated when a book is marketed as a "manifesto" written by a mysterious, amorphous group known as the "friends of attention," who gather in secret to discuss the "attention liberation movement." Attensity's authorship takes itself too seriously, which makes it difficult to engage with seriously as a reader. A shame because we should all probably heed the advice in this book. Sorry -- manifesto.
February 22, 2026
It engages with a topic I really care about, and it feels very timely. I appreciated the urgency and activist energy behind it. But for me, it felt a bit surface-level. The ideas are compelling, yet not explored in enough depth, which made it harder for me to stay engaged. It is a strong call to action, but I wish it had been more grounded and nuanced.
January 30, 2026
This is an explicit and self-conscious call to action to resist the fragmentation of society by the constant siren’s call of the attention economy that isolates and divides us from one another. What action? Mostly, to do things with other people in person in a way that defies what they call “attention fracking”—squeezing ever more moments of monetized screen-based attention from the public. Examples include going to band practice, playing D&D, and growing bonsai trees. I endorse all of this whole heartedly.
It is a real pity that the book is weighed down by the language of lefty activists/academics, much as with How to Do Nothing. To inspire the kind of change this manifesto seems to want, reaching the broadest possible audience is imperative, but they cannot resist drawing analogies that will only appeal to lefties, such as the central “fracking” metaphor, which only really works for you if you believe fossil fuel fracking to be bad. They also approach their subject elliptically, constantly promising that they’re going to explain things and forcing you to wait until much later in the book to find out what they’re talking about (including a long digression about not trusting scientists while insisting that that’s not what they’re saying) instead of just building an argument. Contrast this with The Sirens’ Call, which presents a much more linear, accessible, and compelling account than is rendered here. I think this book does not do much more than rally people already inclined to agree with the authors and who already share, or at least aren’t put off by, their lefty worldview. It’s therefore hard to imagine this book having the kind of Silent Spring–like impact the authors explicitly hope for (though I’ve never read Silent Spring, so for all I know it reads much like Attensity!).
That said, the goals of the authors, to rebuild a society that had been falling apart for decades before social media and AI appeared (as diagnosed in Bowling Alone), align well with my own, and I found reading this book a welcome occasion to reflect on the subject. I think I would recommend The Sirens’ Call and The Anxious Generation well before I would Attensity!, but they are, I think, getting at something important about how attention works. It’s not just our ability to focus on a task, particularly a screen-based one, and the crisis of attention is not just about shortening attention spans but about what we give our attention to and what forms our attention is allowed to take.
I think there is a more precise and more compelling version of this that could be written (and it may already be lingering out there in the vast literature I haven’t read) that disentangles the anti-capitalist aspect of their argument, makes more concrete recommendations, and provides a more actionable definition of attention in the first place, but the authors are engaged in important work, and if this book serves the role they hope it will, that would be no bad thing.
It is a real pity that the book is weighed down by the language of lefty activists/academics, much as with How to Do Nothing. To inspire the kind of change this manifesto seems to want, reaching the broadest possible audience is imperative, but they cannot resist drawing analogies that will only appeal to lefties, such as the central “fracking” metaphor, which only really works for you if you believe fossil fuel fracking to be bad. They also approach their subject elliptically, constantly promising that they’re going to explain things and forcing you to wait until much later in the book to find out what they’re talking about (including a long digression about not trusting scientists while insisting that that’s not what they’re saying) instead of just building an argument. Contrast this with The Sirens’ Call, which presents a much more linear, accessible, and compelling account than is rendered here. I think this book does not do much more than rally people already inclined to agree with the authors and who already share, or at least aren’t put off by, their lefty worldview. It’s therefore hard to imagine this book having the kind of Silent Spring–like impact the authors explicitly hope for (though I’ve never read Silent Spring, so for all I know it reads much like Attensity!).
That said, the goals of the authors, to rebuild a society that had been falling apart for decades before social media and AI appeared (as diagnosed in Bowling Alone), align well with my own, and I found reading this book a welcome occasion to reflect on the subject. I think I would recommend The Sirens’ Call and The Anxious Generation well before I would Attensity!, but they are, I think, getting at something important about how attention works. It’s not just our ability to focus on a task, particularly a screen-based one, and the crisis of attention is not just about shortening attention spans but about what we give our attention to and what forms our attention is allowed to take.
I think there is a more precise and more compelling version of this that could be written (and it may already be lingering out there in the vast literature I haven’t read) that disentangles the anti-capitalist aspect of their argument, makes more concrete recommendations, and provides a more actionable definition of attention in the first place, but the authors are engaged in important work, and if this book serves the role they hope it will, that would be no bad thing.
April 2, 2026
Review TL;DR: the core thesis is great and the message is one we should all get behind. So why is it that the authors felt the need to alienate a majority of their potential audience?
The message really is great, and there are some really interesting insights and comparisons brought up in this book. I especially like the idea of “distraction” being true attention (loosely) and the self-awareness that social-movements can be negatively disruptive to democracy, removing agency in some cases, but the necessity for a movement in breaking stale molds!
But mostly this book made me frustrated. The Authors felt the need to frequently reference controversial, or at least not yet entirely accepted, political stances as though they are tied directly to the nature of Attention Activism. The problems we face when it comes to monetizing attention stretch across all boundaries, and affect everyone universally!
In some cases, topics such as climate change are brought up as a point of reference, and this is fine. But frequently the authors make tactical language decisions to convey certain extraneous opinions as true by default. The problem with this is that it (perhaps—ironically—*unintentionally*?) ties these irrelevant opinions to the Attention Activism movement.
This is obviously damaging to the movement! The point should not be “only the politcal left” or “only the politcal right” will agree with this fight. It needs to universal. What’s more is that the more opinions thrown into the now omnibus movement further decreases the odds the reader has the exact matching opinion set. All of this is tangential to the issue at hand in the book. If you make your readers feel like they are in enemy territory, or forcing them to agree with unrelated opinions they don’t share in order to adopt the CORE belief of this book, your limit the spread of your ideology and your movement.
I agree with the message, and would consider myself an “Attention Activist”, but I find it hard to see myself recommending this book to anyone because of the *irrelevant* included opinions a they might assume I’ve adopted.
The message really is great, and there are some really interesting insights and comparisons brought up in this book. I especially like the idea of “distraction” being true attention (loosely) and the self-awareness that social-movements can be negatively disruptive to democracy, removing agency in some cases, but the necessity for a movement in breaking stale molds!
But mostly this book made me frustrated. The Authors felt the need to frequently reference controversial, or at least not yet entirely accepted, political stances as though they are tied directly to the nature of Attention Activism. The problems we face when it comes to monetizing attention stretch across all boundaries, and affect everyone universally!
In some cases, topics such as climate change are brought up as a point of reference, and this is fine. But frequently the authors make tactical language decisions to convey certain extraneous opinions as true by default. The problem with this is that it (perhaps—ironically—*unintentionally*?) ties these irrelevant opinions to the Attention Activism movement.
This is obviously damaging to the movement! The point should not be “only the politcal left” or “only the politcal right” will agree with this fight. It needs to universal. What’s more is that the more opinions thrown into the now omnibus movement further decreases the odds the reader has the exact matching opinion set. All of this is tangential to the issue at hand in the book. If you make your readers feel like they are in enemy territory, or forcing them to agree with unrelated opinions they don’t share in order to adopt the CORE belief of this book, your limit the spread of your ideology and your movement.
I agree with the message, and would consider myself an “Attention Activist”, but I find it hard to see myself recommending this book to anyone because of the *irrelevant* included opinions a they might assume I’ve adopted.
April 18, 2026
I started reading with excitement but it failed to hold my attention. I like the focus on what they've called attention fracking / an increased awareness of what the attention economy is doing but wish they offered actionable steps.
June 7, 2026
I wanted to like this book more. Honestly, it was one of those purchase I made based on the cover, which is always a gamble. It's asking some good questions about our modern ideas around attention and our waning ability for attention based in care, curiosity, and beauty. There's also some helpful cultural analysis that really rang true for me - particularly the idea about an attention economy.
Where I found it lacking was in its alternative vision. It offered ideas of gathering, but I found it lacking in naming a depth to this new vision. Someone like Brother Lawrence or the Bhagavad Gita offer a spiritual or depth dimension to the ordinary, whereas Attensity takes a purely humanistic approach. There were several points throughout the book where I thought it was going to bring this spiritual, mystery, or depth dimension into the conversation, but it only mentioned spiritual traditions briefly here and there like a stone skipping over the water.
In all, I'm glad I read it, but I was also left wanting.
Where I found it lacking was in its alternative vision. It offered ideas of gathering, but I found it lacking in naming a depth to this new vision. Someone like Brother Lawrence or the Bhagavad Gita offer a spiritual or depth dimension to the ordinary, whereas Attensity takes a purely humanistic approach. There were several points throughout the book where I thought it was going to bring this spiritual, mystery, or depth dimension into the conversation, but it only mentioned spiritual traditions briefly here and there like a stone skipping over the water.
In all, I'm glad I read it, but I was also left wanting.
April 1, 2026
A bit overly self-aggrandizing. It felt very “group of hippies descend on one hippie’s rural property and decide SOMETHING MUST BE DONE about THE! ATTENTION! ISSUE! But they also decide data or measurable evidence or even specific desired outcomes from readers/society are not worth the bother lol. However they spent a lot of time reading books related to this topic so I’ll give them that.
But the points made were generally good. Gave me some new ideas and ways of thinking about the issue. All told still worth the read for me and I think it positively influenced me and how I think about attention fracking. It’s a scary thing fr you guys. Just like literally everything else in our burning hellscape of a society. We can all only pick so many things to care about.
But the points made were generally good. Gave me some new ideas and ways of thinking about the issue. All told still worth the read for me and I think it positively influenced me and how I think about attention fracking. It’s a scary thing fr you guys. Just like literally everything else in our burning hellscape of a society. We can all only pick so many things to care about.
February 12, 2026
Extremely important topic
executed as a 'grab your pitchforks' rally cry.
is a really important concept, explained poorly, still a really important concept.
I think it is.
Others will do this better, but maybe this is simply the fun light that leads the way.
4 stars for the effort, and the importance of the topic.
executed as a 'grab your pitchforks' rally cry.
is a really important concept, explained poorly, still a really important concept.
I think it is.
Others will do this better, but maybe this is simply the fun light that leads the way.
4 stars for the effort, and the importance of the topic.
Read
October 9, 2025Had to read for work!
June 6, 2026
I don’t really write reviews but, because I am a dork, I ended up writing a tiny essay on this book to get my thoughts fully fleshed out so bear with me. I actually almost didn’t read this book because of the reviews, despite my deep, abiding interest in this topic. I picked it up because it was there at the library and so I said under my breath, “oh alright.” I also picked up Like, Follow, Subscribe by Fortesa Latifi at the same time and began reading them simultaneously.
Like, Follow, Subscribe is about the world of eerie, strange and yet mundane commodification of motherhood and how it affects the children specifically. Attensity is about the eerie, strange, mundane online commodification of everything that we all find ourselves in right now and what to do to resist it. I think reading Attensity alone, I may have had similar feelings to some of the other reviews - interesting but a little vague and (like my favorite review) “smelling their own farts.” However, read with Like, Follow, Subscribe, it grounded Attensity for me and provided a clearer reflection of just what The Friends of Attention are getting at in their book.
The topic of online commodification itself is weird and amorphous, a little vague, and can be argued either way. Even with something as obvious as the violation of childhood privacy for money and views, Fortessa Latifi feels that strangeness and finds herself talking in circles, trying to make sense of it all. She concludes the book with “I’m talking in circles. Let me clarify. Here is where I have landed, after hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of researching and writing. The money is eye watering; the fame is intoxicating; the possibility for economic freedom is dizzying. I know all of that. And still, I would never - ever, not for a second - make the trade.” (pg 244).
To me, this is the core of Attensity too and places it firmly in an experience we all have had. Yes, we know that online commodification of all of our lives can be fascinating to watch, fun to talk about, absorbing, tempting, but also empty, weird, worrying and downright wrong.
A very telling paragraph in Like, Follow, Subscribe really connects to the very question at the core of Attensity:
“Gjinishi says it disturbs her, this idea that every single part of life can be packed and commodified and sold. But there’s also a part of her that sympathizes with the people packaging their lives because they live within a system that demands constant commodification… “There’s no way out of it,” she says and is quiet for a moment. “So I think there is a bit of hopelessness, maybe.” (page 133).
And The Friends of Attention are talking about just this hopelessness in their book:
“The basic reality is we are currently living in such a world. How? Like this: The attention economy appears to turn attention into “value”: but it's exactly the other way around. It is attention itself that makes things valuable. It is by means of our attention that we constitute the values of this world: What we care about, what we give ourselves to, what we endow with time and touch and thought, what we stay with, what we circle back toward; these are the things that become valuable. In the fracklands of the twenty-first century, we are being bought and sold with our own coin.” (pg 122).
They argue that we must take back our attention and decide where to place it, specifically on things that we love, the people that we love, and share it with people outside of commodification. “Grab up the attentional practices that you’ve got! Have your neighbor teach you what she knows! And share what you are learning! Because this is literally all we have.” (pg 202)
In Like, Follow, Subscribe, the feeling of hopelessness at the world we are in described above, permeates the pages. The human care of motherhood and the loneliness new mothers feel are mined for value, both for the person who makes the video (for money) and the one who watches (for connection), so far apart. A thin veneer of connection is being sought in the dark, in a room, nursing a baby with a phone in one hand but it isn’t real and we all feel that. It’s hollow at best and sinister at worst.
The Friends of Attention say… “the goodness of consciousness itself is now being remorselessly laid waste by a shocking new industry that recklessly and efficiently and surreptitiously converts human care (and interest and desire) into… MONEY. And this deranged enterprise is harming us all. Attention Activism says NO!” (pg 229).
After reading both of these books, I feel like the Friends of Attention have something really important to say on this topic and is absolutely worth a read. Reading it alongside another book on a concrete example of online commodification provides a lot of clarity on what Attensity is talking about. Excited to see more of what Friends of Attention do!
Like, Follow, Subscribe is about the world of eerie, strange and yet mundane commodification of motherhood and how it affects the children specifically. Attensity is about the eerie, strange, mundane online commodification of everything that we all find ourselves in right now and what to do to resist it. I think reading Attensity alone, I may have had similar feelings to some of the other reviews - interesting but a little vague and (like my favorite review) “smelling their own farts.” However, read with Like, Follow, Subscribe, it grounded Attensity for me and provided a clearer reflection of just what The Friends of Attention are getting at in their book.
The topic of online commodification itself is weird and amorphous, a little vague, and can be argued either way. Even with something as obvious as the violation of childhood privacy for money and views, Fortessa Latifi feels that strangeness and finds herself talking in circles, trying to make sense of it all. She concludes the book with “I’m talking in circles. Let me clarify. Here is where I have landed, after hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of researching and writing. The money is eye watering; the fame is intoxicating; the possibility for economic freedom is dizzying. I know all of that. And still, I would never - ever, not for a second - make the trade.” (pg 244).
To me, this is the core of Attensity too and places it firmly in an experience we all have had. Yes, we know that online commodification of all of our lives can be fascinating to watch, fun to talk about, absorbing, tempting, but also empty, weird, worrying and downright wrong.
A very telling paragraph in Like, Follow, Subscribe really connects to the very question at the core of Attensity:
“Gjinishi says it disturbs her, this idea that every single part of life can be packed and commodified and sold. But there’s also a part of her that sympathizes with the people packaging their lives because they live within a system that demands constant commodification… “There’s no way out of it,” she says and is quiet for a moment. “So I think there is a bit of hopelessness, maybe.” (page 133).
And The Friends of Attention are talking about just this hopelessness in their book:
“The basic reality is we are currently living in such a world. How? Like this: The attention economy appears to turn attention into “value”: but it's exactly the other way around. It is attention itself that makes things valuable. It is by means of our attention that we constitute the values of this world: What we care about, what we give ourselves to, what we endow with time and touch and thought, what we stay with, what we circle back toward; these are the things that become valuable. In the fracklands of the twenty-first century, we are being bought and sold with our own coin.” (pg 122).
They argue that we must take back our attention and decide where to place it, specifically on things that we love, the people that we love, and share it with people outside of commodification. “Grab up the attentional practices that you’ve got! Have your neighbor teach you what she knows! And share what you are learning! Because this is literally all we have.” (pg 202)
In Like, Follow, Subscribe, the feeling of hopelessness at the world we are in described above, permeates the pages. The human care of motherhood and the loneliness new mothers feel are mined for value, both for the person who makes the video (for money) and the one who watches (for connection), so far apart. A thin veneer of connection is being sought in the dark, in a room, nursing a baby with a phone in one hand but it isn’t real and we all feel that. It’s hollow at best and sinister at worst.
The Friends of Attention say… “the goodness of consciousness itself is now being remorselessly laid waste by a shocking new industry that recklessly and efficiently and surreptitiously converts human care (and interest and desire) into… MONEY. And this deranged enterprise is harming us all. Attention Activism says NO!” (pg 229).
After reading both of these books, I feel like the Friends of Attention have something really important to say on this topic and is absolutely worth a read. Reading it alongside another book on a concrete example of online commodification provides a lot of clarity on what Attensity is talking about. Excited to see more of what Friends of Attention do!
July 13, 2026
I picked up Attensity! in a bookstore while visiting Tulsa after the quote on the cover by Jaron Lanier, “If you are human, you must read this book.” That recommendation alone was enough to make me curious. It turned out to be one of the more thought provoking books I’ve read this year. What struck me most is that this is not just another critique of social media or Big Tech. It asks a much deeper question: What is attention, and what happens when it becomes a commodity? The authors argue that attention is not merely a cognitive resource but the very medium through which we encounter reality, other people, and ourselves. As I read, I found myself connecting it with thinkers across traditions. The call to reclaim attention echoes Simone Weil’s idea that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” It reminded me of Abraham Joshua Heschel’s understanding of the sanctity of the present moment, Krishnamurti’s invitation to observe without psychological division, the Buddha’s Middle Path, and even Nietzsche’s challenge to overcome inherited ways of seeing. Those conversations are not in the book directly, but Attensity! invites them. One passage that stayed with me argues that our greatest crisis is not simply misinformation or distraction, but the monetization of human attention itself. If our attention is shaped, extracted, and sold, then our understanding of ourselves and the world is shaped with it. Whether or not you agree with every conclusion, Attensity! succeeds in making you notice something most of us have stopped noticing: where our attention goes, our lives follow. A book that doesn’t just inform you. It changes the way you look at the act of looking.
September 1, 2026
Wow. I did not enjoy this. This was painfully boring and pretentious, while also not being insightful or inspiring. The tone was so grating the whole time, and much of the book made me scream "CITATION NEEDED!!!" in my head.
I agree with the basic premise here, but it seemed like the authors were doing a TON of mixing up correlation and causation. Teens mental health issues are on the rise and more and more people are being diagnosed with ADHD. Okay. That doesn't mean it's the screens' fault! I'm sure it doesn't help, but there are so many other factors at play here. There is less stigma surrounding mental health issues now and more people feel comfortable seeking help. Women were woefully underdiagnosed with ADHD 20-30 years ago and now many are getting diagnosed in their 30s, finally. You can't just hand wave it all away and say it's just because of social media.
Also, early on in the book they make the case that all of the claims they're making don't need to be based on evidence. They say that science is great and they support it, but that science is too slow and the harms of the attention economy must be stopped NOW and we can't wait around for silly science to catch up. Umm. Why not both? It was a weird vibe.
Their "radical" ideas are basically: touch grass. Find community. Get to know your neighbors. Do analog hobbies. Wow. I'm shook.
I agree with the basic premise here, but it seemed like the authors were doing a TON of mixing up correlation and causation. Teens mental health issues are on the rise and more and more people are being diagnosed with ADHD. Okay. That doesn't mean it's the screens' fault! I'm sure it doesn't help, but there are so many other factors at play here. There is less stigma surrounding mental health issues now and more people feel comfortable seeking help. Women were woefully underdiagnosed with ADHD 20-30 years ago and now many are getting diagnosed in their 30s, finally. You can't just hand wave it all away and say it's just because of social media.
Also, early on in the book they make the case that all of the claims they're making don't need to be based on evidence. They say that science is great and they support it, but that science is too slow and the harms of the attention economy must be stopped NOW and we can't wait around for silly science to catch up. Umm. Why not both? It was a weird vibe.
Their "radical" ideas are basically: touch grass. Find community. Get to know your neighbors. Do analog hobbies. Wow. I'm shook.
March 4, 2026
Oh, but this is difficult; if it were possible to award five stars for intent and trumpeting a just cause I would not hesitate, however in reality intent versus execution I am being generous in awarding two stars, regrettably.
For what seems like decades we have been watching (and allowing) the erosion of our attention, together with loss of our privacy, the deterioration of the mental health of us and our children, dumbing of our collective intelligence, etc., etc.) to the point now where one we must acknowledge to a large degree that combating on a collective basis is futile. Our “Bread and circuses” (Juvenal warned Romans of collective apathy in his time) have for us come home to roost. Our “circuses” the willing erosion of our privacy and individuality through technological comfort and frivolous amusement has taken an irreversible toll. The constant Brain-Fracking will only get worse and a well-intentioned Manifesto to combat same will make little difference unfortunately.
A well-intentioned narrative that speaks of fighting back with community advocacy, finger painting exercises in church basements, chess clubs, art installations etc., is beyond naïveté almost bordering on pollyannish dreaming. Hello Manifesto Authors!! the barbarians are not at the gates anymore they are well entrenched inside the walls; in fact, they are in charge; we too by our poor choices are complicit and are also the barbarians. This manifesto principled (well-intentioned) is twenty years too late. All we can do is try to save what little remains of our individual sanity by whatever means available to us. The chapter on Political action is laughable: the Tech-Bros are firmly in charge and effective political counter action in our lifetime is highly doubtful!
The least that is said about the formatting of this book the better. Red typeface! each chapter introduction four or five wasted pages in obnoxious red glare!
For what seems like decades we have been watching (and allowing) the erosion of our attention, together with loss of our privacy, the deterioration of the mental health of us and our children, dumbing of our collective intelligence, etc., etc.) to the point now where one we must acknowledge to a large degree that combating on a collective basis is futile. Our “Bread and circuses” (Juvenal warned Romans of collective apathy in his time) have for us come home to roost. Our “circuses” the willing erosion of our privacy and individuality through technological comfort and frivolous amusement has taken an irreversible toll. The constant Brain-Fracking will only get worse and a well-intentioned Manifesto to combat same will make little difference unfortunately.
A well-intentioned narrative that speaks of fighting back with community advocacy, finger painting exercises in church basements, chess clubs, art installations etc., is beyond naïveté almost bordering on pollyannish dreaming. Hello Manifesto Authors!! the barbarians are not at the gates anymore they are well entrenched inside the walls; in fact, they are in charge; we too by our poor choices are complicit and are also the barbarians. This manifesto principled (well-intentioned) is twenty years too late. All we can do is try to save what little remains of our individual sanity by whatever means available to us. The chapter on Political action is laughable: the Tech-Bros are firmly in charge and effective political counter action in our lifetime is highly doubtful!
The least that is said about the formatting of this book the better. Red typeface! each chapter introduction four or five wasted pages in obnoxious red glare!
September 24, 2026
Totally radicalized me. Beautifully written; the book itself is an embodiment of the "practice" and "sanctuaries" they preach about. Very strategically formatted, even though each sentence reads like a compilation of Old Twitter. Fits into the genre of a manifesto beautifully—the manifesto is the type of formal/informal writing where you can just not cite your sources and yell your opinion out into the universe. They utilize the genre's freedom, as they should! And they (sometimes) cite their sources, just for fun.
Docking a star because they were working towards a solid, actionable argument towards the end, only to fall off into the pit of vague acceptability. I'm not a Marxist, and yet I almost wanted them to lean into their Marxist-adjacent argument. Commit to the bit!
Docking a star because they were working towards a solid, actionable argument towards the end, only to fall off into the pit of vague acceptability. I'm not a Marxist, and yet I almost wanted them to lean into their Marxist-adjacent argument. Commit to the bit!
February 8, 2026
so excited to continue studying attention in my day to day. i liked a lot of the ideas and tone of this, but there was hella italics. making me so excited about being offa my phone and onto myself. i like the emphasis on going forward vs. going back to the way things were. because, as much as i love nostalgia, that's not a solution really. and there does need to be revolution, even reconsidering our relationship to media as a whole. and as a humanity. rare books can make me think of humanity as a whole like this one did. read this at work which i also found interesting and have just been talking about it with everyone i know.
August 3, 2026
Solid three. I was surprised how...intense some people hated the book. XD Really, this is obviously a very worthwhile subject to be discussing, the commodification of our time and attention etc., but as is in the title, a "manifesto" isn't a proof filled research paper, but multiple stated intentions. It's better viewed thru the lens of an essay, and I think people would get more out of it than if you're looking for bullet-points of correction. "What we care about, what we give ourselves to, what we endow with time and touch and thought, what we say with, what we circle back toward; these are the things that become valuable."
Did Not Finish
March 23, 2026DNF. I liked the structure in theory; the manifesto/mission statement is broken up sentence by sentence, which creates "chapters" going in depth on each piece of the statement. But it ends up repeating the same point. The tone is quite emotional when I would've preferred factual. They make some bold claims and then say "look up the research yourself" and even go as far as to discount research/science altogether. Feels ironic that I couldn't pay attention to a book on attention. It's an important cause but these "Friends of Attention" are not going to garner genuine activism like this.
May 11, 2026
“Attensity”, and the authors, The Friends of Attention, advise readers to rise up and learn what our neighbors know, and pass it on. They also recommend sitting and conversing with people who will someday be dead. Sobering.
February 7, 2026
Corny, but if you look past that, the commentary is on point.
Did Not Finish
May 14, 2026High school ass take on a serious problem
June 19, 2026
A great call to use our attention to create a better world.
September 19, 2026
I loves it, this opened my eyes and made me want to go do stuff. I finished it and immediately wanted to read it again... and tell all my friends about it.
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