Why Criticize When You Can Celebrate?

Outside of the writing world, I've spent most of my career in the nonprofit arena. One of my nonprofit heroes is Dan Pallotta. His 2012 TED Talk, "The Way We Think About Charity Is Dead Wrong," is a must-watch for anyone who has ever worked for a nonprofit or considered donating to an organization. His opinion starkly contrasts conventional thinking, which is why it's worth hearing.

Since that TED Talk, Dan turned the basis of his talk into the book, ‌Uncharitable, which, last year, was converted into a documentary. This past week, I attended a screening of Uncharitable that included a live discussion with Dan Pallotta.

Uncharitable highlights multiple nonprofits that were crushed by media stories criticizing them for "excessive overhead." In most cases, these multi-million-dollar nonprofits spent around 30% of their budgets on what was considered overhead: salaries, marketing, fundraising, utilities, facilities, etc. The media stories portrayed these organizations as excessive and poor managers of the public's donations.

These organizations funded amazing programs and made an incredible impact in their fields. Yet, because of the "excessive overhead" claim, donations to these organizations tanked, the impact was fractured, and, in most cases, the executives lost their jobs. While I could talk for days and days about the impact on the nonprofit world, the movie got me thinking about how the attention economy broke all of our brains.

The attention economy, which sprang up a few decades ago with the rise of social media, taught us that the value of our content was measured by the eyeballs that consumed it. All of the platforms fed the attention economy by giving us metrics to track our impact (view counts, hearts, likes, claps, clicks, followers, etc.). These platforms then trained their algorithms to feature posts and stories that gained massive attention.

Professional media didn't escape the attention economy either. An article's social virality led directly to pageviews, which affected publisher ad sales. In other words, the more pageviews, the more ad dollars.

There are so many things wrong with the attention economy. It forced everyone to become a brand and to chase the wrong metrics. As a result, many discovered that attention is easy to capture when you go negative.

Far too many people built an audience in the attention economy by criticizing and complaining about others' creations and dreams. This negative trait is exemplified in Uncharitable for the nonprofit space, but it’s also prevalent in fandoms, politics, and platforms of all kinds.

Disney can't announce a new movie without thousands of people complaining about it online. Whether it's Star Wars or The Little Mermaid, people have built a platform complaining about Disney.

There's an entire corner of Medium where people only complain about the platform. While this seems counterintuitive since they're using the very thing they apparently can't stand, it, unfortunately, makes complete sense in the attention economy. Negativity breeds attention.

The attention economy taught entire generations to criticize instead of celebrate. This is the definition of a broken system.

It's okay to not like something, and it's okay to have differing opinions. However, building an entire brand around negativity is dangerous. And let's be honest with each other: who wants to be the person who finds faults in everything around them?

When it comes to journalism, there is a responsibility to highlight issues and expose the truth. But there is also a responsibility to ask why. All of those nonprofits that were brought down for "excessive overhead" invested in marketing, which grew their fundraising and services. Is that investment worth a higher overhead? Yes. But that wasn’t part of the reporting because the negative approach drives traffic. Sensational headlines capture eyeballs.

I don't understand negative metric chasing, which is why I've done everything I can to break out of the attention economy. I chase the metric of communicating with my readers — I want to hear others' opinions and thoughts. I want to engage with the world, not watch it burn.

Dan Pallotta has a second TED Talk from a few years ago titled "The Dream We Haven't Dared to Dream." In it, he suggests that we begin asking each other, "What are your dreams?"

The alternative to the attention economy is one where we support and encourage each other's creativity and dreams. While their creation or dream may not align with our interests, we should still celebrate that the dream exists.

Star Wars with a female protagonist is a dream worth celebrating.

A nonprofit making incredible strides to solve social issues is a dream worth celebrating.

Providing publishing tools to everyone is a dream worth celebrating.

We can break out of the attention economy by celebrating dreams and engaging with people who have big ideas. Through chasing dreams, we can make the world a better, more interesting place.

So, what are your dreams?

Reader Survey's Final Week

In case you missed it last week, I'm running a quick reader survey. This is your chance to share your thoughts about my writing (aside from, you know, just hitting reply to any email). Tell me what you think, and let's continue to dream together.