Welcome, dear reader!
I'm glad you're here, I hope things are going well for you!
I returned to the Stockholm “sanatorium” on Monday after a week of rock and roll hustle and bustle in Budapest. They always say that growth happens outside of your comfort zone, but it is a lie.
We do need to step out of our comfort zone for growth, but growth itself happens when, after a challenging period, we can return to our base, calm down, rest, and integrate what we have learned.
For me, this week is dedicated to that purpose, and I already see one conclusion: I will either remain authentic or become popular on a wide scale. I say this as a podcaster and in general.
At last week's Budapest podcast conference, I talked about how we, as content creators, are in the midst of an arms race, where many Davids fight a few Goliaths for the remaining crumbs of listeners' attention.
Podcasting is no longer the playground of the underground. The mainstream quickly embraced the genre during the COVID era.
Industrial content production kicked off, seasoned journalists, celebrities, former heads of state with serious media machinery behind them, started creating shows with budgets in the hundreds of thousands of forints. At the same time, millions of amateur, underground podcasts sprouted out of nowhere, and we have reached a point similar to the late 2000s with blogs. Everyone has one. I mean, a podcast.
This is a great opportunity to discover new voices, and I think it's fantastic that anyone can create shows about anything. There are no rules; the age of infinite freedom has arrived. Everyone can start a podcast now, there's no entry barrier. But does everyone really need to start a podcast because of this?
There are currently 861 Hungarian podcast shows, and in the past five years, the number of podcast episodes worldwide has quadrupled. Meanwhile, new media platforms (like TikTok) have emerged, and information, Content with a capital C floods us from all directions.
Our cognitive capacity is often overloaded, and many people delude themselves into thinking that they can process this amount of data and stimuli without consequences. In reality, we have to pay a high price if we want to keep up with the accelerated pace.
Attention has become the product that everyone fights for, and all media players, from YouTubers to TikTokers to podcasters, actively contribute to the destruction of our greatest treasure. The attention economy steals and devours our focus.
It is incredibly taxing for humans to keep up with the infinite amount of content. Everyone quickly becomes exhausted, and diagnoses related to mass attention disorders, such as ADHD and ADT emerge. We are unable to immerse ourselves in anything anymore.
Everyone is just scratching the surface; messages need to be conveyed in 3 seconds. We sacrifice depth, reflection, and connection on the altar of content creation.
As content creator, I have a tremendous responsibility. Let's think of content as food! It matters greatly what we consume, in what quantity, and in what quality.
In this spirit, I have decided not to engage in the podcast arms race. I will respectfully remain a member of the underground and strive to genuinely connect with my 1-2 thousand listeners who appreciate homemade meals and unique flavours.
podcast
In this week's episode of HAC you can listen to my pre-recorded speech from the podcast festival, where I further elaborate on the above-mentioned topic.
The English-language podcast "Woohoo! Burned Out" is approaching the end of its first season. There are four new episodes coming on the following Mondays, and then there will be a summer break. Starting in the fall, the podcast will switch to a bi-weekly release schedule for sustainability and to respect your attention.
Listen to it on your favorite player and share it with an international friend!
Book
An interesting and enlightening read is the book "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari, which provides tangible tools on how to live a meaningful life in this information cacophony.
"In the US, teenagers can concentrate on a task for an average of only sixty-five seconds, while office workers can manage only three minutes. Many of us think that this lack of attention is a personal flaw, a consequence of individual willpower when we try to control our devices. However, the truth is even more frightening: our attention has been stolen by powerful external forces, and science shows that these forces have been growing for decades, making us particularly vulnerable to the attacks of profit-seeking corporations when social media emerged. These forces have been so successful that the collapse of our attention is behind many wider societal problems."
In the book, the author embarks on an exciting journey, guiding readers from veterinarians diagnosing ADHD in dogs to Silicon Valley dissidents who exposed social media companies' secret attempts to distract our attention. The journey takes us from Rio's favelas, where everyone catastrophically lost their attention, to an office in New Zealand that discovered an extraordinary technique to restore their workers' attention.
Be very mindful of the content you consume and take care of yourselves!
Regards
András