How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

by Jenny Odell

A simple refusal motivates my argument: refusal to believe that the present time and place, and the people who are here with us, are somehow not enough. Platforms such as Facebook and Instagram act like dams that capitalize on our natural interest in others and an ageless need for community, hijacking and frustrating our most innate desires, and profiting from them. Solitude, observation, and simple conviviality should be recognized not only as ends in and of themselves, but inalienable rights belonging to anyone lucky enough to be alive.

capitalism, colonialist thinking, loneliness, and an abusive stance toward the environment all coproduce one another.

Why is it that the modern idea of productivity is so often a frame for what is actually the destruction of the natural productivity of an ecosystem?

“Nothing” is neither a luxury nor a waste of time, but rather a necessary part of meaningful thought and speech.

I’ve always found it funny that it’s called bird-watching, because half if not more of bird-watching is actually bird-listening. (I personally think they should just rename it “bird-noticing.”)

To do nothing is to hold yourself still so that you can perceive what is actually there.

As the body disappears, so does our ability to empathize.

we inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative.

Memory and horizontal alliances are two hallmarks of individuality.

the “doing nothing” I propose is more than a weekend retreat. But that doesn’t mean I propose a permanent retreat either. Understanding the impossibility of a once-and-for-all exit—for most of us, anyway—sets the stage for a different kind of retreat, or refusal-in-place,

To stand apart is to take the view of the outsider without leaving, always oriented toward what it is you would have left. It means not fleeing your enemy, but knowing your enemy, which turns out not to be the world—contemptus mundi—but the channels through which you encounter it day to day. It also means giving yourself the critical break that media cycles and narratives will not, allowing yourself to believe in another world while living in this one. Unlike the libertarian blank slate that appeals to outer space, or even the communes that sought to break with historical time, this “other world” is not a rejection of the one we live in. Rather, it is a perfect image of this world when justice has been realized with and for everyone and everything that is already here. To stand apart is to look at the world (now) from the point of view of the world as it could be (the future), with all of the hope and sorrowful contemplation that this entails.

As the attention economy works to keep us trapped in a frightful present, it only becomes more important not just to recognize past versions of our predicament but to retain the capacity for an imagination somehow untainted by disappointment.

It’s uncomfortable to assert one’s will against custom and inclination, but that’s what makes it admirable.

Civil disobedience in the attention economy means withdrawing attention.

If you can afford to pay a different kind of attention, you should.

Curiosity, something we know most of all from childhood, is a forward-driving force that derives from the differential between what is known and not known.

if we allow that what we see forms the basis of how we can act, then the importance of directing our attention becomes all too clear.

The idea that I’ve already lost the battle of attention doesn’t sit right with me, an agential being interested in gaining control of my attention rather than simply having it directed in ways that are deemed better for me.

the only habit worth “designing for” is the habit of questioning one’s habitual ways of seeing, and that is what artists, writers, and musicians help us to do.

It’s in the realm of poetics that we learn how to encounter.

I worry that if we let our real-life interactions be corralled by our filter bubbles and branded identities, we are also running the risk of never being surprised, challenged, or changed—never seeing anything outside of ourselves, including our own privilege.

the reason I suggest the bioregion as a meeting grounds for our attention is not simply because it would address species loneliness, or because it enriches the human experience, or even because I believe our physical survival may depend on it. I value bioregionalism for the even more basic reason that, just as attention may be the last resource we have to withhold, the physical world is our last common reference point.

you cannot opt out of awareness of physical reality. The fact that commenting on the weather is a cliché of small talk is actually a profound reminder of this, since the weather is one of the only things we each know any other person must pay attention to.

Context is what appears when you hold your attention open for long enough; the longer you hold it, the more context appears.

instantaneous communication threatens visibility and comprehension because it creates an information overload whose pace is impossible to keep up with.

the immediacy of social media closes down the time needed for “political elaboration.”

immediacy challenges political activism because it creates “weak ties.”

I wonder what it would be like to experience a social network that was completely grounded in space and time, something you had to travel to in order to use, that worked slowly.

What if we spent that energy instead on saying the right things to the right people (or person) at the right time? What if we spent less time shouting into the void and being washed over with shouting in return—and more time talking in rooms to those for whom our words are intended? Whether it’s a real room or a group chat on Signal, I want to see a restoration of context, a kind of context collection in the face of context collapse. If we have only so much attention to give, and only so much time on this earth, we might want to think about reinfusing our attention and our communication with the intention that both deserve.

Parks don’t just give us the space to “do nothing” and inhabit different scales of attention. Their very existence, especially in the midst of a city or on the former sites of extraction, embodies resistance.

Sometimes boycotting the attention economy by withholding attention is the only action we can afford to take.