The Attention Economy Turned Builders Into Batman
A culture that sells witness as views will take brilliant minds and train them to perform power instead of steward it.
The Attention Economy Turned the Future Into Batman Gear
A society that sells witness as views will take brilliant builders and train them to perform as weapons.
I’m sharing this post because it captures something much bigger than one creator, one invention, or one viral video. Link here to the Instagram post if you can’t see it in the article here.
This is not a dunk on the guy.
That needs to be said first.
He can clearly build. He has mechanical talent. He has discipline. He has imagination. He is doing real physical work in a world where most people only move pixels around and call it innovation. That part deserves respect.
But that is exactly why this matters.
Because when someone with real technical ability ends up presenting himself like a comic-book weapon system for views, the issue is no longer the person.
The issue is the culture that shaped the room around him.
The issue is the machine that looks at a young builder and says:
Do not make the body whole.
Make the body look dangerous.
Do not build tools for restoration.
Build claws.
Do not show stewardship.
Show spectacle.
Do not serve the human being.
Become content.
That is the sickness.
Not the builder.
The field.
The incentives.
The altar.
The entire attention economy has trained a generation to confuse being witnessed with being watched.
Those are not the same thing.
To be witnessed is to be seen in truth. It means someone recognizes what you are carrying, what you are building, what you are becoming, and what standard your gift should be held to. Witness gives form. Witness gives responsibility. Witness calls the gift upward.
Views do not do that.
Views are not witness.
Views are extraction.
Views say: do the version of yourself that gets clicked again.
Views say: exaggerate the part that made strangers stop scrolling.
Views say: become more legible to the nervous system of the mob.
Views say: if the claw got 15 million, make a bigger claw.
And slowly the builder is no longer building from purpose.
He is building from the reflection pool of strangers.
That is how the future gets polluted.
Not because people lack talent.
Because talent is being trained by the wrong god.
A mind that can design wearable mechanics, batteries, movement systems, body-mounted tools, and physical prototypes should be one of the most valuable minds in society. That kind of person should be surrounded by elders, engineers, doctors, craftsmen, patients, rescuers, veterans, builders, fathers, and people with an actual standard.
That mind should be asked better questions.
Can this help a paralyzed person move?
Can this support someone with spinal injury?
Can this protect a worker’s back?
Can this help firefighters carry weight through smoke?
Can this give mobility to someone who lost it?
Can this make the body more dignified, more capable, more protected, more free?
But meme land does not ask those questions.
Meme land asks:
Does it look insane?
Does it look like Batman?
Does it look like a weapon?
Can we clip it in three seconds?
Will people comment “bro is becoming Iron Man”?
Can it look scary enough to make the algorithm twitch?
That is the tragedy.
The attention economy does not merely distract people from their purpose.
It re-educates their purpose.
It takes the raw desire to be seen and sells people a counterfeit version of witness. Then it rewards the most exaggerated, most infantilized, most weaponized version of their gift.
And we keep pretending this is harmless.
It is not harmless.
This is how a civilization loses its builders while still technically having them.
They are still in the garage.
They are still soldering.
They are still printing parts.
They are still learning circuits.
They are still assembling machines.
But the myth has been corrupted.
The work is no longer under the authority of service.
It is under the authority of spectacle.
That distinction matters more than the technology itself.
A claw is not automatically evil.
A battery pack is not automatically weird.
A wearable rig is not automatically a sign of decay.
Tools are innocent until they are placed inside a story.
The story decides what the tool becomes.
A blade in a surgeon’s hand is mercy.
A blade in a child’s fantasy is danger.
A powered brace in a hospital is restoration.
The same powered brace in a viral intimidation reel becomes cosplay domination.
The hardware may be similar.
The spirit is not.
And that is the part modern people refuse to talk about because they have been trained to treat everything as content, aesthetics, engagement, and personal expression.
But form carries meaning.
Presentation carries meaning.
Myth carries meaning.
When a builder straps batteries to his spine and mounts claws on his arm and frames the whole thing through a dark superhero aesthetic, society should not merely ask whether it is cool.
Society should ask why that is the story he felt he had to enter in order to be seen.
That is the deeper indictment.
Because this is not one guy being weird.
This is the natural output of a civilization that gave young men no sacred container for power.
No apprenticeship into stewardship.
No elder standard.
No public honor for disciplined service.
No clear rite of passage.
No language for strength except domination, irony, cosplay, or brand.
So of course they reach for Batman.
Batman is what a fatherless culture gives boys when it does not know how to form men.
Not literally fatherless in the household sense only.
Fatherless in the civilizational sense.
No standard above the self.
No serious public language for duty.
No sacred relationship between gift and responsibility.
No one saying: yes, you are powerful, and that means your life is not a costume.
That means your gift belongs under discipline.
That means your invention must serve life.
That means attention is not the same thing as authority.
That means views are not proof that your direction is right.
That means the crowd is not your father.
That means the algorithm is not your god.
This is the part people do not want to say because it sounds too heavy for a reel.
But that is exactly the problem.
Everything is too heavy for the format that now governs everyone’s imagination.
So the future gets compressed into clips.
A man’s gift gets compressed into a stunt.
A machine gets compressed into a vibe.
A builder gets compressed into a character.
The sacred desire to contribute gets compressed into “look at me.”
And then everyone acts shocked when the world feels unserious.
What did we think was going to happen?
We built an economy where the highest reward goes to the most clickable distortion of the self.
Then we wonder why everyone is distorted.
We built platforms where a person can receive millions of impressions without a single real elder asking what the work is for.
Then we wonder why the work feels unanchored.
We built a culture where spectacle is more profitable than stewardship.
Then we wonder why the future looks like cosplay instead of civilization.
This is why the phrase “attention economy” is too soft.
It sounds like a business model.
It is not just a business model.
It is a formation system.
It forms the soul.
It trains taste.
It trains posture.
It trains desire.
It trains what kind of version of yourself you believe is worth showing.
And once a person’s desire to be witnessed gets captured by the machinery of views, the machine begins editing their becoming.
That is why this example hits so hard.
Because he is not talentless.
He is talented.
That makes it worse.
A talentless person doing cosplay is just noise.
A talented person doing cosplay is a warning.
It shows that the pollution has reached the capable.
It shows that the culture is not merely distracting the weak.
It is redirecting the strong.
And a society that redirects its strongest builders into spectacle has already begun eating its own future.
Imagine that same mechanical mind raised inside a stronger container.
Imagine the same builder with a serious lab, a real mentor, a mission, and a human problem in front of him that actually mattered.
Imagine if the applause came not from strangers saying “this is insane,” but from a person with a spinal injury standing up straighter.
Imagine if the viral moment was not claws extending from a forearm, but a warehouse worker going home without pain.
Imagine if the reward signal was not “bro is Batman,” but a child watching his disabled father move with more freedom.
Imagine if the culture gave builders honor for healing instead of only attention for looking dangerous.
That is the future we are losing.
Not because the tools cannot be built.
Because the builders are being socially trained to make themselves into content before they are trained to make themselves into servants of life.
And no, servant does not mean weak.
Service is not weakness.
Stewardship is not softness.
Service is the highest form of power because it places strength under right relation.
That is what adulthood is.
Power under right relation.
Talent under discipline.
Invention under purpose.
Body under spirit.
Tool under life.
Without that, the same intelligence that could restore the body starts decorating the body like a threat.
That is the line.
That is the whole issue.
This is not anti-technology.
This is not anti-maker.
This is not anti-invention.
This is pro-purpose.
Technology without purpose becomes spectacle.
Spectacle without stewardship becomes decay.
Decay with millions of views starts to look like culture.
And culture, repeated long enough, becomes destiny.
So when people say, “Relax, it’s just a cool build,” they are missing the pattern.
Yes, it is a cool build.
That is the point.
The problem is not that the build is bad.
The problem is that the symbolic direction is immature compared to the ability required to create it.
We are watching adult-level capability trapped inside adolescent mythology.
And that is everywhere now.
Finance became casino cosplay.
Politics became performance cosplay.
Education became credential cosplay.
Health became biohacker cosplay.
Masculinity became domination cosplay.
Spirituality became aesthetic cosplay.
Technology became savior cosplay.
And now invention itself is being pulled into superhero cosplay.
Everyone wants the aura of power without the burden of right relation.
Everyone wants to be seen.
Almost no one wants to be witnessed.
Because witness demands something from you.
Witness says: I see what you are carrying, now become worthy of it.
Views never say that.
Views just say: again.
Again.
Again.
Bigger.
Louder.
Stranger.
Darker.
Sharper.
More extreme.
Again.
That is not witness.
That is hunger.
And a generation has been fed to it.
So I am not looking at this builder with contempt.
I am looking at him as evidence.
Evidence that the raw material is still here.
Evidence that young people still have hands, minds, courage, mechanical instinct, imagination, and the willingness to make real things.
That part gives me hope.
But I am also looking at the surrounding culture and saying: this is criminal.
Because instead of building a world that receives talent and orders it toward life, we built a machine that harvests talent and orders it toward engagement.
We sold them visibility and called it meaning.
We sold them followers and called it community.
We sold them virality and called it proof.
We sold them being watched and called it being known.
That lie is destroying the future.
The correction is not to mock the builder.
The correction is to change the altar.
Put the same gift under service.
Put the same hands under discipline.
Put the same machine under healing.
Put the same imagination under a standard.
Make the question unavoidable:
Does this restore life, or does it merely perform power?
That one question would save an entire generation of builders from becoming characters in someone else’s feed.
Because the future does not need more Batman gear.
The future needs men and women with spine.
Actual spine.
Moral spine.
Spiritual spine.
Stewardship spine.
The kind of spine that can carry talent without turning it into a costume.
The kind of spine that can be witnessed without begging to be watched.
The kind of spine that can build something powerful and still ask, with reverence:
Who does this serve?
That is the missing standard.
That is the wound under the spectacle.
And that is why this matters.
