Did you see that truck survive an enormous weight being dropped on its roof?

No.

Did you see the car drive up a ridiculously steep ramp?

No.

Did you see that politician’s latest outrageous statement?

Yes, but no. I don't want to discuss it so I would rather pretend I didn't see it.

And frankly, I’m getting tired of being expected to.

We’ve built an entire culture around getting people’s attention, regardless of whether we’ve done anything to deserve it.

The automotive industry seems particularly enthusiastic about this.

Every manufacturer needs a bigger stunt. A more impossible demonstration. Something that makes millions of people stop scrolling and say, holy shit, did you see that?

Great.

Your car can climb a 45-degree incline.

Can it survive ten Canadian winters without becoming a financial liability? That’s the part I’m interested in. But reliability doesn’t go viral.

A well-designed product that quietly does its job isn’t particularly exciting to watch.

So we get spectacle. And spectacle has a habit of needing to outdo itself.

Politicians understand this exceptionally well.

Make a provocative statement. Pick a fight. Say something outrageous enough that every newspaper, television network and social media account feels compelled to repeat it.

• Supporters share it because they agree.

• Opponents share it because they’re furious.

• The news covers it because everybody’s talking about it.

And suddenly, the person who started the whole thing has successfully occupied another day of public conversation.

Whether anything useful happened is almost beside the point.

Outrage has become an advertising strategy. And the strangest part is that we willingly participate.

• We share the ridiculous statement to explain how ridiculous it is.

• We repost the stunt to demonstrate how pointless it was.

• We argue about things we never needed to know existed.

And in doing so, we give them exactly what they wanted: attention.

It’s the same machinery that drives influencers, personal brands, celebrity feuds, corporate publicity stunts and those painfully manufactured controversies that seem to appear whenever somebody has something to promote.

The objective isn’t necessarily to be admired.

It’s to be impossible to ignore.

And that’s a rather depressing standard to build a culture around.

Because attention isn’t the same as admiration.

Recognition isn’t the same as respect.

And being talked about isn’t the same as having something worth saying.

I understand marketing. I’ve spent much of my career helping people and businesses communicate.

Getting someone’s attention is part of the job.

But it should be the beginning of an exchange, not the entire achievement.

What are you giving me in return for the attention you’re taking?

Something useful?

Something beautiful?

Something genuinely entertaining?

A new perspective?

A product that makes my life better?

Or just another thirty seconds of manufactured astonishment before the next thing comes along?

The problem is that meaningful progress rarely competes well with spectacle.

A manufacturer quietly improving repairability doesn’t generate the same headlines as a truck performing some absurd feat.

A politician doing the tedious work of developing workable policy doesn’t necessarily command the attention that a deliberately provocative remark can.

And a person doing something genuinely worthwhile can disappear beneath a thousand people shouting about themselves.

Maybe we’ve started confusing visibility with value.

Maybe we reward the loudest person in the room so consistently that everyone else eventually feels compelled to start shouting.

And maybe the most radical response is to stop rewarding it.

You don’t have to watch.

You don’t have to share.

You don’t have to have an opinion about every ridiculous thing someone does to get your attention.

When someone asks, Did you see that?

It’s perfectly fine to say: no.

And just leave it there.