"In the flood of content may the authors be the ones to pay their readers?"

.”Web ads – watch for free” is the catchline for one of ad weeklies. Well, it is only very recently that one does not need to pay to watch the ads anymore.

What if soon it will be on the information sender’s side to pay the receiver for acquiring it? For access to the latter’s mind, for their attention (among the most valuable assets in the age of info bombing), for the promise of passing it on to their friends?

It is already been happening: on Facebook you need to pay for your promo posts if you want them to be displayed for others. When you do, it works. If you do not (pay several dollars for one go), even your friends will not be able to see the message.

Wait a minute, why should we watch any web content while not being paid for that? The senders paying us instead the other way round. For watching selected TV channels, for purposeful choice and conscious consumption of the content given us on a certain website, for listening to the web radio we have agreed on. Do we have to do it with no payment?

Would it be a reversal of old rules? Yes. Is it not the consumer who shall pay for their access to words, images, important opinions, great movies, excellent musical performances? They are for sure. Should it be up to journalists, singers, actors to buy our attention? Let me ask a little provocatively: why not?

If there is so much information scattered everywhere, various content being „sold” to us through multiple channels (e.g. TV, radio, billboards, press, web pages, text messages, tweets etc.), then why does no-one pay us for the time we are spending on being accessible?

In the world of abundance of data and opinions is it not so that the author should pay for being sure of the desired action taken up by the reader of getting to know the right content?

When will the authors begin to pay their readers for rejection of all the surrounding buzz, cutting off other incentives, messages, offers and such, to willingly and carefully read proposed texts, to let in what one wants to tell them?

Life cycle of an idea: ridiculed, drowned in silence, taken for granted.

Go.

Eryk Mistewicz