Incentives behind the attention economy
How digital media shifted from informing audiences to optimizing attention, and what that means for public knowledge and cultural value.
The Sincerity Industry
For a decade, brands demonstrated their values. Then the internet made verification cheap, trust expensive and sincerity hard to distinguish.
You Are What You Buy. Apparently.
Sociology spent a century explaining how consumer objects carry social meaning. The market spent the same century charging for it.
The Sociology of Desire
Consumers think they choose products. Sociology, neuroscience and market data suggest otherwise. What they choose is a place in the social order.
