Lowered attention spans may be widely regarded as a net negative, yet I propose to reframe the conversation: • Call it "whiffreading" after the term in the Boo

Lowered attention spans may be widely regarded as a net negative, yet I propose to reframe the conversation: • Call it "whiffreading" after the term in the Book of the Subgenius [1983]. A way to intuitively, instinctively and logically determine if you can get the sense of something quickly. If you sense it is worthy, you will invest the time in it. If not, and you feel you are wasting time, you skip it. Quicker abandonments, glossing, and skipping ahead are all natural human adaptions to the increasing and constant bombardment of data and stimuli we are presented with. This is why we want the "tl;dr." This is why you want a 1-minute explainer video instead of a 30-minute or 1-hour lecture. Now, if you catch someone's attention, they'll follow you down the rabbit hole and will keep reading or watching. Maybe for hours. Look at TikTok lives and Twitch streamers. People doomscroll, next, next, next... but as soon as they encounter the right content — whabam! They will stick there until the livestream ends. Similarly, look at Hacker News itself. If a 1-sentence topic grabs your interest — whabam! You'll read the article (which could be thousands of words long) and you may engage in the threads of conversations, which could eat up your day. Oppositely if a content creator bores people or if the audience start to sense what you are talking about is sus, or totally outside their interests, they'll just drop it. A post on Hacker News will sink like a rock in the middle of a very deep ocean. Again, I propose this is an adaption to the environment. Time is speeding up. The onslaught of content trying to grab your attention is relentless. So this is the natural result.