2026.08: Losing in the Attention Economy
The best Stratechery content from the week of February 16, 2026, including asking what happened to video games, the NBA being a mess, for now, and Shopify and the future of e-commerce.
---
This Week in Stratechery
2026.08: Losing in the Attention Economy
@PUBG
Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!
As a reminder, each week, every Friday, we’re sending out this overview of content in the Stratechery bundle; highlighted links are free for everyone. Additionally, you have complete control over what we send to you. If you don’t want to receive This Week in Stratechery emails (there is no podcast), please uncheck the box in your delivery settings.
On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
- What Happened to Video Games? For decades video games were hailed as the industry of the future, as their growth and eventually total revenue dwarfed other forms of entertainment. Over the last five years, however, things have gotten dark — and what light there is is shining on everyone other than game developers. I’ve been talking to Matthew Ball about the state of the video game industry every year for the last three years, and this week’s Interview was my favorite one of the series: what happens when you actually have to fight for attention, and when everything that made you exciting — particularly interactivity and immersiveness — start to be come liabilities?— Ben Thompson
- The NBA Is a Mess, For Now. As a card-carrying pro basketball sicko who will be watching the NBA the rest of my life, it brings me no joy to report the league is not in a great place at the moment. We’re reliving the mid-aughts Spurs-Pistons Dark Ages, but with too much offense instead of too much defense, and a regular season that’s 20 games too long. I wrote about all of it on Sharp Text this week, including problems that can be fixed, others that may be solved with time, and whether Commissioner Adam Silver is the right leader to address any of these issues. — Andrew Sharp
- Shopify and the Future of E-Commerce. In the midst of the ongoing thrum of SaaSpocalypse takes, I enjoyed that Ben’s Daily Update on Wednesday pumped the brakes on the panic in at least one area: Shopify is fine, actually. We went deeper on this week’s episode of Sharp Tech, exploring not only Shopify’s value propositions, but the shifting dynamics of e-commerce in the AI era, the sorts of businesses that are likely to emerge in the years to come, and why certain structural advantages from previous paradigms will not only be durable, but even stronger going forward. — AS
---
#### Stratechery Articles and Updates
- Thin Is In — Thick clients were the dominant form of device throughout the PC and mobile era; in an AI world, however, thin clients make much more sense.
- Shopify Earnings, Shopify’s AI Advantages — Shopify is poised to be one of the biggest winners from AI; it would behoove investors to actually understand the businesses they are selling.
- An Interview with Matthew Ball About Gaming and the Fight for Attention — An interview with Matthew Ball about the state of the video gaming industry in 2026, and why everything is a fight for attention.
#### Sharp Text by Andrew Sharp
- The NBA’s Problems Are Structural, Cultural and Fixable — What’s driving NBA fans to apathy, how the league might find its way back, and whether Adam Silver has outlived his usefulness.
#### Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber
- Back to the Future
- Curling, F1, and Gambling
#### Asianometry with Jon Yu
- South Africa’s Ruined Synthetic Oil Giant
#### Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver
- The Dunk Contest Preview America Needs, The Top Five Bandwagons for the Next Five Years, The NBA Fines the Jazz $500,000
- The All-Star Game Was a Delight, Harrowing Field Reporting from the Dunk Contest, KD Burners Rise from the Ashes
#### Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson
- The Roots of a Global Memory Shortage, Thick, Thin and Apple, Shopify is Fine, Actually
This week’s Sharp Tech video is on Anthropic’s Super Bowl lies.
#### Share
Thin Is In
2026.09: This Was an Xbox
---
[Original source](https://stratechery.com/2026/losing-in-the-attention-economy/)