Every few months, someone declares that “no one reads anymore.”
It’s the go-to excuse for lazy marketing - a way to justify thin messaging, templated posts, and AI sludge.
But your audience hasn’t stopped reading. They’ve just stopped wasting time.
The Myth of the Short Attention Span
Marketers love to blame “attention spans,” as if the human brain suddenly reprogrammed itself sometime around TikTok. But the truth is simpler:
People have never had infinite attention. They’ve just become better at filtering out anything that doesn’t respect it.
Think about how you read online.
You scroll past most things, but when something actually earns your attention, you’ll read every word. You’ll share it, quote it, or save it.
Your prospects are the same. The issue isn’t that they’re not reading, it’s that most content doesn’t deserve to be read.
Filtering Is a Feature, Not a Problem
Filtering is how buyers protect their time.
If they’re ignoring you, it’s not because they can’t focus, it’s because your message didn’t make the cut.
And that’s not a bad thing. It means the path to attention isn’t through volume or gimmicks. It’s through relevance, clarity, and conviction.
The best content doesn’t fight for attention. It earns it.