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The story
On the night of September 14, TV personality Sou Takei posted on X warning that “the machine that turns attention into money, no matter the method, is baring its fangs even at reckless, greedy zealots” — a message cautioning against the SNS-era obsession with chasing attention at any cost. On the 5ch Entertainment/Sports News+ board, many pointed out that Takei himself — who built his fame on tales of taking down a lion and appearances in animal-slipper segments — has used an “attention-grabbing machine” of his own, while others argued that the sponsorship-based business model behind TV and social media has simply hit its limits, splitting opinion down the middle.
Sou Takei: “A machine that turns attention into money regardless of method… bares its fangs even at reckless zealots…” — shares his thoughts
TV personality Sou Takei updated his X account on the night of the 14th, posting a warning about the state of the world today.
The remarks appear to address the harms of the attention economy — where simply grabbing attention on social media translates directly into money — and the state of society as a whole.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
So basically it all boils down to "don't watch celebrities."
Ditch the TV and read a book.
Once you sharpen your craft, you can spot the amateurs on social media.
Pros know how to navigate social media too.
I think the sponsorship-based business model is already dead.
You can tell just by looking at TV and the internet these days —
that money isn't going toward making quality programming,
it's just being handed out to attention-seekers.
The sponsorship business model is absolute garbage.
These days every gap gets stuffed with ads, ads, ads — it's ads everywhere you look,
and since they just pass that ad cost onto product prices and skim it little by little off consumers, it keeps growing without end.
Especially for someone like you.
So you're saying there's no biased reporting going on, then?
only the medium shifted from paper to airwaves, then from airwaves to the internet.
He always just says stuff that sounds deep, but none of it is particularly impressive or unique.
A "machine"? Does he mean TV?
Even so, it's gotten better than it used to be —
things used to be genuinely reckless and awful.
Background and Key Points of This Story
The “machine that turns attention into money” Takei pointed to appears to refer to the so-called attention economy, in which social media view counts and tips translate directly into revenue. On the thread, some noted that the concept itself originated overseas, while others drew parallels to the limits of TV’s ratings race and ad-revenue model. At the same time, since Takei himself built his fame through a striking persona — like his “bare-handed lion takedown” story — and TV appearances in animal slippers, plenty of pointed remarks asked whether the person who has used the attention-grabbing machine the most has any right to lecture about it. The mix of criticism and sympathy seems to stem from the fact that while few disagreed with the substance of his remarks, many kept questioning whether they squared with his own career.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (Entertainment/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] Sou Takei Warns About Today’s World: “A Machine That Turns Attention Into Money, Regardless of Method, Bares Its Fangs Even at Reckless Zealots…”“.
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