Attention vs Intention

 

We’ve spent the better part of a decade worshipping the attention economy.
Chasing eyeballs.
Optimizing for scroll-speed.
Twisting ourselves into whatever shape the algorithm demanded just to stay visible.

But something subtle — and seismic — is happening.

People aren’t overwhelmed by content.
They’re overwhelmed by meaninglessness.

And beneath the noise, you can feel a new hunger emerging — for resonance, for relevance, for something that feels like it was actually made for humans.

What people want now isn’t more content.
It’s more intention.

Because attention is passive.
Intention is participatory.
Attention is what lands on the screen.
Intention is what lingers in the soul.

We live in a world where six billion smartphones glow like small suns in our hands — each whispering “look at me,” “react to me,” “validate me.”

But the real question isn’t:
Are people looking?

It’s:
Did it matter?
Did it land?
Did it make them feel something true?

Because the future of influence isn’t visibility.
It’s vibration.
The emotional frequency you emit.
The energy you inject into culture.
The meaning you make in someone’s internal world.

And this shift is showing up everywhere — in behavior, in creative choices, in the ways people search, discover, and decide.

Intentionally or unintentionally,
TikTok has become the clearest expression of this shift.

Not because it’s “entertainment.”
Not because it’s “social.”
But because it’s become a kind of emotional search engine — a place where people don’t just consume, but connect dots inside themselves.

A place where discovery feels less like searching…
and more like recognition.

It has quietly become the mid-funnel moment we used to ignore — the space between curiosity and commitment.
The moment where a thought turns into a feeling,
and a feeling turns into intention.

Not “Did I see it?”
But “Does this feel like me?”
“Is this part of the identity I’m shaping?”

This past month — across boardrooms, backstage green rooms, studios, and long-haul flights through Dubai, New York, Mexico City, and São Paulo— one theme kept surfacing:

People aren’t running out of attention.
They’re running out of tolerance for the irrelevant.

They can sniff disconnection instantly.
They recoil from inauthenticity on impact.
And they lean in — deeply — when something feels emotionally congruent.

Meaning has become the scarcest resource in modern culture.

And meaning doesn’t come from frequency.
It comes from context.
From emotion.
From cultural clarity.
From the courage to communicate with a point of view.

So here’s the turn:

The last decade belonged to attention.
This decade belongs to intention.

Attention wins the scroll.
Intention wins the soul.

The brands — and humans — who win now won’t be the loudest.
They’ll be the ones with the clearest emotional signature.
The ones who help people feel more like themselves.
The ones willing to create culture instead of renting it.

Because the future isn’t content.
It’s connection.
And connection doesn’t scale through volume — it scales through intention.

If you made it this far, here’s your provocation for the week:

What intention are you putting into the world?

Not “What am I posting?”
But —
“What emotion am I activating?”
“What identity am I supporting?”
“What meaning am I creating?”
“What do I want someone to feel ten seconds after the scroll ends?”

Because intention is identity.
Identity becomes memory.
And memory…
that’s the real metric.

See you out there!

 

Author

David Shing

Digital Prophet

Shingy