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Comment by high_5 | Hacker News Reader

> Meanwhile, time-spent-centric business models mean that games are not competing with just games (like they once used to), but with other entertainment propositions for the limited 24 hours of the day.

Interesting. Theoretical "(number of people) x 24h/day" is the max limit for attention economy. Has it already hit the ceiling?

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I believe (with no evidence) that infinite-scrolling social media sites have already consumed most available attention. To get a share of attention you now have to compete with them, instead of simply being an alternative to boredom.

To be honest if games can't compete with doom scrolling they are either crap games or the social media doom algos are too effective.

No part of me thinks "I'd rather scroll my social feed" rather than doing pretty much anything more fun.

If that's the case why are a significant number of people scrolling instead of playing?

Because the distracting algos provide more entertainment than games.

I think there are people who like to do things, and people who like to do nothing.

Next, there is an effort threshold between these choices for some people. For me, IRL activities and mouse/keyboard means that I "do things".

At a moment I'm bound only to a touchscreen (phone, ipad, android tablet, etc.) with no access to better activities, I will likely read or watch YouTube videos. You can categorize those activities as doing something or doing nothing if you like, but the effort threshold for my regular keyboard/mouse activities is just too high to accomplish on a phone on-demand.

I think in the general case, there are varying degrees of laziness and varying degress of inaccessibility for better activities in the general population.

I hate tiktok, but I understand why you would watch pointless 30 second clips for an hour when the perceived alternative may be a pointless microtransaction farmville clone.

Personally I feel it's the second one. When you're competing with boredom, a piece of entertainment can be pretty 'swingy' in how rewarding it feels, which I think is a desirable thing - dynamic range for feelings. When you're competing with social media scrolling, you have to beat that baseline of constant rewards.

> Interesting. Theoretical "(number of people) x 24h/day" is the max limit for attention economy. Has it already hit the ceiling?

Everyone is always paying attention to something or they are asleep. There's increasing competition for what people are paying attention to, but the amount of attention is directly tied to population.

It's got me thinking we might have hit "peak content" too. Is there is just enough high quality historical media and endless free cheap modern media to consume ?

A Fox network executive was saying that if the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes aren't resolved by October 1, the US TV season is effectively cancelled[0], so we may be about to find out. Disney has already dipped their toes in airing things that were exclusive to Disney+ -- Ms. Marvel and Andor both got limited showings on ABC (Disney's broadcast network) as promos for other materials, but I could see more of that happening if the strikes force new work to be abandoned.

[0]: https://deadline.com/2023/09/fox-krapopolis-animation-strike...

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