The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource

by Chris Hayes

Even the most attention-addicted among us can find they hit their limit. “The amount of attention on me has gone supernova, which super sucks,” Elon Musk wrote in the summer of 2022, as he was in the midst of a deal to buy Twitter and multiple stories came out about the various women he had had children with. “Unfortunately, even trivial articles about me generate a lot of clicks :( Will try my best to be heads down focused on doing useful things for civilization.”[52] That lasted about a week. After trying to back out of the deal, Musk ultimately completed his purchase of Twitter at a wildly overinflated value, and would go on to obsessively post and attract constant attention to himself, even as it clearly destroyed the value of the enterprise he had paid so dearly for, forcing him to sell off Tesla stock at steeply discounted prices to stay ahead of margin calls.[53] So caught in the spiral of social attention was Musk that he was willing to give up a substantial part of his fortune.