The modern feed is not a neutral river of information but a marketplace of values, where every glance, click, and pause is registered, monetized, and amplified. We are no longer just passive consumers of content; our attention is the invisible ballot by which platforms measure worth and by which ideas are elevated or discarded. In this silent economy, we endorse not only what we love but also what we linger upon, even if with disgust. The gaze, once thought private, is now a form of power that binds us to responsibility.
This piece invites reflection on the moral dimension of our scrolling habits. In a world where outrage is profitable and cynicism becomes currency, each moment of attention contributes to a political economy of meaning. What we “like,” “share,” or simply refuse to look away from, becomes fuel for the very narratives that shape the collective mind. Attention is not free; it is the scarce resource upon which digital empires are built, and it carries ethical weight.
For readers who come here searching not just for critique but for practices of freedom, I propose thinking of attention as a form of stewardship. Just as money can be spent in ways that reflect our values, so can attention. This does not mean fleeing the digital altogether but cultivating a discipline of selective gaze: learning when to feed what is life-giving and when to starve what corrodes. This is not a call to purity but to consciousness.
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The feed operates on a logic of compulsion. Algorithms are designed not only to predict but to provoke, to find the contours of our curiosity and stretch them into obsession. What you see is not what is most true, but what is most engaging, often what is most divisive. In such a system, neutrality is an illusion: to watch is to contribute, to click is to vote, to return is to affirm the structure itself.
The French philosopher Simone Weil once wrote, “Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” Yet what happens when generosity is converted into data points, and generosity itself becomes a market transaction? To give one’s gaze is no longer only to honor another, but to participate in an economy that extracts value from every second of presence.
Consider the mechanics of outrage. A video of injustice circulates, drawing our horror. We linger, we replay, we comment with indignation. Yet in so doing, we amplify it; the platform reads our outrage as desire, rewarding the very content that repels us. We become, unwillingly, patrons of what we despise. This is the paradox: attention is both resistance and complicity.
The same occurs with cynicism. Satirical memes, nihilistic jokes, and dark humor spread not merely because they entertain but because they capture our weary recognition. We share them to vent, but in sharing we normalize the shrug, we make cynicism the dominant tone. The feed tilts toward despair because despair sustains engagement.
There is, however, another possibility: the practice of deliberate gaze. Just as citizens in a democracy can choose to boycott products or divest from harmful industries, so too can digital citizens refuse to fund toxicity with their clicks. A scroll passed quickly over sensationalism is not indifference; it is a vote for silence. A subscription to a thoughtful voice is not mere consumption; it is participation in the slow cultivation of wisdom.
Concrete practices emerge from this ethic. One might establish an “attention budget,” allocating daily moments to the sources one truly wishes to nourish, and cutting off when the budget runs dry. One might institute a Sabbath for the senses: one day where no feed commands the eyes, where attention returns to books, conversations, or the simple detail of a tree in the wind. These practices are not asceticism but recovery—the retrieval of dignity for the gaze.
A striking example can be seen in communities who collectively redirect their attention. A small neighborhood group chooses to unfollow local rumor mills online and instead convenes monthly dinners. The result is a politics of attention turned inward, nurturing bonds rather than fueling suspicion. Another example lies in parents who replace algorithmic cartoons with evening storytelling—slower, less polished, but formative in a way no stream could match.
The task, then, is not to renounce the feed entirely but to treat it as a terrain of moral struggle. Every act of attention is an investment; the question is whether we invest in depletion or in renewal. We cannot escape the economy of gaze, but we can shift its flow. We can demonetize the trivial, starve the harmful, and fund the humane.
To do so requires humility. We are easily seduced by spectacle, often too tired to resist the lure of distraction. Yet even here, the smallest acts matter. Choosing not to rewatch, not to share, not to gawk—these are invisible forms of protest, the quiet sabotage of an exploitative economy.
As the philosopher Kierkegaard reminded us, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” Attention is fragmented by design, yet the task of the human soul is to will, amidst distraction, what is truly worthy. Our fragmented glances can be gathered again into a coherent orientation, if we are willing to ask: whom do I wish to honor with my gaze? What do I choose to make visible?
In the end, the feed does not only reflect us; it shapes us. To curate our attention is to curate our becoming. We must resist the temptation to believe that our gaze is weightless, that our presence online is without consequence. Every pause is a seed sown, and every click is a covenant.
The challenge is to reimagine ourselves as moral agents of attention. Just as citizenship entails responsibility, so too does digital presence. To feed wisely is to live wisely, and to refuse what diminishes life is to affirm, quietly but powerfully, the dignity of the human spirit.
Thus, the moral weight of the feed presses upon us. Yet within that weight lies the possibility of freedom—not in withdrawal, but in discernment. To gaze with intention, to attend with care, is to resist being reduced to data. It is to reclaim attention as a form of love, as Weil saw it: the rarest and purest gift.