The Colonization of Attention

I open social media and am immediately confronted by a profound contradiction.

If we want softer language, we can call it misalignment.

Example of "hating data centers" while actively participating in data centers

I see witches, pagans, Taoists, people preaching sovereignty, matriarchy, decolonization, rewilding, Earth connection, anti-capitalism, and more life-affirming ways delivering messages through one of the most extractive, attention-harvesting systems ever created. The contradiction is that the medium undermines the message. And this troubles me deeply because because many of these are values I hold myself.

(I explore how traditional Witches, Taoists, Buddhists, and Pagans might respond to social media in another post if you're curious to read more.)

Speaking of sovereignty, rewilding, decolonization, and liberation while willingly handing over our attention to systems specifically engineered to capture it is so ironic that it is difficult for me to ignore.

Very insidiously, it transforms being witnessed into a commodity.

To speak of sovereignty while participating in an attention economy designed to influence thought and behavior feels fundamentally at odds with the message. To speak against

colonialism while feeding systems that colonize the inner landscape feels equally troubling. Because social media, in my belief, is the newest frontier of colonization. Not of land, but of attention. It colonizes our capacity to be present, our ability to think for ourselves, and our relationship with enoughness. It teaches us that we must be more, do more, produce more, perform more, and constantly prove our worth in order to belong. It creates scarcity where there was once sufficiency, comparison where there was once contentment, and performance where there was once presence.

It distorts our relationship to success which is a concept I already believe is deeply unhealthy in its modern form. It distorts our relationship to being witnessed. Very insidiously, it transforms being witnessed into a commodity. We become obsessed with how we are seen, how much we are seen, and how many people are seeing us. It convinces us that visibility is value, attention is worth, and audience is belonging. And in doing so, it nudges us toward a culture that is increasingly performative, increasingly self-referential, and increasingly disconnected from actual life.

For a system built on extracting attention, this is not a bug. It is the business model.

To build a business, movement, or personal brand on platforms designed to commodify human attention is not a neutral act. It requires participation in the very systems many claim to resist.

To build a business, movement, or personal brand on platforms designed to commodify human attention is not a neutral act. It requires participation in the very systems many claim to resist. The more successful we become there, the more effectively we feed the machine.

Social media rewards performance over presence, visibility over depth, growth over relationship, and consumption over contemplation. It trains us to monitor ourselves through the eyes of others, shape our lives into content, measure our worth through engagement, and compete for relevance in an economy where attention is the primary resource being extracted.

It occupies the inner landscape, fragments our capacity to be present, weakens our ability to think independently, and conditions us to seek validation, visibility, and belonging through systems specifically engineered to keep us wanting more reach, followers, relevance, and proof that we matter.

And so I struggle when I see people speaking passionately about rewilding while spending hours feeding an algorithm. I struggle when I see people preaching sovereignty while remaining dependent on platforms designed to shape behavior. I struggle when I see anti-capitalist messaging delivered through systems whose business model depends entirely upon extracting human attention and selling it.

And because I am genuinely trying to find pathways beyond these systems—trying to cultivate ways of living that are relational, local, embodied, and life-affirming—I can no longer participate.

To me, these contradictions matter. Because when I am scrolling, I am not fully present to my life. I am not in relationship with the land, in conversation with my neighbors, nor am I paying attention to the tea in my cup. I am participating instead in a system that profits from my distraction. And because I am genuinely trying to find pathways beyond these systems—trying to cultivate ways of living that are relational, local, embodied, and life-affirming—I can no longer participate. Not because I think I am above it but because I am vulnerable to it. I can feel what it does to my mind, my body, my attention, and my spirit.

I know this choice comes at a cost. In business terms, leaving social media is irrational. It reduces visibility and reach. It closes doors and makes growth slower. But perhaps that is precisely the point. For years I have carried a quiet conviction that my business must exist differently. It must move at the pace of relationship, the pace of trust, and at the pace of tea. Slow enough for integrity to remain intact, which feels essential when working with an ancient, ancestral lineage. Slow enough that the people, places, and ecosystems involved are not sacrificed in service of expansion.

Stepping away means surrendering certain opportunities, certain forms of visibility, and a culturally approved version of achievement. But what I lose in exposure, I gain back tenfold in attention, presence, freedom, health, and the ability to belong to my actual life. And if a way of working costs me my attention, my vitality, my relationships, or my peace, then I am no longer interested in calling it success.

I recognize that there is privilege in making this choice. Not everyone can. But I believe those of us who can have a responsibility to experiment with alternatives, create other models, and prove that another way is possible.

So let this be both a departure and an invitation. As I sign off social media, I am turning my attention elsewhere. Toward local relationships, tea, the living world, and the conversations that unfold more slowly than an algorithm allows.

In the coming months, I will be exploring a question that feels increasingly important to me:

What becomes possible when we stop optimizing for attention and start optimizing for life?

This is the direction my work is moving toward. Dismantling the oppressive systems to uncover those that support life instead. I don't know exactly how it will all evolve but as a tea friend joked (in all seriousness), when you start to really communicate with the wisdom of the plants, this is often what starts to come up. So I'm listening, staying curious, and opening to the new ways.

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