You Stole My Curiosity, But Now You Must Earn My Attention in the Algorithm Age

A person with little wealth must rely more heavily on social capital.
Every new social network offers a fresh form of social capital, a kind of symbolic currency.
Adults often accumulate status more effectively through real-world interactions than online. Maintaining your existing social capital tends to yield better returns than chasing profits on new platforms, because it's easy to earn interest on your established reputation.

Some companies have managed to generate utility through networks but never built any real social capital—tools users adopt briefly and then abandon.

The maximum number of meaningful contributors each network can support is bounded, and it's often a direct function of its proof-of-work. #ReadingNotes #

In essence, some networks reward those who accumulated large followings early on, gaining so much exposure that they continue to attract more followers than other users regardless of whether their posts are actually good. One hypothesis for why social networks lose momentum at scale is that this old money can't be cleared out, and new players lose the motivation to play.

You captured my curiosity, but now, fed by algorithms, you also have to win my attention.