I have very mixed feelings about DHH at the moment.<p>On the one hand, I love almost everything about this piece.<p>I couldn’t agree more about the pathological thinking behind the attention economy concept, and I love that he’s pointing this out so clearly.<p>On the other hand, I think it’s almost as destructive to frame things using political concepts like ‘Totalitarian’.<p>It creates a then-vs-us mentality and encourages people to want to tear things down rather than build them up.<p>Blaming villains is a distraction from the kind of complex thinking we to make things better.<p>It is just as pathological to divide the world into good guys vs bad guys as it is to think maximizing your share of people’s attention is a healthy business model.<p>Pieces like this <i>do resonate</i>. Why?<p>Because a lot of us <i>can</i> see or feel that the attention economy is a problem.<p>We like what DHH is saying, because <i>he’s telling us something we already know</i>, and which is not said enough.<p>We used to love Spotify, but we’re out of love now. The same is true for Facebook, and Apple, and Google.<p>Hating these companies and the way they think is like obsessing over all the ways an ex was bad for us instead of moving on and finding that the good relationship we really need is already available if we look beyond who is popular.<p>Is Daniel Ek a scary, powerful ‘totalitarian’, or is he just an out of touch businessman with a narrow view of the world?