Attention Deficits & Building Trust for AI

This episode explores the shift from the “attention economy” to the emerging “trust economy,” why we’re all overwhelmed, and how creators can stand out in an era of AI-generated content. Meredith’s Husband breaks down practical ways website owners can build trust, create pattern-breaking content, and avoid blending in with generic AI blogs.

Timestamps

[0:00] Introduction
[0:24] The rise of social media and attention as currency
[1:33] Spending 110% of our attention
[2:28] ADHD-like overwhelm in modern life
[3:27] Phones and constant content access
[4:27] AI’s coming explosion in content creation
[4:51] Oversaturation and the end of the attention economy
[5:11] The trust recession
[6:07] Trust as the new currency
[6:54] How to create content AI cannot replicate

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Chapters

• 0:48 Remembering Social Media’s Rise
• 1:27 The Attention Economy Explained
• 3:08 Living In Perpetual Overload
• 4:05 Phones, Feeds, And Endless Options
• 6:51 AI’s Content Explosion Forecast
• 10:21 From Attention To Trust

Transcript

Meredith's husband 0:24

2008. Do you remember that year? I remember thereabouts. Social media. That's right about the time social media started kind of going mainstream.

Meredith 0:33

Was that like Friendster time?

Meredith's husband 0:36

No, Friendster was before. So like because when I we met in 2006.

Meredith 0:41

We did?

The Attention Economy Explained

Meredith's husband 0:41

Yeah. News flash. And when we met, you were already using Friendster. I think you were probably already on MySpace. There were a few things. Facebook, I think, technically came out in 2006. No, yeah. Nobody was, because it was just for colleges. And then I think they kind of opened up and they in 2008-ish, I'm going to say it went mainstream. Pretty soon thereafter, people started talking about this thing called the attention economy. Especially in marketing, in my world. It was all about the attention economy. Because if you can get somebody's attention, you could monetize that. That's literally how you made money.

Meredith 1:16

Right.

Meredith's husband 1:17

I mean, I guess that's always been a little bit true. But social media was like, hey, if somebody could get your attention for a minute, they could somehow make money off that. If they could make if they could get your attention for 10 minutes, better. For four hours, way better. So and you can see where social media took that.

Meredith 1:33

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 1:34

So until so now, let's fast forward, we're at the point where the money's gone. We have spent all the attention that we have.

Meredith 1:42

Yes.

Meredith's husband 1:43

We're out of it. We're fresh out.

Meredith 1:45

We're overwhelmed.

Meredith's husband 1:46

Yes. As individuals, as a society in general, I would say we have spent probably 110% of the attention that we have to spend.

Meredith 1:55

Yes. I agree.

Meredith's husband 1:56

And I don't know about you, but I like I don't remember feeling like this 20 years ago. At the end of the day, they just feeling like sitting down and being like, oh, just I'm just it's too much. Everything is too much.

Meredith 2:06

Aaron Powell Oh, I often feel that it's different. Also, we're way older and we run our, you know, like things are way different.

Meredith's husband 2:16

For whatever reason, where you're running on an attention deficit.

Meredith 2:19

Trevor Burrus, Jr. We are.

Meredith's husband 2:21

And I would say there's probably no it's no surprise that the people realizing they have attention deficit disorder has exploded.

Meredith 2:28

Yes.

Meredith's husband 2:29

I mean, how many people do you know who have some sort of ADHD?

Meredith 2:32

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 2:33

Yeah, a lot. There's even a uh I I don't know if it's a clinical name, but there's a name for the the ADHD that people get by just living in society now.

Living In Perpetual Overload

Meredith 2:43

V-A-S-D.

Meredith's husband 2:44

Yeah. It's like and it's kind of you know minor symptoms of ADHD that you forget just as a result of existing in this world. Yeah. Yeah. Or this country. I guess I can't speak for other countries so much, but certainly this country. So one reason for that is obviously the explosion in just the amount of content. You figure when you go on social media, you're getting a uh one millionth of one percent of all the content that's out there, and that's plenty to keep you occupied 24-7. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Meredith 3:13

And also it's right with us all the time on our phones. It used to be billboards or commercials or advertisements and magazines that you would flip through.

Meredith's husband 3:27

Yeah, I think that like literally is how we have ended up to be able to spend 110% of our attention. Is it is always, always, always an option.

Meredith 3:36

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 3:36

More than one option. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Phones, Feeds, And Endless Options

Meredith 3:38

Oh, uh many, many at the same time.

Meredith's husband 3:41

Aaron Ross Powell And so one one cause of this has been the explosion in the creation of content. Obviously, there's tons of people creating content. By the way, AI, I think, is going to allow this is my prediction for the future. Okay. AI is going to allow platforms themselves to just create the content for us because it knows, its algorithm knows exactly what we like. AI is getting very good at creating content. AI is getting very good at generating concepts and scripts and then the whatever to go along with it. I don't see why. I think content creators are doomed. Not 100%, but like say the bottom 90 percent are going to be replaced with AI-generated content. Not like this podcast.

Meredith 4:27

Who could be that witty? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Meredith's husband 4:29

AI could never replace AI.

Meredith 4:31

Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?

Meredith's husband 4:33

All right. So I th so that's just my personal prediction. But anyway, the question becomes how do you stand out in what has been an explosion in content and what will inevitably be the moody. Inevitably be even a bigger explosion, an explosion of explosions.

Meredith 4:51

Aaron Powell You don't think that it's just people are going to be so oversaturated?

Meredith's husband 4:55

Aaron Ross Powell Well, I think they are. And I think that what we have I think the attention economy is going to come to an end. Because we like I said, we don't have any more to give. And it will be more the trust economy.

Meredith 5:09

Aaron Powell Yeah, there which there's a trust recession.

Meredith's husband 5:11

Trevor Burrus Yeah. You sent me an email about that, and I 100% agree because now it's you have so much content. What do you trust? What do you believe?

Meredith 5:19

Aaron Powell That's exactly it.

Meredith's husband 5:20

Trevor Burrus The 20 think I think of the news cycle, the 24-hour news cycle, and who knows what you see. I automatically, if I see a news story, I figure it's not true.

Meredith 5:28

Aaron Powell Right. I really believed that all of the late night hosts were gonna get their own network and do their own shows. No, lies.

Meredith's husband 5:41

Somebody writing an article that said that to grab your attention and they got it. Right. And now it's like, who knows if it's true? That's the problem. So how do you build trust? So trust is the new uh economy. It's the new uh buzzword. What do you call money? Money. It's new money. Trust is the new money.

Meredith 6:01

Currency.

Meredith's husband 6:02

Currency. That's the word you're looking for. Yeah.

Meredith 6:06

We're married.

Meredith's husband 6:07

Yeah. Okay. So how do you do that? How do you do that? So pretty good question. That's really kind of where my industry is. The insiders?

Meredith 6:15

Yes.

AI’s Content Explosion Forecast

Meredith's husband 6:16

Like in my industry, like where it's like the real good thinkers inside my industry. Sometimes they let me into that room so I can listen. Yeah. So they are uh talking about how do you disrupt the pattern? How do you create content that stands out?

Meredith 6:33

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 6:33

Okay. And that is a sense, this is marketing. I mean, this is like that is marketing. How do you stand out? Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So how do we stand out for AI? Well, how do you you've got to create content that AI cannot generate itself because so much content is going to be AI generated? So what what types of things? I'm just going to go over a few types of things. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Meredith 6:52

Oh, it wasn't a question to me.

unknown 6:54

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

Meredith's husband 6:54

No, it was not. Trust me. I know better than that. Things like case studies. Okay. AI can't just it's not going to just generate case studies. I mean, it technically has done that when it does those hallucinations, but those in general, it does not. AI does just not generate fake facts and like they're real. I did. When you are creating any sort of content, if you can, include times and dates. Okay. AI is not going to just do stuff like that out of the blue. Include your author name, your person with links to your any bios, any uh professional references like LinkedIn. And notice this sort of is an expansion of the EEAT principles that we've talked about before.

Meredith 7:42

I understand.

Meredith's husband 7:43

A lot of the same things, something else, uh your stance or your opinion, your philosophy, your principles, something that you have specifically that only you have.

Meredith 7:54

Yeah.

Meredith's husband 7:55

If you have contrarian views on anything, those are those are pattern breakers. Those are going to stand out. Remember, anything that only you can produce, your your goal should be to distinguish yourself from other content, from specifically, probably AI-generated content.

Meredith 8:12

Right.

Meredith's husband 8:13

And like I have said, I feel like I've said many times on the podcast, don't use an AI tool to blog for you. That's not going to help you stand out from other blogs. In fact, it I know people say all the time, you got a blog, you got a blog, you got a blog, you got a blog. Oh, and then there's this tool that will blog for you. Done. Having no blog is better than having an AI-generated blog.

Meredith 8:34

Can you say that one more time?

Meredith's husband 8:35

Aaron Ross Powell Having no blog It would be better for you to not have a blog than to have a blog that AI wrote.

Meredith 8:40

Thank you.

Meredith's husband 8:41

Something else that is good, and this also is along the EEAT lines, clarity. Clarity. Clarity is good for people who are reading it. It is good for SEO. It always has been. And it's really good for AI. It's a win-win-win. You gotta be clear. Things like bullet lists. Make sure your stuff is organized. Next week I'll I think we'll talk a little bit more about the specifics of that. Like technically, how do you organize stuff?

Meredith 9:08

This is more of a learning how to organize.

Meredith's husband 9:13

I think that's it.

Meredith 9:17

Those are good. Remember when I was saying last night how so I I'm I always forget my camera settings and all these things just because of my brain. And if I I went to AI, to Chatty G, asked her, like, what are the optimum, blah, blah, blah. She just kept it, it got it wasted so much time. And then I went to the manuals, no help. And then on YouTube, and everyone is all over the place. But then finally I found this one person who simplifies and clarifies, and it makes sense to me.

Meredith's husband 9:51

There you go.

From Attention To Trust

Meredith 9:51

Case in point. What you hear are the soothing sounds of our dog Marcel.