Sell it to the robots

I had a strange thought this week, somewhere between an ad for a mattress and an ad for a course on how to stay relevant.

The thought was this. If machines can now do the work, why can they not do the buying?

It is a stupid question and I cannot let go of it. Every week there is a new thing that used to need me and no longer does. Writing, sorting, drafting, designing, deciding. Fine. I have made a kind of peace with that, or at least I have stopped arguing with it in public. But here is what I cannot square. In the exact same week that the economy needs my work less, it wants my attention more than it ever has. The demands have gone up, not down.

So which is it? Am I obsolete or am I essential? Because I am being told both, all day, by the same machine.

The demotion nobody announced

I think what is actually happening is a change of role, and nobody sent the memo.

For most of history you were in the economy as a producer. You made something, or moved something, or knew something, and that was your seat at the table. What you got paid was, roughly, what your contribution was worth. It was not always fair and it was often brutal, but the logic was legible: you were needed for what you could do.

That seat is being quietly removed. Not all at once, and not for everyone, but the direction is not subtle. And what remains, the role still very much on offer, is the other one. Consumer. Audience. Attention.

So the pitch you are getting, underneath everything, is this: we do not need what you make any more, but we still need you to want things. Please keep wanting things. Please keep watching.

That is a demotion. And it is a strange one, because it comes with more attention than the promotion ever did. Nobody courted me this hard when I was useful.

Why they cannot sell it to the robots

Which brings me back to the stupid question, and the honest answer to it, which I find genuinely uncomfortable.

They cannot sell it to the robots because robots do not want anything. They have no status anxiety. They do not feel behind. They will not buy the better jacket because of how it will feel to walk into a room in it. An agent will find the cheapest sufficient option and stop, which is a catastrophe if your entire business model is built on desire rather than need.

The whole apparatus, the ads, the feeds, the endless small manufactured wants, only works on something that can feel insufficient. That is the machinery, and there is only one component in it that can still perform that function.

Me. You. The last part that still wants.

So we are not kept around out of sentiment. We are kept around because the demand side cannot be automated. Production can go to the machines. Consumption cannot, because consumption requires someone capable of dissatisfaction. That is the job we are being retained for.

What they actually want from me

I keep asking what they want, as if it is complicated. It is not.

They want my attention, because attention is the raw input. They want my desire, because desire is what converts. And increasingly they want my judgment, which is the part I am least willing to hand over, because it turns out a machine can produce a thousand options but cannot care which one is chosen. Somebody still has to want. Somebody still has to pick.

If there is anything hopeful here, and I am not certain there is, it might be that. The thing being harvested from me is also the only thing I have left that is not replaceable. My attention is valuable to them for the same reason it is valuable to me. That is not a coincidence. It is the whole game.

Which means the only real move available is embarrassingly old fashioned. Be much more careful about what you want. Notice when a want was installed rather than felt. Spend attention like it is the scarce asset it has become, because everyone else in the system has already worked out that it is.

I do not have a triumphant ending for this. I still get the ads. I still, occasionally, want the jacket.

But I have stopped believing the story that I am becoming useless. I am not becoming useless. I am being repositioned, from the side of the ledger that produces to the side that consumes, and nobody asked me whether I agreed to the move.

Did anyone ask you?