It’s driven into us from the first day we start J-school. Keep it short. Keep it simple. Whatever you do, don’t use any big words that might doom your product to litter-box duty.

They tell us this because readers’ eyes are like pinballs; they bounce hither and yon with wicked velocity. Sometimes the brain behind them is even processing what they are looking at. Attention, like any precious commodity, sells for a premium. But these days I really wonder: Is there less of it around than there used to be?

Not so long ago, people could concentrate on almost every person and message they came in contact with. When they read, they read. When they watched television, they watched television. Even distractions, such as commercials or billboards, were effective communicators. The habit of paying attention was so intense that a lot of chaff was taken in with the wheat.

Fast forward to today, and we’re all skimmers. We change the channel at the first hint of commercials. We watch Comedy Central for our news. The first step of “reading” our mail is to summarily dispose of anything marked “Presort Standard” or looks otherwise suspicious.

I know whom I would like to blame – which isn’t to say it’s not their fault – advertisers and marketers. They’re good at what they do and mostly we appreciate it.

Marketers helped us skim the sports section by giving us ESPN.com. They helped us skim ESPN.com by giving us mobile Web. Then, they helped us skim the mobile Web, sending just the box scores we care about straight into our cell phones.

Advertisers, for their part, made the whole scheme profitable. They started collecting our user information and pairing our targeted info with targeted ads. It was OK, though, because our internal spam filters adjusted to tune the commercials, and everything else, out.

We became an evolved, media-literate generation and our attention is on a hair-trigger. The habit of tuning out is so intense that a lot of wheat is thrown out with the chaff.

Perhaps it’s a bit grandiose to frame in evolutionary and or Biblical terms, but think of the simple acts of concentration and memory we often fail to perform.

How many times have you been in a conversation only to miss someone’s comment because you were checking your e-mail? Ever forgotten someone’s birthday because you assumed you would be warned by Facebook? I, for one, find it almost impossible to remember the name of anyone I have met less than twice.

Subconsciously I know most messages – ads, slogans, even a lot of important information – will be repeated ad-infinitum in some form. Thus I have been conditioned to pay only cursory attention to anything the first time I hear it.

Marketing, along with the sheer volume of information at our disposal, has almost certainly impaired my attention span and that of every other person under the age of 30. It’s a rather upsetting consequence of modern life. Still, if I’m being fair, I have to ask: Where’s the foul?

I’m a moderate. I have friends in advertising and marketing, and I don’t think of them as evil; rather, I think of them as much higher potential earners than myself. It’s their job to sell stuff. As the kids say, “Don’t hate the playa, hate the game.”

The foul, and the latest sad chapter, may be that the game has left the court.

There are people out there right now selling out their Facebook accounts and even Saturday nights to drop “spontaneous” endorsements for bars, Web sites, anyplace we might be persuaded to leave a buck or two. I even know one person whose Facebook account was hacked by a site that used her profile to hawk ringtones.

I believe I’ve been more than reasonable, but that is off the court and below the belt. Personal relationships are already suffering from second-hand obliviousness. Blurring the last hard lines between personal space and marketplace can only lead to ever greater cynicism and ever shorter attention spans.

I’m as laissez faire as the next guy, but – like the smooth chocolate and creamy peanut butter that make up a Reese’s – I think ethics and a free market are two great tastes that go great together. I expect businesses to consider what they ask of the consumer for the sake of the bottom line.

The last things I want outside my spam filter are the friends who are supposed to be my touch points with reality.

– Kevin Stillman is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Emmetsburg.