Both sides in this exchange miss the mark When thinking about platforms that aggregate attention, the better questions to ask are: - Who is willing to pay to access that attention? It's rarely other (individual) consumers on the platform - Why do those payers care about having distribution? - What ability do those payers have to convert that attention into value that they can capture? Memes are a commodity that can help generate attention. Ad revenue is sustainable insofar as companies can convert the spend (on attention) into some degree of value. What really matters when thinking about new monetization models is: where is the money coming from and how can those spenders reason about ROI?