Interest Media

When gurus like GaryVee declare we're in 'interest media,' they're framing it as a natural, meritocratic evolution where good content simply finds its audience, making follower counts irrelevant. It sounds like a win for quality and new voices, but it's really the latest iteration of the attention economy, repackaged to obscure the increasing burden on creators. The steelman is that algorithms now genuinely connect users with content they'll engage with, regardless of who made it. The inversion is that this 'meritocracy' demands creators produce an endless stream of 'jabs' - free, valuable content - just to stay visible. Platforms, having reduced organic reach, now profit from this constant output and the paid promotion needed to break through. What to remember is that platforms, once built on the promise of organic reach, are now extracting more value from creators by making them pay - either in relentless content creation or direct ad spend - for visibility. It’s a content treadmill disguised as an equitable playing field, with the platforms holding the stopwatch and collecting the fees.