what we talk about when we talk about bullshit
Before we can understand the economics of bullshit, we must first grasp what distinguishes it from mere lies or errors. Harry Frankfurt’s seminal distinction remains crucial: bullshit is “something that is designed to impress but that was constructed absent direct concern for the truth.”1 The bullshitter, unlike the liar, doesn’t care whether what they’re saying is true or false. They care only about the effect their words produce.
G.A. Cohen deepened this analysis by identifying two distinct species. Frankfurt-bullshit concerns the speaker’s attitude: their indifference to truth. Cohen-bullshit concerns the statement itself: its “unclarifiable unclarity.” These are statements that seem meaningful but resist any attempt at clarification. When someone says “We need to leverage our synergies for transformative impact,” try asking what that means. The resulting explanation will likely be more bullshit.2
Daniel Dennett’s concept of “deepities” provides another lens. These are statements with two readings: one true but trivial (“Love is just a word”), another profound but false (“Love is merely linguistic”). The ambiguity allows speakers to retreat to the trivial reading when challenged while benefiting from the impressive aura of the profound reading.3
What unites these forms is their function in the attention economy. In a world where capturing and monetizing attention has become the primary business model, bullshit serves as a peculiarly effective currency.
the attention economy’s appetite for emptiness
I’ve been writing about bullshit, pseudo-profundity, and post-depth for some time now, documenting the transformation of wisdom into commodity, complexity into consumable portions.4 But to understand why bullshit has become valuable, we must examine its relationship to what Chris Hayes calls our “epoch-defining transition”: the commodification of attention itself.
In “The Sirens’ Call,” Hayes argues that attention has become to the 21st century what labor was to the 19th: a resource extracted from us, from which we are increasingly alienated.5 We’ve torn down the boundary between public and private in about a decade, creating what D. Graham Burnett calls “human fracking”: the systematic extraction and monetization of human attention by digital platforms.6
This “human fracking” operates through what Burnett identifies as decades of military-industrial research aimed at sustaining vigilance on screens. Research now weaponized to capture and hold our attention for profit. The attention economy doesn’t just want our focus; it wants to extract every possible moment of consciousness, turning our deepest neurological structures against us.7
In this extractive landscape, bullshit serves a crucial function. It provides content that captures attention without delivering substance. It’s the perfect fuel for an economy that profits from engagement rather than enlightenment. Consider Donald Trump’s signature style—what researchers have called “authentic bullshit.”8 His statements often lack not just truth but even a stable relationship with meaning itself. “Nobody knows more about technology than me.” “I’m the least racist person you’ll ever meet.” These aren’t lies in Frankfurt’s sense because they show no concern for truth whatsoever. They’re pure performance, optimized for attention capture rather than information transfer.
The attention economy rewards this kind of discourse because it generates engagement without resolution. A clear, truthful statement can be evaluated and dismissed. Bullshit, by contrast, creates an interpretive vacuum that draws continued attention. We engage not because we’re learning but because we’re trying to decode what, if anything, is being communicated. As Hayes notes, we’re like Odysseus hearing the sirens: compelled by something that promises meaning but delivers only captivation.9 Yet in the classical story, the protagonist ties himself, enduring suffering for the greater good. What’s our equivalent? Is there one? These answers escape me.
This isn’t accidental. The attention economy has systematically selected for bullshit over truth because bullshit is more extractable. Truth educates and liberates; bullshit captivates and captures. The $500 billion management consulting industry doesn’t exist despite its meaninglessness but because of it. Each incomprehensible framework requires another workshop, another engagement, another billing cycle.
The relationship between the bullshit economy and the attention economy isn’t merely correlative: it’s foundationally causal. The attention economy doesn’t just benefit from bullshit; it requires it as its primary operating fuel.
Truth has a terminal quality. Once you understand something true, you can move on. Bullshit, by contrast, creates what we might call “interpretive quicksand”—the more you struggle to extract meaning, the deeper you sink into engagement. This is precisely what the attention frackers need: content that generates endless scroll without resolution.
