Congrats, humanity — we’ve officially lost a cognitive race to a goldfish.
In this brutally honest episode, Ryan breaks down how our attention span tanked from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8.25 seconds in 2025 — and how tech giants like Meta, ByteDance, and Google are cashing in by renting out your brain.
He dives into the science of dopamine addiction, the rise of short-form chaos, and why our obsession with instant gratification is shaping everything from relationships to politics. It’s part comedy, part cautionary tale, and entirely Fray.
🔥 You’ll hear about:
The 12 → 8-second fall of human focus
The $570B business of distraction
How short-form media rewired your dopamine
Why attention = currency in 2025
What happens when leadership and focus collide
Stick around to the end for Ryan’s signature “Fray Thought” and a closing you won’t forget.
If you’re listening past the goldfish mark… congratulations.
🧠 Stay curious.
⚔️ Stay sharp.
🎙️ Stay in the Fray.
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I wanted to congratulate humanity when we did it.
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We have officially lost. We spend 6 hours and 37 minutes
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per day staring at screens, which means the only thing we
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truly commit to anymore is here's the thing.
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These companies aren't really selling products, They're just
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renting your prefrontal cortex by the hour.
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In 2024, they raked in. Our focus is gone, our patience
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is gone, and our ability to be bored, which is where I believe
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creativity used to live, is gone.
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We've replaced boredom with background names, creativity
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with content. It's great we can learn to make
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sushi in 15 seconds, but it's a shame we can't really hold a
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conversation for 15 minutes. Welcome to Stay in the Fray
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podcast. I'm your host, Ryan.
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This is where headlines get hit hard, hypocracy gets shredded,
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and the absurd are laughed at. If you want comfort, this isn't
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your place. If you want blunt and
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unfiltered, I'm your guy. Join me in the fray.
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All you had to do is just listen up.
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Hey guys, welcome back. I want to touch on something
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today real quick that's a little different from what I do.
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I usually do and I hope you enjoy this and something to
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think about. I think about sometimes now when
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I'm fighting for algorithm reach and I'm fighting for what shorts
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to put up and what reels and what platforms and all this is
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just attention span talk. And so I wanted to congratulate
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humanity when we did it. We have officially lost a
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cognitive race to a goldfish. Yeah, the average goldfish can
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focus for 9 seconds. The average human in 2025 is
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8.25 seconds. God, somewhere in a tank right
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now. Nemo staring at a castle
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thinking deep existential thoughts while you're scrolling
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past three careers, 2 relationships, and a guy
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reviewing an energy drink from his car on TikTok.
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We used to say I don't have time and now we have the time.
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We just can't stay with it for more than a memes worth of
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existence. Join me here real quick.
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It's a it's a very fast lesson on yet another modern issue of
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mass dysfunction in humanity. It's what I do.
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This is stay in the Fray podcast.
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It is October the 29th, 2025. Let's roll.
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So how do we get here people? There was a time and I know this
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will shock some of you. Some of you not so much.
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Well, we used to wait for things and happily wasn't a big deal.
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MTV I'll use it as an example. They drop it's daily countdown
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and if your favorite bands new music video was coming, you had
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to sit through every commercial, every Adam Curry VJ segment and
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pray they didn't cut away before number one.
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You couldn't stream it, couldn't replay it.
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You just waited the same video. You waited for it for them to
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play it again over and over. Myspace the first, arguably the
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first social media platform that was slow enough to make you
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question your life choices, but at least you were building a top
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8, not a personality disorder. How about TV?
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That's the big one. TV show ended on a cliffhanger.
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You had to wait 7 fucking days to find out what happened next.
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You couldn't binge anything. And now if if a TikTok doesn't
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hook us before the guy even finishes his first blink, we're
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gone. We've trained ourselves to swipe
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faster than we actually think. Back in 2000, our attention span
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was irrespectable, 12 seconds. All right, Microsoft says that
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by 2025, we've now dropped, like I said, to 8.25 seconds.
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It's not really the kind of evolution to brag about.
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We are devolving with Wi-Fi. The average smartphone user get
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this they touch their phone 2617 times per day.
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That's more affection than most people show their lover.
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In a good week, we spend 6 hours and 37 minutes per day staring
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at screens, which means the only thing we truly commit to anymore
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is that battery life. We have built a world where the
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attention span of a fruit fly would be a competitive edge, and
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like most things, someone saw that decline and thought, you
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know what? I can turn that into money.
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I'm looking at you meta and bike dance.
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Even you Google. We're on to you.
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Before I go any further, full disclaimer, I love all of you.
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I fully support your efforts to make sure I never see the
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sunlight ever again. Please algorithm gods, don't
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mess with my reach. I am on your side.
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Here's the thing. These companies aren't really
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selling products. They're just renting your
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prefrontal cortex by the hour. In 2024, they raked in 570
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billion in AD revenue, and that wasn't from selling things.
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It was from selling you your clicks, your curiosity, your
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wandering thumb. Here's the science part.
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Dopamine is the brains feel good chemical.
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A lot of you know that, some might not.
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It's what rewards you for doing something that feels satisfying.
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The problem is the apps figured out how to hit that button.
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Like a kid mashing a button on Nintendo track and field.
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Or when you're desperate to get that dialogue off, you just want
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to play the game. Every scroll, every
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notification, every new clip is another Press of the button.
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The more they hit the dopamine button, the less control you
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have over who's actually playing.
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These companies have weaponized your boredom.
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They are drilling straight into your frontal lobe.
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But like an it's an oil field, they frack your focus, bottle it
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and sell it to the advertisers. Outrage, novelty, infinite
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scroll. That is the business model.
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People watch Netflix with their phone open.
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They scroll Tiktok while playing a YouTube video.
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It's double dipping dopamine. We're snorting attention crumbs
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through two screens at once and calling it multitasking.
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This isn't just tech, it's biology.
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Our brains have adapted to a constant slot machine of
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stimulation. Like any addict, we built
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excuses for it. Texting feels exhausting, emails
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or many novels and if a video doesn't hit us with subtitles,
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music and explosions in the first 3 seconds we assume that's
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boring. There's this YouTube I saw this
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and I thought it was hilarious and very fitting.
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He made a 30 minute video called How to focus better.
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The top comment said can someone make this a one minute short?
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Kid you not, that is humanity in 2025.
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We want a crash course on fixing our attention span, delivered in
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the same time it takes for a cat to fall off the counter.
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Relationships. Forget it.
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We're dating like it's a tender speed chess.
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Three moves done. Even our empathy's short form
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now. We used to read entire articles
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before arguing about them. Now we see a headline make up
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our own version and rage tweet from the bathroom and I
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genuinely think that's part of the division and chaos that
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we're living in. It's not just politics, it's not
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just all the things I'm talking about.
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It's attention warfare. Nobody's fighting over true
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ideas anymore, They're fighting over the headlines and whose
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team wins. Outrage is instant context
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optional and the loudest clip wins.
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It's not the information age, it's the interpretation age.
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It's tearing us apart faster than any ideology ever could.
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But I said I was going to stay away from politics in this
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episode. Let's move on.
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I know what some of you are thinking.
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Hey, Ryan, calm down. Maybe people have just become
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faster thinkers. Maybe that's a good thing.
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But is it really thinking? Maybe.
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Let's talk. Perhaps it's not all bad.
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We've built an entire generation of rapid processors.
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That's one way to do it, One way to call it People who can edit
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videos, reply to five group chats, and place an Amazon order
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before finishing their first thought.
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The pros? We adapt faster.
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We multitask like caffeinated squirrels.
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We can tell if a video is trashed in under 3 seconds,
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which is honestly pretty efficient.
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The cons? Our focus is gone, our patience
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is gone, and our ability to be bored, which is where I believe
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creativity used to live, is gone.
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We've replaced boredom with background noise, creativity
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with content. It's great we can learn to make
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sushi in 15 seconds, but it's a shame we can't really hold a
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conversation for 15 minutes. So what weighs more here?
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The pros or the cons? Does anyone actually miss
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waiting that long? That week long patient wait for
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ATV show to come back and air? How about back when texting
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involved that letter by letter short messages with the number
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pads took like 5 minutes to type 3 words.
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Or not having just the stress of, man, you got to get through
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like 250 reels in a night and figure the first couple seconds.
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The newest generation doesn't know what it was like to live
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like that. So how's that going to affect
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the decision makers and the leaders when they're the ones in
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charge? I don't know.
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I don't know. Or maybe maybe it'll make them
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stronger, right? More efficient leaders who can
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juggle 50 things at once. Not so sure about that.
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Speaking of our future, where does this stop?
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We've gone from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8.25 seconds in 2025 on
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our attention span. Does it keep going?
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Can it get, can it really get lower?
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At this rate, in 50 years, 2075, we'll have an attention span
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shorter than it sneaks. Conversations will be like, hey,
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did you scroll? Wait, were you scroll?
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Never mind. We'll get news through flashing
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emojis. Politicians will campaign in
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gifts. Debates will last 12 seconds, or
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until someone's clip hits the algorithm.
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And when the robots take over, we won't even notice.
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We'll be too busy scrolling through clips of those robots
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dancing. Maybe we'll ask ChatGPT for
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dating advice, fall in love with a virtual assistant, and get
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ghosted by a software update. Maybe kids won't write essays,
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they'll just send their teachers a highlight reel.
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Or job interviews will be 3 second reaction videos.
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You blink and congratulations, you're in middle management.
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Maybe that's the final irony. We created machines to think
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faster, and now we're too distracted by it to out think
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them. And if that doesn't worry you,
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congratulations again. You might be evolving into a
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robot. We've traded our time for
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dopamine, our focus for frictionless feeds, and our
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conversations for captions. The attention economy doesn't
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collapse when the platforms simply fail.
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It collapses when we stop being able to pay attention to
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anything worth it. So yeah, maybe the future really
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does belong to the robots, because at least they can focus
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longer than 8.25 seconds. Thank you for listening to this.
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It's just something to think about.
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It was a breather from what I usually do, as you know.
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If you made it to the end of this episode, congratulations,
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you've just beat a goldfish in attention span.
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If this hits home and you've got teenagers or friends or family
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all over the place that just can't stop scrolling and just
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can't sit and relax for a few minutes, send this to him.
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Hit like drop a comment. Give me some stories of your own
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about people that are just with this stuff.
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You know, people have a hard time getting through a full
00:13:27
podcast anymore. I'm telling you, I've learned
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all this short content versus long content data right now all
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over the platforms demonstrates proof of what this episode was
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about. It's wild.
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No one wants to watch a full episode.
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So I challenge you to look beyond the shorts and the reels
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from this episode. I think you can get through the
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entire 15 minutes. I believe in you and challenge
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others to do it as well. So follow the show, subscribe
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wherever you're listening as always, and don't forget to stay
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curious. Stay bold, stay sharp, stay in
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the fray. Love you guys.
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All you had to do is just listen up.