The Attention Recession

This is Tenor. Signals Before Surface.

Every week, fifteen minutes to listen or read. One signal. Before it surfaces. A new episode and post every Sunday when you actually have time to read and listen to things deeply. Looking for slop? You have six other days of the week for that.

Here's how this works: I'm not going to tell you what already happened. You've got a dozen newsletters and podcasts for that. What I'm interested in is the thing underneath — the pattern that's forming before anyone's given it a name. All those videos with people talking trends and labeling them? Yeah, not this. That's just ear candy.

This is episode one. And the signal I want to talk about is something I've been seeing based on a few on the fringe giving it this label — the Attention Recession.

Stick with me.

THE SIGNAL

So. Here's the thing that's been bugging me.

Everyone talks about the attention economy like it's still expanding. More content, more platforms, more ways to reach people. More software to make things. More AI. And on the surface, the numbers might agree — time on screens is up, engagement metrics keep climbing, advertisers keep spending.

But I think those numbers are lying. Or at least, they're measuring the wrong things.

Because here's what I'm actually seeing: the quality of attention is collapsing. People are technically watching, technically scrolling, technically present — but nobody's actually there. The lights are on. But nobody's home.

And that gap — between eyeballs and actual engagement — I think that's the recession. It's not a crash in the traditional sense. It's more like a slow deflation.

Let me give you a concrete example of where I first noticed this.

A founder I know — smart, second-time founder, knows how to build an audience — told me something that stuck. She said her open rates on email are basically unchanged. Clicks are fine. But replies? Replies have basically gone to zero over the last eighteen months. People are opening, they're even clicking, but they're not responding. They're not in the room.

At first she thought it was her. That her content had gotten stale. So she tested it — sent her most personal, most vulnerable thing she'd ever written. Crickets.

And I've heard versions of that story from enough people now that I don't think it's about the content anymore. I think something else is going on.

Here's my working theory.

We had a pandemic. That artificially inflated online metrics to make it appear like all most of us do is stare at screens. Throw in the fact we've had three or four years of algorithmic content — stuff perfectly calibrated to grab you. And it worked. It grabbed us. But in doing that, I think it recalibrated what our brains consider worth engaging with. The threshold for "this deserves my actual thought" has moved dramatically.

So now you've got this weird situation where the content is better than ever at capturing attention — and worse than ever at holding it at depth. We skim everything. We graze over content like we graze over a buffet at a Vegas casino. We respond to nothing. We feel informed, but we haven't actually processed anything.

It's like — okay, weird analogy incoming — it's like inflation, but for cognitive cost. Everything that used to buy a real reaction now just buys a scroll. Maybe a tap on the like button. Possibly, and this is considered a big deal by digital marketers, a share! Wow, a share is a signal of some sort we're supposed to believe matters? Like I said.

The attention recession.

THE SURFACE

So why does this matter? And why now?

A few things are converging that make me think this is about to become a very big deal for a specific set of businesses and creators.

First — AI-generated content is about to flood every channel simultaneously. Hold on there. It already has in some spaces, but we're still early. And what happens when the volume of content increases tenfold while the attention pool stays flat? The recession gets worse. Fast.

Second — and this is the part I find genuinely interesting — I think we're about to see a flight to friction. Counterintuitive, right? But I think the platforms and creators who add a little deliberate difficulty — who make you slow down, make you work slightly harder — are going to start winning disproportionately. I watched a video the other day raving about this trend dubbed friction maxxing. Which I replied, “Oh you mean how Gen X actually grew up?” You have people literally proud to label themselves now as digital immigrants. Those who remember what life was like before the feed. It's almost as if saying you are a digital native is a penalty.

But I digress. Let me get back to the point. This friction is not going to be hard as in confusing. It’s going to be hard as in: this requires something from you.

There's actually some early evidence of this.

Long-form newsletters that read like essays — not listicles, actual essays with a through-line — are outperforming shorter punchy formats on the metrics that matter, like paid subscriptions and community engagement. Not reach. Reach is fine for the short stuff. But depth? Conversion? That's going long.

Podcasts. Specifically podcasts that are under thirty minutes and have a clear singular focus. Not three-hour free-for-alls, not panel shows — single-host, single-idea, tight. Those are the ones that are actually growing loyal audiences right now, not just download counts.

And interestingly — book sales. Physical book sales. Not ebooks. Physical books. Have been quietly, stubbornly resilient in a way that doesn't fit the broader attention recession narrative. And I think it fits exactly.

People are choosing friction. Deliberately.

Here's the underlying signal, then.

The brands, the creators, the businesses that are going to win the next chapter of the attention economy, if it doesn’t collapse like a house of cards first, are not the ones who get better at capturing attention cheaply. That game is about to get way more competitive and way less profitable.

The ones who win are the ones who get good at keeping attention. At creating things that feel worth the cognitive cost. That make someone feel smarter, or more curious, or more alive after they've engaged.

And the business model implication of that — this is where it gets interesting to me — is that the monetization swings back toward direct relationships. Subscriptions. Communities. Direct to Audience. No middlemen. No middleware. Less bloat. Less emphasis on social media platforms as we've known them. Things where someone has made a deliberate choice to be there.

Not impressions. Presence.

THE SO WHAT

Okay, so what do you actually do with this?

Whether you're building a business, growing an audience, or just thinking about where to put your own creative energy — here's how I'm thinking about it.

One. Get ruthlessly singular. The attention recession punishes breadth. If you're trying to cover everything, you'll reach everyone and hold no one. The question isn't "what can I talk about?" — it's "what's the one thing I'm going to go unreasonably deep on?"

Two. Design for return, not reach. The metric that matters in a recession isn't how many people saw it — it's how many came back. In a world where platforms have downgraded the meaning of a follower. Build a world for people to live in. Then you don’t need followers. You have citizens. Build something people want to live in. That requires consistency and a clear identity. Which is hard. And that's the point.

Three. Treat friction as a feature. Not everywhere, not always — but somewhere in your product or your content, make someone slow down. Ask a question. Leave something unresolved. Create a reason to think. The reflex to optimize everything for friction-less consumption is exactly the wrong instinct right now.

And the last thing — and this one's a bit more personal.

I think the attention recession is actually an opportunity if you see it early enough. Recessions clear the field. The over-leveraged, the volume-dependent, the platforms built on cheap impressions — they're going to feel this first and feel it hardest.

What survives a recession? Things with genuine value. Things people would actually miss if they went away.

So the question worth sitting with is: if you disappeared tomorrow — your show, your product, your newsletter, your book, your solution, whatever it is that you're here for — would anyone actually notice? Not in a self-critical way. Just honestly. Is there a there there?

That's the bar. That's the signal.

CLOSE

Okay. That's episode one of Tenor.

The attention recession — the quiet collapse in the quality of engagement, why friction is becoming an asset, and why direct relationships are the only thing that survives what's coming.

Next week I'm going to pick up on something adjacent to this — the specific sectors where I think you'll see the attention recession show up first in actual financial results. We'll get a little more specific.

If this was worth fifteen minutes of your actual attention, something you didn’t have to watch but could just insert your airpods or strap on a pair of ear goggles and listen — I thank you. Genuinely. From the bottom of my heart. I hope you will share it with one person you think would find it interesting. And talk about it too. That's how signals grow to the surface.

This is Tenor. I'm Geoffrey Colon. We'll catch you next week.

One more thing before you go.

This episode is brought to you by Giide — and I want to tell you why I said yes to this one specifically.

Everything I just talked about in this episode — direct relationships, earning attention, not renting it from an algorithm — Giide is basically built around that idea. It's an interactive audio platform that lets you publish content directly to your audience. No feed. No middleman. No algorithm deciding whether your stuff gets seen.

You create audio, attach resources, links, visuals — and your audience gets it directly. They can actually interact with it. And you get real data on what's landing — not just passive download counts, but actual engagement.

For anyone building an audience right now, that's a meaningful difference. I hope you’ll check it out and use it.

Check it out at giide.com. That's G-I-I-D-E dot com.

Alright. That's it. See you next week.

Tenor is produced in Los Angeles by Feelr Media.