the cost of outrage in the attention economy
our people, our planet and our own lives
media literacy
We hear much complaint nowadays about the lack of media literacy in young people. They struggle to identity subtext, context and meaning. They can’t read between lines, can’t hold focus or attention and need what’s conventionally been implicit to be made explicit. They rely on AI and other tools and can’t do much without them.
I look at the world they’re growing up in and say… But of course?
They are indeed losing their attention spans to screens. The adults charged with raising them are forced to make work our entire lives to meet ever rising living costs. After a day of being squeezed by the system, TikTok tucks them into bed while we, too, indulge in some low-effort dopamine. Screen time.
Our attention is also under attack and we too are struggling with media literacy.
We are so easily taken by whatever person, story or narrative has been deemed relevant, topical or important this week that we rarely stop to ask:
Why am I being shown this?
What am I being asked to feel here? Why?
Why is this being pushed?
Why am I being asked to have an opinion?
Is this my area of competence?
Do I have all the context?
Do I actually care?
And craving the belonging so absent in our real lives,
craving the fervour of weekly dinner table chat with friends (that we didn’t have to pay a £40 entry fee to),
needing to be seen as pillars of our communities,
with a desire to build our personal brand and thought leadership – we comment.
We take a stand.
We get on the makeshift platform our phones have awarded us in place of any meaningful community action and we do the easy thing.
We share our opinion.
Rest in Peace Professor Jason Arday
It would be dishonest to claim that I took meaningful action against the narrative being pushed about Prof. Jason Arday. I saw bits and pieces here and there and at some point – his resignation announcement – I did a google. Between bloodthirsty articles and dehumanising Reddit threads I quickly understood what was happening. Having aligned heart work that keeps me busy, I silently hoped the best for him and moved on.
It was a post from a ‘neurodiversity advocate’ that I don’t even follow on Linkedin, liked by another neurodiversity advocate I did follow, and the heat from our 5th heatwave of summer 2026, that made me do what I haven’t done in years.
Go back and forth with someone on the internet.
In the same breath where she recognised the racial abuse from “the far right” that Prof. Arday was subject to, she just had to break her silence to call for more scrutiny into his developmental history.
His early childhood experiences must be fabricated because autistic people aren’t like him.
His actions would damage the perception of autistic people to bigots so we need to take a closer look into his past to determine if he really is one of us.
Speak to his childhood teachers and former classmates.
Find the truth.
This would be good journalism.
How bizarre.
white outrage and climate change
Even more bizarre was my out-of-body experience, watching myself respond to her while physically roasting in my bedroom. Doing Green Schools back in Ireland growing up, climate change felt like this distant thing that would affect generations after me. My children if I decided to have them.
No. Climate change is here. It hasn’t properly rained in weeks. I’m bitten by mosquitos every time I leave my house. There are people in East London who do not have water in their homes because of burst pipes in this abnormal, sustained heat.
Water is not freely available.
Water.
People are queueing two hours for supplies just to get to the front and be turned away because it’s run out, in the same England where The Times are paying to syndicate disparaging articles against Prof. Jason Arday on Twitter.
They produced and directed white outrage towards him. Outrage from people who do not keep up with Cambridge University nor give a toss about higher education.
Fuelled “culture wars” from people who haven’t picked up a book in god knows when.
People who get triggered by seeing Black people do well.
People who are biased.
People who are racist.
People who are ableist.
This is one of many stories the media has used to distract people from our collective reality by doing what they always do. Make the masses turn on the marginalised.
The black person.
The autistic person.
The queer person.
The muslim person.
The immigrant.
Whoever “doesn’t belong”.
Holding a few of these identities, they had a field day with Prof. Arday without a care for his humanity. Few could muster up enough empathy to recognise that. Very few could, if not call for some grace, shut up and not pile on.
lives with meaning
With media literacy, you’ll deduce that I’m not against taking advantage of the opportunities technology affords us. I care about and do work in intersectional neuro-inclusion. I care about the sustained economic success of marginalised groups, particularly Black people. I get to have a voice and you get to hear it because of technology.
I’ll leave you with some of the facts that have stopped me being rage-baited into giving my 2 cents on anything and everything.
More than 53% of all web traffic is automated.
20% of social media chatter around major global events comes from bots.
You are available to be swayed in every direction at the whims of people with power for their financial enrichment. Rage that would otherwise be poured into marches and protests and action and movement and organisation and lifelong advocacy, dies in a single social media post after one week.
Yes more people get “educated” – and do what with that education?
You learn so much about everything and become so paralysed by overwhelm, you do nothing.
You cannot care about everything.
You do not care about everything.
Britain does not have an unwavering national concern for academic rigour, otherwise William O’Reilly, found to have plagiarised his own student in 2023 after a 2-year investigation, wouldn’t still be working at Cambridge University today.
You do not care about honesty and integrity and honour.
You care about being listened to.
You care about being heard.
You care about being admired.
You want to be seen.
You want to be loved.
You want to be cared for.
You want attention.
You want excitement.
You want intensity.
You want stimulation.
You want achievement.
You want to play.
You want to win.
You want to feel.
You want to matter.
You want to live.
What would happen if we looked up from these screens
for just long enough
to touch some grass (while we still have it)
and figure out what, or who,
gets in the way of our ability to live?
Might our attention be held
for just long enough,
and our rage
find just enough focus,
to do something about it?