You know that feeling when you’re doing something you’ve always done, and suddenly you can’t remember why you started doing it in the first place?
That’s not a glitch. That’s the whole point.
Most traditions don’t come from your grandmother’s wisdom or some ancient cultural memory. They come from someone who had enough money to make you do something repeatedly until you forgot it was ever optional. The diamond ring on your finger? A De Beers marketing campaign from the 1930s. The Thanksgiving turkey? A poultry industry lobby. The endless scroll on your phone at 2 AM? A team of engineers in Silicon Valley who got paid handsomely to make sure you never put it down.
Traditions aren’t sacred. They’re subsidized. And you’re the one paying the subscription fee with your attention, your money, and your time.
Here’s what’s uncomfortable about this: the moment you start questioning which habits are actually yours, you realize how few of them are. The morning coffee ritual — branded. The weekend brunch — Instagram-engineered. The annual holiday shopping frenzy — quite literally manufactured by retailers who needed to clear inventory before Q4 ended. You didn’t choose these things. You inherited them from systems that needed you to perform them.
And here’s where it gets really dark. Even this article — this critique you’re reading right now — is part of the same machine. It’s content. It’s slop. It exists because the attention economy rewards me for making you feel something about the fact that you’re being manipulated. The meta-irony isn’t lost on me. I’m writing about the trap while standing inside it, holding the bait.
The critique of the system always becomes content the system sells back to you. That’s not a bug of the attention economy. That’s its most elegant feature.
So what do you do with this? You can’t opt out entirely — that’s a fantasy sold to you by the same people selling you everything else. But you can start auditing. Pick one thing you did today. Not because it’s wrong, but because you want to know if you chose it. Did you eat breakfast because you were hungry, or because a cereal company in the 1920s convinced America that skipping it was self-harm? Did you check your phone because you needed something, or because a notification was designed to trigger a dopamine response you didn’t ask for?
The goal isn’t to become some off-grid puritan who rejects everything modern. The goal is to stop renting your habits from people who never had your interests at heart in the first place. Some traditions are worth keeping — but only the ones that survive the question: Would I still do this if nobody was watching, nobody was selling, and nobody was profiting?
If the answer is no, you’ve found a habit that belongs to someone else. And it’s time to give it back.
FAQ
Q: Isn't this just cynical nihilism — everything is manufactured, so nothing matters?
A: No. The point isn't that everything is fake, it's that you should know the difference between what you chose and what was chosen for you. Some traditions pass the test. Many don't. The audit is the point, not the conclusion.
Q: So what am I supposed to actually do with this?
A: Pick one daily habit and ask: 'Would I still do this if no one was watching, selling, or profiting?' If the answer is no, you've found a rented habit. Start there. You don't need to burn your life down — just stop paying subscriptions on behaviors you never signed up for.
Q: Isn't this article itself just slop feeding the attention economy?
A: Absolutely. That's the tension the piece acknowledges openly. The critique becomes content, the content becomes product, and the cycle continues. But awareness of the trap doesn't make the trap useless — it makes you a harder target. Imperfect resistance beats perfect compliance.