In a major attention-capture stunt, Kim Kardashian famously used Instagram in 2014 to send out a picture of her nearly naked backside in an attempt to “break the Internet.” It may not quite have done that, but it paid off in attention earned; it must have, because Kardashian’s management, normally so efficient about getting paid, negotiated no other compensation. It was further evidence of attention’s having become an accepted form of currency.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 1049