Attention Is the New Currency & You’re Going Broke

In a world drowning in content, it's easier than ever to feel busy while building nothing. This piece dives deep into how digital media hijacks your brain's motivation systems, erodes your focus, and leaves you mentally starved — and more importantly, how you can flip the script.

We are overstimulated.

Over-informed.

And somehow … more disconnected than ever.

You know exactly what I mean. You open your phone, scroll for 30 minutes, close the app—and then reopen it 10 seconds later without even thinking.

Or even worse, sit down with a plan to be productive, only to realize two hours later you’ve gone down a rabbit hole of headlines, memes, and/or strangers’ lives! Sometimes you don’t even make it that far, because someone texted you 5 minutes into a work session and when you lookup an hour has passed.

You’re not alone. I’ve been there too — and I’m starting to realize, it’s not just a bad habit.

It’s a slow erosion of our minds.

You could damn near think of it as a decay that most of us will never notice. Because it honestly, feels normal.

But it’s not normal. We all know that.

We are living through what I like to call the age of brain rot. A time when we consume more information than ever, yet rarely pause long enough to process it. A time when our brains are so overloaded with content that they become bloated with useless noise.

• Tweets we can’t remember
• Videos that offer nothing but momentary distraction
• Headlines designed to spark fear, not thought

The controller of all of this? Dopamine. The molecule that got Andrew Huberman millions of views — drives our motivation, desire, and attention.

The very thing that moves us toward goals … is being hijacked.

Our brains are wired to crave novelty, reward, and progress. But social media and screen time have turned that system against us.

Instead of pursuing real goals — starting a project, building a business, deepening relationships — we chase the next hit. The next notification. The next flick of the thumb, gah damn.

And just like that, we find ourselves stuck in a low-energy, foggy state — intellectually full, but mentally starved. Some call this “brain fog”. Something that passes eventually after a good nights rest or a much needed vacation.

I like to think of it in the way Gurwinder (a prominent online researcher) puts it, “intellectual obesity”.

So our mind become just that. Stuffed with half-remembered gibberish, too sluggish to think clearly, too restless to focus. We’re not lacking willpower — we’re lacking the drive.

We doomscroll because it feels urgent. We click because it feels good — for a second. But the cost is cumulative. It adds up. Over time, our ability to think deeply, to feel motivated, to act decisively — it weakens. The algorithm wins. And we slowly lose access to our best selves.

But here’s the twist: the solution isn’t as simple as just cutting screen time or deleting apps. That’s surface-level shit. You’ve probably alreaedy tried that already.

What I’m interested in is deeper.

What if you could rewire your relationship with technology? What if you could use these same tools to fuel your ambition, not erode it? What if social media could actually sharpen your focus, not steal it?

This isn’t a “go live off-grid and chant under a waterfall” video.

I’m just someone who’s noticed that my mind isn’t what it used to be and I want to help others get theirs back.

So in this video, I’m exploring just that.

• The basics of dopamine and how it silently controls your behavior
• The symptoms of brain rot and how to spot them
• How we’ve confused consumption with wisdom
• And lastly, sound advice on how to break free from the chains of social media

This is a conversation about attention, ambition, and the hidden cost of consuming more than we create.

Let’s talk about it.

Biology of Brain Rot

Before we can talk about breaking free from overconsumption and social media addiction. We have to understand the biological cause.

I’m no scientist, and I don’t want to pretend like one — but stick with me … this part is important.

Our answer to the question of “Why does it feel harder than ever to focus? Why do I keep reaching for my phone when I know I shouldn’t be?” is dopamine.

Essentially, dopamine is your brain’s internal motivator. However, It’s less about pleasure and more about pursuit.

It’s what gets you to want something — to feel curious, excited, or hungry for progress.

Andrew Huberman calls it the “universal currency” of the brain. The more dopamine you have available, the more likely you are to chase goals, try new things, or build something meaningful.

But here’s the twist: social media, short-form content especially, and doomscrolling hijack that system.

Every time you get a like, hear a notification ding, or swipe to something new — you get a little dopamine hit. To your brain, it feels good. Rewarding. Like you’re doing something.

But you’re not. You’re just falling victim to these algorithms that are curated by these mega corporations.

And over time, your brain adapts.

It starts expecting more stimulation and obviously more dopamine.

That tweet? Not enough.

That video? Too slow.

That article? TL,DR.

So you keep scrolling. Keep switching. Keep stimulating. Until eventually, you hit a point where nothing feels that good anymore.

That’s the dark side of dopamine: what goes up, must come down.

Every spike is followed by a drop. And when you keep spiking dopamine over and over — especially from cheap, fast rewards; our baseline levels start to fall. Your brain becomes desensitized.

You wake up and feel foggy, you have trouble focusing, then you might have little to no motivation to start anything of value or substance, so as a result you get bored.

Then, without thinking, you open your phone — trying to erase that boredom. Sometimes it works. Most times … it doesn’t.

Social media doesn’t just provide entertainment though, it goes much deeper. You start to lose a bit of reality itself.

Let’s say something comes up in your life. An argument, a missed opportunity, a moment of doubt, anything. Instead of facing it or sitting with the discomfort, you run to your phone and scroll. You hop on your feed and instantly get hit with a trending clip, a highlight play, or some wild story that hijacks your attention. This is all happening subconsciously too.

The scrolling lends you dopamine in a way that results in you focusing on the present through content, rather than on reality. It gives you an emotion of feeling grounded.

This can be a good and bad thing.

Good because it’s not always a bad thing to be pulled from a high stressful or an anxious moment in your life. It can feel good to take your mind off of things.

It becomes bad though when we don’t use sparingly. What used to be a walk around the neighborhood, a Sunday hike, or just shooting the shit with your homies in real life, has become a scroll game on the couch.

I mean bro look at this image! People get paid for posting hyperdopaminergic clips to social media. Content creators and influencers shell out money to folks so that they can create hours and hours of reels and tik toks because they know there are dopamine dope fiends out there!

People who are just scrolling waiting for something to pop up that catches attention. So other folks are capitalizing on the attention economy because they know billions of people want to be distracted.

And just so you know, the apps are designed with this in mind.

Social media platforms, TikTok and Instagram especially, are engineered to hijack your attention.

They feed you content so hyper personalized to your every interest, these algorithms almost know you better than you know yourself. These corporations know the more precise and granular they get, the more willing you are to come back. As soon as you log on your being fed exactly what you like.

Now, what starts as entertainment quickly turns into dependence and dependence is expensive. Due to the fact that dependance causes you to pull away from other aspects of your life. It also gives dope fiend vibes.

You end up spending your most valuable currency! A combination of your attention, your energy, your mental clarity — on content that gives you nothing in return.

No real learning. No depth. No traction.

Just dopamine and rot.

Symptoms

If you’ve done this long enough, you start to notice these symptoms:

• You can’t read a full article without jumping to another tab
• You forget what you consumed five minutes ago
• You can’t sit still with your own thoughts without feeling uncomfortable or anxious
• You constantly crave stimulation, but nothing really satisfies
• You start five projects and finish none

If you feel attacked don’t trip 😂 these were all me at some point in my life!

This is the intellectual obesity we talked about at the beginning of this video. The mind gets clouded with noise. Content that rewards your attention in the moment, but robs you of long-term clarity.

Now the scariest part is sometimes overconsumption can feel productive. Watch a couple video essays, political content, fear mongering news segments, the latest exploits of Elon Musk, you get the idea. None of that shit truly matters in the present moment.

It look me a long time to come to this realization:

We’ve started confusing consumption with progress.

That’s the trap.

You scroll through those political commentary, philisophical analysis of life, hot takes about the economy, maybe even a few podcast clips on stoicism — and it feels like you’re doing something. Like you’re learning.

But in reality? You’re just consuming.

Take this video here for example, look how this AI slop starts.

Crazy hook that grab you attention because who wouldn’t want to know what would happen if China invaded the US? Mind you, this video has 15k likes and 3 thousand people actually having discourse about some shit is meant to engagement farm 😂.

Awareness levels are at all time lows bro I’m telling you.

What I’m trying to get across is, your brain doesn’t always know the difference between valuable information and junk data. It just knows stimulation.

So when you hear an interesting point, or see a flashy headline, your brain rewards you. It hits you with a bit of dopamine. And that hit feels like progress — even if you forgot what you just watched two minutes later.

We need to understand this pattern clearly.

Your dopamine isn’t broken. Your brain isn’t weak.

You’re just stuck in a loop that was designed to keep you there.

Once you see it — once you know how dopamine’s being used against you — you can start to take it back.

That’s the dark magic of social media.

It gives you the feeling of forward motion … while keeping you stuck in place.

Break Free

That’s why we idolize the few creators that have broken free from this chain. They managed to flip the logic on it’s head. They turned there consumption into a play.

They have the algorithm working for them. When they open there phone or hop on social media they can consider it work. They’re getting paid by consuming because their consumption turns into content.

So how do we turn play into work?

Roy, wtf do you mean?

What I mean by that is: if you’re constantly consuming content about politics, business, fashion, fitness, gaming — whatever it is — there’s a reason you’re drawn to it. There’s curiosity there. There’s interest.

So flip the switch.

Become a creator in the niche you can’t stop consuming.

This isn’t some crazy ass revelation. Naval Ravikant has been saying this for years:

You may not even be aware but you are doing this now. You are already investing hours and hours a week of screen time to the algorithm. RIght now that is considered play. All we have to do is flip our awareness switch and turn those hours into work.

Instead of watching five hours of videos about your favorite topic, challenge yourself to create one piece of content about it. A blog post. A TikTok. A video breakdown. A tweet. Something that forces you to take your thoughts and shape them into something real.

Or instead of mindlessly scrolling on the For You page, find something that holds your attention. Why did it hold your attention? What was that person, video subject or discourse linked to that made you pause?

Whatever it was, type that into the search bar of whatever social site your on. Go deeper into the topic. Take notes on the subject. Connect dots, find answers to the questions you had when watching the first piece of content.

Now provide those answers to others.

Dan Koe said it best

If your scared of posting online …. for the less senstivie, you need to get over it. The future isn’t going to reward folks that hide behind some mental illness. You have to fight through that shit and put yourself into the uncomfortable situations.

But I do get it. Not everyone is ready for that leap so here’s my advice to those — at least take notes.

If you can’t take notes on it, then guess what? You weren’t that interested to begin with.

This is how you start to build momentum.

Because here’s the truth my boy:

You don’t have to be the best at it. You just have to be on the controller playing the game, trying to get better.

When you create, you process information on a deeper level. You learn faster. You think clearer. You build real skills.

And slowly — your brain starts craving the act of doing rather than just consuming.

Take me for example. I was literally sitting on my couch scrolling, when I went down a Huberman rabbit hole of his talks about dopamine.

So what did I do? Not let it go to waste. If it captured my attention, then why not make a video on it?

That’s the secret sauce. Turn your interests into something others can consume.

With this, you can consume guilt free because you know you are creating your own tokens for others to consume.

Now I know, it’s not easy. And that’s the whole problem.

Everything that’s actually good for your mind takes effort. Boo Hoo.

Eating real food, moving your body, going outside, building something — these are the obvious things to do if you want more out of life. But they’re not instantly rewarding, and they don’t come with a dopamine hit every 3 seconds.

You’ve been trained since a phone was slapped in your hand by ya momma to expect constant reward.

Everyone’s journey to reclaiming there mind is on them. But I want to give you some blanket advice on how to speed this process up.

• Clean your feed. Start a new account if you have to. If it’s not providing value, making you think, giving you the urge to build, cut it. Be careful with shit that makes you laugh. Kai Cenant saying some crazy shit in a clip is not all that thought provoking.
• Delay your first dopamine hit. Don’t touch your phone for the first hour of the day. Go analog. Make it painful to open an app. This one is hard, trust me.
• Create while you consume. No matter how small. A journal entry. A post. A sketch. A quick note. If your consuming a topic, consider writing about it from your own lens.
• Reclaim dead space. That line at the store? That 10-minute break? Don’t just auto jump into a screen. Breathe. Walk. Be bored on purpose. Just stare and think sometimes. Start a convo with a stranger.

And if you need a mindset to hold onto — it’s this:

Choose to be legendary, rather than average.

Take it from me. Don’t even create expecting something. Just do it to better yourself. Researching, writing, doing everything a creator needs to do — it builds you.

In my opinion it is one of the quickest cheat codes to leveling up in real life. It requires to have so much on point that you must level up yourself to be able to create. There is little to no negatives to deciding to create.

We live in a world that worships consumption. That’s fine, I guess for the masses. But those who win long-term are the ones who build. Who produce. Who turn their curiosity into something real — and ship it.

No one is saying quit social media or become a monk. That shit is crazy, I don’t expect you to do it because I know I won’t.

But you do have to take back control of your awareness.

Because the brain rot doesn’t come from one bad scroll session — it comes from never checking in on who you’re becoming.

You were made to do more than consume.

So prove it. One post, one habit, one decision at a time.

That’s it for me.

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