Let us pause here to remark a major recurrent dynamic that has shaped the course of attention industries: “the revolt.” Industries may have an inherent tendency to “nestle everywhere,” but when the commodity in question is access to people’s minds, the perpetual quest for growth ensures that forms of backlash, both major and minor, are all but inevitable. The minor version I shall refer to as the “disenchantment effect”; this describes what happens when a once entrancing means of harvesting attention starts to lose its charm. Our ability to ignore things is adaptive; with enough exposure it can make us indifferent to any stimulus, until, say, a poster that was once arresting becomes one we can see through as if it did not exist. It is because of this effect that the attention merchant’s approach is always trending in the direction of going too far, almost to the point, sometimes even reaching it, of causing shock.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 71