It was a time when a random picture of a grumpy-looking cat (Grumpy Cat) posted on the online bulletin board Reddit made a viable career for its owners; when a ridiculous dance video like “Gangnam Style” amassed more than 2.4 billion online views (while the 2014 World Cup, the most watched event in human history, reached about 1 billion).

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 1067