Attention is the currency of the internet.

I’m paying attention to you for a moment.

I’ve been trying to express this for a while now. For some reason, it’s very hard to explain; I can’t quite grasp the right words to get my point across.

Websites that provoke, they just want traffic, and they get it by being intentionally offensive to you. A site that is poorly built so that you have to click around to find the one thing you went there for? Each time you click it counts as “traffic”.

When you share, or repost something you find horrible or rude, it creates more links to it- making it more relevant in searches online, so that even more people get to find it.
Let’s say you have tattoos, and have just read an article saying that people with tattoos are scumbags.
Don’t link to that article, repost it everywhere, talk about it, give it attention- because it makes that result rise higher in searches for “tattoo”, you see?

Instead, write your own opinion. A rebuttal or explanation. And link to that, talk about that.

And for people wondering why e-commerce sites don’t fix things since they “want our money”…THEY DON’T WANT YOUR MONEY. (especially if you are a seller, a user, and not a buyer)
They want your TRAFFIC, so their stock value goes up, so their ads and affiliate links pay them more. They want you clicking on their site, that is all.

No matter what the site does or if there are ads or not, attention is the currency of the internet, and clicks/hits/views are how that currency is measured.

And if you find something you agree with, that you like- well hell, share that link. Reblog, follow, add, share, twit, whatever it is that you use or do- share the good things around.

I’m through paying out attention to things that don’t feed my mind and to derivative shit.

Spend your attention wisely. ( Jun 6, 2012)
(Reposting to add, I’ve found donotlink helpful in my efforts to spend my attention wisely.
http://www.donotlink.com/dnl/faq)