Reclaiming Digital Attention
Friends of Attention Launch Collective Movement to Combat Big Tech's Exploitation
A group of artists, scholars, and activists is calling Big Tech's grip on your focus a form of "human fracking" — and they want a mass movement to fight back. Their manifesto, *Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement*, launched in January 2026 and sold out its debut event at Judson Memorial Church in New York City, with lines wrapping around the block, according to Princeton Alumni Weekly.
The group, called Friends of Attention, argues that individual willpower is no match for trillion-dollar tech platforms. They say the real solution looks less like a digital detox and more like a labor strike.
Big Tech as a "Fracking" Operation for Your Mind
The movement's core idea is simple: Big Tech doesn't just steal your time. It breaks your attention into tiny fragments and sells those fragments for profit. Princeton historian D. Graham Burnett calls this "human fracking." Just as oil fracking pumps fluid into rock to release gas, he argues, tech platforms pump "low-grade slop content" — rage bait, fear-driven feeds — into the human mind to fracture and extract focus, according to KJZZ.
Burnett compares the tech industry today to Big Tobacco in the 1950s — powerful, profitable, and not yet held accountable. The Friends of Attention say that's about to change. Filmmaker and co-author Alyssa Loh frames attention as a "civic battlefront," not a personal failing.
From Artist Residency to Mainstream Political Force
The Friends of Attention started small. The group formed in 2018 at the Mildred's Lane artist residency in Narrowsburg, New York. By 2021, they published the "Twelve Theses on Attention" in *The Paris Review*. By September 2022, they had opened the Strother School of Radical Attention in Dumbo, Brooklyn — a real-world hub for workshops and what they call "Attention Labs," according to Mother Jones.
At those labs, participants practice "radical human attention" — things like prolonged eye contact or deep observation of their physical surroundings. Program Director Peter Schmidt runs the sessions. The *Attensity!* manifesto, published by Crown at $30 a copy, funds the school directly. All proceeds go to the nonprofit.
A Movement Modeled on Labor Rights and Environmentalism
The Friends of Attention are clear about their model. They don't want to tweak an app's design. They want collective resistance — the same kind that won the eight-hour workday and the Clean Air Act. Their argument: you can't fight a multi-trillion-dollar attention industry alone, just as you can't stop climate change by changing your lightbulbs, per the *Attensity!* manifesto.
The timing matters. By mid-2026, only 15% of Americans trust AI companies to make responsible decisions, according to polling from George Washington University. A separate survey found 70% of Americans now oppose new data centers in their communities. Mother Jones reports the movement has shifted from an art-world niche to a mainstream political force — one pushing for "Attention Sanctuary" laws that would ban data-mining in theaters, museums, and houses of worship.
Critics Warn of Backlash — and Pushback from Tech Allies
Not everyone welcomes the movement's rise. Some security analysts note that 2026 has seen violent attacks on data centers and tech executives tied to "anti-tech" manifestos. Jordyn Abrams of George Washington University describes a broader "trust collapse" that is giving more radical actors cover, according to AI Weekly.
Industry allies push back too. Chuck Flint of the Coalition for Affordability and Prosperity has claimed that "political activists" opposing data centers are influenced by foreign adversaries. But supporters like broadcaster Chris Hayes have called the *Attensity!* manifesto "invigorating," and critics like Jonathan Crary describe it as a "declaration of tenacious opposition to techno-colonization," per Penguin Random House.
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