#3: The ad that checks you're rich
Introducing Attention's first ever satirical ad
Probably the biggest existential threat to humanity is people clicking on ads for things they can’t afford.
Let’s dig deeper into what happens in that catastrophic situation:
The advertiser’s money is wasted
The advertiser’s dataset is spoiled
If we take the completely uncontroversial starting assumption that anything that’s bad for advertisers is also bad for the entire human race, we can grasp how truly dangerous this behavior is.
To mitigate this X-risk, Attention is hosting the world’s first ever ad that checks the clicker’s income level (Guinness World Records verification still pending):
👉 Check out the ad on Attention’s homepage, here.
[Exit satire mode]
I’m excited about this. The Zeitfreit watch ad represents the first foray by Attention into the creative coding (👾-type) content I talk about here. As I mentioned in that article, I have lots of ideas for this type of content but they’re all extremely time-consuming.
Except for ads. They’re small enough that — with the help of AI coding tool Cursor + Claude 3.5 Sonnet — I can create a satirical ad in a day, even including an interactive aspect like this one.
Over the next few months, I hope to create 20-30 satirical ads riffing off the trash we’re subjected to every day across the internet — This exercise will make you look 20 years younger! The app all the CEOs use! Shop like a billionaire! — and rotate them across Attention’s homepage and articles.
It ain’t my first satirical ads rodeo — we used to make them for the print edition of Underground Magazine (a satirical magazine I co-founded in my early 20s, which I wrote about here). Here’s an example:
Hosting these made-up ads will bring an unexpected side benefit — burning all bridges with real-life advertisers who won’t want to be associated with us. That means Attention will go bust even faster and I can get back to my true passion, Microsoft Excel.
If you have an idea for a satirical ad, please leave a comment! Even the tiniest thought could spark something cool.
New homepage for approx. 5 seconds before I change it again
Yup, that’s basically all I came here to say. This week I navigated over to the Attention homepage, bumped up a few font sizes, dropped in some boxes, then put up my feet and gazed upon my creation like Michelangelo looking up at the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Enjoy it while it lasts, because I’ll probably change it all in the next few days. Not just out of a spirit of wanton destruction, but also because I have an idea: fill the homepage with clickable headlines of ideas that haven’t been written yet, and track which are clicked most to decide what to work on next.
That’ll also be nice because even if the links are vaporware-esque, the overall effect will be to make a homepage that showcases the full extent of what Attention intends to be in the world.
Miscellanous
Worth taking a look at Jabroni Capital, a tech newsletter written in the voice of an obnoxious VC. They launched a really neat joke-product this week, the exact kind of thing I’d love to make with Attention: Is Your CEO A Fraud?
It scans a LinkedIn profile and decides the probability that the person is heading down the Theranos/Juicero route. I’m too scared to submit myself.
Back with more soon, and please share this newsletter with Michelle Obama. I was going to say ‘with your family and friends’ but honestly, I’d prefer Michelle.