In 2023 my cousin and I visited Marrakech. We noticed a coordination failure amongst the street sellers. Each one shouts to passerbys in the hopes of attracting custom. "Here! Very Cheap!", "Hello, my friend...", "You want weed? No? Do not be afraid", "You are Scottish? We have haggis!" And so on. The result of this cacophony of sales-pitches was that we ignored all sellers as a rule. This is a classic case of tragedy of the commons, where the shared resource is the patience/attention of tourists. Something similar is going on with the media commons:

Each individual act of communication – whether novel, movie, protest, or conversation - is an ever smaller proportion of what the average person will consume. Yes, more people might read your emotionally devastating novel about deforestation, but each person will also read two other similar books on related causes, watch several documentaries, read disturbing news exposes, and consume several hundred tweets, reels, videos on any number of issues. Each piece of media occupies a smaller part of a person’s total media input and a smaller part of their attention.

Contrast this to the 1950s, in which the average person, politician, official, and academic read far fewer books, got their news from fewer sources, and tuned into a narrow range of radio and televisions stations. For this person, a single book – say, Silent Spring – could be a life-determining event. She could – and might have to – spend hours poring over it, turning it over in her mind. The same could be said about a single conversation: a single sermon, or visiting preacher, or protest, could radicalise a town. It occupied a much larger share of their media-input, and a much larger share of their attention.

For the 13th century peasants, an anabaptist pamphlet might be the most interesting thing they had ever read. The complete and utter poverty of media (manifesting in massive excitement when seemingly trivial things occur, like the arrival of a stranger or a strange weather event) made the pamphlet enormously powerful. The printing press had to be controlled in a way totally unnecessary in the modern liberal country. 1 printing press is an atom bomb; 100,000 is a matchstick.

In countries with stricter media controls – e.g., censorship or conservative ‘endarkening’ – the power of the artist grows massively, and the need for their control. The artificial constraints on media-production renders the memetic environment parched and dry, and as a result single inspirational pieces of media, songs, artwork, performances, public conversations even, can spark an inferno. This is the world of the 1930s-1960s.

Conversely, in a world of high saturation and competition it is much harder to produce a classic: although your book will reach more readers, it will occupy a smaller fraction of their attention. The same can be said generally of conversations social events. In 1960, a sizeable fraction of the American populace would have seen and concerned themselves – for weeks or months – about the death of JFK or the peace march. In 1950, lone government reports, academic conferences, and articles could radically alter the attention of an expert community. In 2025, a protest, a book, a new article, is likely to occupy between 1-3 days of the news cycle. It then vanishes under a wave of new, stimulating content.

If every Moroccan salesman just chilled out and relaxed in silence they would all sell more of their cheaply-made hats, rugs, and trousers. And yet...