Hyperfocus: The ADHD content economy: How algorithms and incentives turn help into grift

The problem is that many prominent voices have little to no formal training. And algorithmic incentives encourage creators to bait their audience.

Cate Osborn, known online as @catieosaurus, joins Hyperfocus to explain how the ADHD content economy works. She looks at why grifting thrives and how power, profit, and trust in online mental health spaces affect our understanding of ADHD.

• Read: What is an ADHD coach? 

• Read: 50% of mental health TikToks contain misinformation (The Guardian)

• More on Cate: Cate’s book, tour dates, and podcast

Cate Osborn: I think for me I can comfortably define a grifter as anyone who creates content knowingly and willfully containing misinformation or disinformation in order to profit or otherwise take advantage of people who are looking for answers, who are looking for solutions, who are desperate, who are struggling, and who are otherwise feeling isolated and alone.

And so there is a difference between every single person who is trying to make money out of the educational content that they're making and people who are actively grifting.

But because — oh, this is where it's going to get really spicy really quickly — because ADHD coaching, because education, because a lot of this stuff is so unregulated and kind of just the wild, wild west in terms of like what are your qualifications, where are you getting your training, who is training you, what are their values, what are their morals, what are their ethics?

It gets really dicey really quickly because you can go into it with every good intention in the world, but if you are bad at your job or you've been trained irresponsibly or you don't know how to handle really difficult, really complex situations, you can wind up doing more harm than good. And is that grifting? No, I don't think so. But it's also still damaging. It's also still dangerous. It's also still I think unethical.

Rae Jacobson: That's Cate Osborn. You might know her as Catieosaurus online. Cate's a content creator and podcast host, and she's been long-time watching how the social media sausage gets made. So I wanted to ask her about something that is endlessly on my mind: ADHD grifters running rampant on the internet.

Cate and I both had a lot to say, and we both have ADHD. So without further ado or voice-overs, today on "Hyperfocus", a conversation on social media, ADHD grifters, and how to hopefully, anyway, be better online with Cate Osborn.

One of the things that drives me most crazy as a person who has ADHD and studies this stuff and lives in this world is the amount of just pure and total BS about ADHD that I find online that is packaged in this really like "you're so seen, it's so true, I mean I relate so much."

And you're like, none of these things are helpful, none of these things are real. Just because they look and feel good doesn't mean they have any validity at all. And every time I would bring it up with people they'd be like, "Yeah, but it's the internet, blah, blah, blah." But the more you look into it and the more I've researched all of this, the more enraged I've gotten.

Cate: Yeah, I mean I get really angry. I get really angry because I think there's a way of presenting information that is educational. There's a way of presenting information that is responsible and ethical and based in scientific truth. And then there is a way of presenting information in order to generalize, in order to dilute, in order to create the widest possible net, the widest possible audience, the hashtag "I do that."

And then use that to profit. And that is where I think I get the most frustrated because I am a creator. I talk about ADHD online, and I want to be so honest going into this — there have also been times when I have made mistakes. There have also been times when I have broadly generalized or broadly, confidently stated something which is patently not true.

But I think there is a difference of doing that inadvertently where you could have maybe thought a little bit better about how you phrased the video, and intentionally doing it because you want to sell the most supplements or sell the most vitamin powder or whatever the thing may be. And that's the part that I get frustrated about.

Rae: No, I mean you touched on so much in that that feels very deep and touches all the different parts of this that I find really concerning. It's not just here are people who are creating things and they're doing it because it feels kind of enjoyable or exciting.

There is a profit motive behind a lot of this, especially on TikTok. That is basically a sales platform to my knowledge.

Cate: At this point, yeah.

Rae: But I want to ask you because Cody is asking me to ask you. Hi, Cody. What to you is a grifter in this context? Because that word covers so much.

Cate: I think for me, I can comfortably define a grifter as anyone who creates content knowingly and willfully containing misinformation or disinformation in order to profit or otherwise take advantage of people who are looking for answers, who are looking for solutions, who are desperate, who are struggling, and who are otherwise feeling isolated and alone.

(06:55) How grifters exploit the lack of community and professional care to sell unvetted products.

Cate: I think that covers a broad range, but I also think it really hones in on what you were just saying. So much of it comes down to the systems — it's just a rant about capitalism — but we exist in a system that is fundamentally broken.

We exist in a place where not everyone has equitable access to information or insurance or medication or mental health coverage or any of the things that we actually need to get through the day. And that's outside of things like community support and family support and friends.

Because I feel like I'm just going all over the place, but we talk about the male loneliness epidemic with this sort of wink and a nod, but I also see women lacking community. I also see people regardless of gender who are dealing with profound loneliness, with profound isolation, with a profound lack of community.

And what does social media give? It gives you this really great, really profound sense of togetherness and "I've found a community." But if the leader of that community is selling supplements, if the leader of that community is creating content for the purpose of "And if you join my special support group or download my PDF" or whatever, again, the ethics of it start to get really muddy really quickly.

Rae: Especially when it's standing in place of good care. It's not like, "Oh, I have a therapist and I have access to medication and I've got a good diagnosis and then I still kind of like these videos." They're fine. It's for a lot of people, that is the only thing they have access to, and that's where I think it gets really insidious.

Cate: Yeah, and it's complicated too because I'm a creator. And I will soapbox all day about the fact that being a content creator is a job. It is a job. And again, we're operating under capitalism and so I need to make money.

And so, there are also places where sometimes "join my ADHD coaching group" or "download my PDF," that is a way to supplement income. And so there's a difference between every single person who is trying to make money out of content or support themselves, support their family in the educational content that they're making, and people who are actively grifting.

But because — oh, this is where it's going to get really spicy really quickly — because ADHD coaching, because education, because a lot of this stuff is so unregulated and kind of just the wild, wild west in terms of like what are your qualifications, where are you getting your training, who is training you, what are their values, what are their morals, what are their ethics?

It gets really dicey really quickly because you can go into it with every good intention in the world, but if you are bad at your job or you've been trained irresponsibly or you don't know how to handle really difficult, really complex situations, you can wind up doing more harm than good. And is that grifting? No, I don't think so. But it's also still damaging. It's also still dangerous. It's also still I think unethical.

Rae: I think all the things that you said of these sort of non-grifters but who can accidentally do harm could be said of therapists, could be said of trained clinicians, could be said of medical doctors. We see them do a lot. There's a lot of people who are bad at their jobs.

Cate: There's a lot of people who are bad at their jobs. I can think of a couple right now. Prominent figures, even.

Rae: But I think there's this kind of thing, when you say what separates a grifter, to me it's somebody who doesn't care. They're like, "This is a great money-making opportunity, people are talking about this, it's the hot topic, how do I get in on this?"

To me it's like this person, instead of having a trench coat jacket full of steaks where they're like, "Hey guys, you want a steak?" That's not really what they're doing, but they're like, "I see a need here. How do I exploit this for my own gain?" And that's different I think than even well-meaning coaches who are not necessarily well-trained or well-meaning therapists or other people who are sort of adjacent to care.

They step in because they're trying to figure out how they can do what they feel to be good. And in some ways I feel like we're having — that's a different conversation about a different but very significant challenge that people in the ADHD field and people who have ADHD face.

But when I think of the pure grifter piece, it really is that exploitative like, "Here's a group of people who wants something. Why shouldn't I be the person to provide it whether I'm qualified or not because I'm going to get paid here no matter what?"

Cate: Yeah, I think that there's that kind of — I don't know why, but I always think of the — oh God, what's the word? — like the Industrial Revolution, like the guys who are just like, "Oh, I see the niche" and I —

Rae: The Robber Barons?

Cate: The Robber Barons! Exactly, that's the word I was looking for. Social media has created this new sort of Robber Baron who is coming into this space and saying, "All right, well, you got a problem, kid. I can solve it."

And it's like, can you? Or are you just taking up space where someone more qualified and more educated could in fact do more good? But because you understand the algorithm, because you understand how to game the system —

(13:46) How the algorithm prioritizes engagement and aesthetics over factual, educational content.

Rae: But I feel like one of the things that you see and I'm interested in this is when we talk about the algorithm. People talk about the algorithm like it's God or astrology or it's this unknowable massive thing. And there is some degree that that's true, but there are also very obvious things that the companies that make these products do to prioritize or de-prioritize content.

And one of the things I'm always curious about is you make this stuff, you put a lot of work into what you put up. And do you see the — like you said, you were being conscientious about making longer-form videos when you had stuff that required a longer explanation. Does that do as well as the "Hey man, I'm so ADHD today"?

Cate: No, never does. I mean that's the thing, is you sort of have to reverse engineer — because first off, the algorithm is unknowable. It's just mysterious, it is fickle. It also varies from platform to platform. So when we're talking about "the algorithm," what we're actually talking about is Meta's algorithm, Facebook's algorithm, Instagram's, TikTok's, YouTube's.

They all have different algorithms that they work under. But for the purposes of this conversation, I think TikTok is one of the more egregious examples of the mysterious unknowing algorithm. But the algorithm is also gamed, right?

So you can be doing everything right. You can be making immaculate perfect videos all day long, and they will still suppress some, make other ones go crazy viral because it's like winning the lottery. It's the dopamine hit of "Oh wow, this video got a million views."

But the next 10 only get 10,000 or 25,000 views. "Maybe if I work harder I can get another million views." And so it incentivizes you to keep trying and keep doing. So it's very insidious just from the way that social media algorithms are predatory towards the people who are making content.

So then the second thing is that yes, absolutely, they do weight things in different ways. So the casual 15-second little dance video while you stand underneath an ADHD fact that may or may not be correct, that's going to do better than a 10-minute deep dive into a specific study because it's about giving people the most content that they can consume at the fastest rate.

And then there's even things like other considerations, things like lighting or even what are you wearing. Videos where I wear makeup are going to do better than videos where I don't. I don't wear makeup and so it's frustrating, but I will see an impact.

The hotter I look, the better my videos are going to do, right? So it has nothing to do with content, it has nothing to do with how effective your communication or your scripting or your education is. It's purely based on what the algorithm is seeing in terms of these things.

And then there's even just considerations like how are you opening the video? Because — so for example, I did a video about burnout the other day and it did pretty well. It did all right. And so I was like, "Do you want to know what the funny thing about burnout is?" So that's your hook.

But you can also say, "One of the things that sucks the most about burnout" or you can say "If you're struggling with burnout, something that you might want to know is" — you have all of these hooks. And so part of being an educator online, it's complicated and it's frustrating because to be an educator, to be somebody who is helping, you also kind of have to participate in the system.

And you have to think about what's the hook that's going to get people, what's the interesting thing that I can be doing in this video to keep people's attention. And so sometimes it's something weird, sometimes it's baking cookies or sometimes it's dressing up in silly costumes or doing all this different stuff. And people look and go, "Well, how is this educational?" And it's like, it's not. The costumes are not educational, but I have to do this in order to —

Rae: It's the delivery system.

Cate: In order to sort of beat the final boss that is the delivery system in order for people to see my content. I don't know where I was going with any of that, but —

Rae: No, that all makes sense to me. But I think one of the things that's fascinating to me about that is there is some element of real life in all of that, right? If somebody seems relatable or more engaging, you might be more likely to choose them as your therapist or your doctor or your friend or somebody you want to have a conversation with.

And likewise, if there's a good hook in an article I write, people are more likely to read it. And we have to game SEO headlines to make sure that the content that we create gets seen, period. This could be the most educational article I've ever written. It pulls on 50 studies, it's perfect, but if it doesn't have "Five things you need to know about ADHD grifters," it's possible no one will ever read or see it.

And so all of that is present in all of these different things, but I kind of get stuck on the idea of the packaging is so important for content creators because that's where I think it falls off. Because then you're like, "Well, my videos do really well when I present them like this." It feels like that could end up de-incentivizing the more in-depth, good educational content.

Because you're doing this work, I do this work, I interview fantastic clinicians all the time. Is every person that I talk to somebody who's like, "I am really great at being on a podcast because I am a clinician who spends hours doing incredibly important research?" No, that's not always the same skill set. Often, but not always. And that's okay, but that may mean that those things don't ever get the "makeup treatment."

You're not going to get Dr. So-and-So looking super hot and doing a TikTok dance and being like, "Here's the reason why you shouldn't do that." It doesn't work that way.

Cate: Yeah, it doesn't. And honestly, something that I really try to be transparent about — at this point, I'm going back to school, I'm working on a PhD because this has become something that is really important to me. But from the very beginning, I've always been very transparent about I'm not a doctor, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a clinician.

I am a nerd whose background is in academia, whose special skill, whose hyperfocus, whose interest happens to be explaining stuff. I'm amazing at explaining stuff. And the number one comment that I get on my videos is "Oh my God, you explained this, you said this in a way that makes total sense to me, I've never heard anybody else explain this so well."

And I don't say that to be like, "Oh my God, I'm so good at making content," but it's important to name that because that's the skill. You can be the world's greatest doctor, the world's greatest therapist, the world's greatest clinician, but if you lack that skill, that ability to hook people, to keep their attention, that information is not going to get out of there.

And I think that's where the grifters come from. Because grifters are people who see that, who understand that part of it. And I think a lot more of the grifting, a lot more of the unethical behavior comes from people who are recognizing how to game the algorithm, how to game the system, how to make the salacious, hot-button, contentious topic, start a shitshow in the comments, but they don't care.

If people are fighting in the comments, if they're arguing, if they're calling you a jerk and a piece of shit or whatever, it's still engagement. The algorithm does not distinguish between a "you're a terrible person" and "this is the best video that I've ever seen." All it says is like, "Hey, you got a comment, hooray, people are engaging."

And so rage-baiting and rage-farming, that is the new — I'm seeing that a lot on text-based platforms, especially Threads and Twitter — I don't even go over there anymore because it's just become a cesspool. But Threads is becoming especially in the ADHD neurodivergent space, a lot of rage-baiting, a lot of clickbaiting, a lot of asking really — I don't want to say dumb questions because that's rude — but questions that they clearly know the answer to, but they are asking in a way that is going to get them a ton of engagement and a ton of views and a ton of likes.

But it's all unethically sourcing people in order to sell their thing or "And I'm an ADHD coach, so if you want help with this," and it's sketchy. It's just all so sketchy.

(18:37) Practical advice for social media users to identify ethical creators and avoid grifters.

Rae: Well, it's sketchy and it also has a materially bad impact on people who are in need. If you're going to get grifted into buying makeup, I honestly don't care. The lipstick you thought you were going to get doesn't look as good on you as it did on the creator — well, that's advertising, babe.

But the people who are looking for information in these areas, like we keep saying, are often people who are either supplementing the care that they're getting with the information they get online or maybe just getting that information and there is no other care. And that to me is where this becomes something that's not just "that's kind of gross" but that's dangerous. That could be truly dangerous and bad.

And I think when we talk about these algorithms, there's so much conversation right now, rightly so, about what responsibility do the people who create these platforms hold for this kind of stuff. And you mentioned so many specific ones: Threads, which is Instagram, and there's X, which as you say, we're not even going to go into. There's all these different places where people go to get this stuff: Instagram, Facebook, whatever.

You're a creator, you make your living on these platforms. In some ways they have to exist for a lot of folks to make a living. But what responsibility do the people who make the products that hold these videos hold? And I know it's an impossible question. It's also how long do you have?

Cate: I'm going to tell you like an hour and a half. To me, that is one of the biggest issues is that there is this really interesting phenomenon that happens. Specifically, I want to talk about eating disorders. Because a while back, Instagram realized that a lot of people were using the platform to create eating disorder positive content, like pro-Ana, pro-bulimia stuff. And that's deeply unhealthy.

And so they were like, "Nope, you can't do that, can't talk about eating disorders." But what they actually did in making that decision is they disallowed conversations around recovery and support and what to do if you are struggling with an eating disorder. And so they actually eliminated a lot of the ability for people to help.

I make a lot of content around the connection between ADHD and eating disorders because one, it's a topic that is very close to my heart, but it's also one that people are really under-educated on and they don't know that there's this huge overlap in the community.

But every time I make one of those videos, I'm risking my platform. I am risking getting demonetized, I'm risking community violations and that kind of stuff. Same with sex and intimacy. Everything I talk about is not allowed on the internet, basically.

But those are the topics that are the most important to me because those are the ones that people also don't know the most about. And so it gets really frustrating because we're fine with half-naked children dancing around on the app, but if we talk about adult topics like eating disorders or sex and intimacy and that kind of thing, then nope, that's community guidelines violation and now you don't have access to your platform and now you've lost your income and now you have to rebuild from scratch.

And that's happened to me a couple of times. My accounts have been taken down, I've had to start completely over, and that sucks. And then the other side of it is that these platforms also offer little to no protection for creators. For example, I have I think right now 12 or 15 different copycat accounts that are just "Catieosaurus 99," "Catieosaurus underscore" or whatever. And they won't do anything about it.

And the terrifying thing, and this is actually happened to me before, is that somebody will start a Facebook page called "Catieosaurus" or whatever. A bunch of people thinking that it's me will follow, in some cases hundreds of thousands of people will start following that page thinking that it's me. Meta won't take it down, they won't do anything about it. You can report it, you can say, "Hey, this person is impersonating me," but they won't do anything about it.

And then that page starts posting military propaganda or child pornography or whatever horrible, racist, terrible thing that you might imagine, but it's being posted under the name Catieosaurus and I can't do anything about it. And that is terrifying. There's a page right now that exists on Facebook that is not me, it is not owned by me, it is not run by me, I have nothing to do with it. And all they do is post far-right Republican military propaganda.

And thankfully, I have built a community and I have built a group of people who know me well enough to believe when I say that's not actually me, I had nothing to do with it, I'm so sorry. And you can pay for verification. If you have $200 to $700 a month, you can pay to be verified by Meta, which I do, but they still don't necessarily protect you.

And so these platforms do the barest, barest bar-and-hell minimum to protect creators because they don't actually care. They don't care about me. I know that TikTok doesn't care about me, I know that Instagram doesn't care about me. What they care about is the fact that I'm pulling in millions and millions, sometimes tens or hundreds of millions of views for them a month and they're profiting off of that because I'm keeping people on their platform.

But I'm just one of a million people talking about ADHD, so if I go away, somebody else is going to take my spot. And it's really dystopian and it's really dark and it's really frustrating. But that's also one of the reasons why grifters are so common, is because they're not looking and saying, "Okay, who's actually being an ethical educator? Who's actually running these accounts?"

Is this account actually being run by Catieosaurus or is it being run by a bot based in Algeria? And they don't check. And so grifters get away with so much more than they ought to because there's just no really good way of moderating and protection. And that makes me real mad.

Rae: Legitimately so, and I'm sorry that happened. Genuinely. I'm pleased that your community knows you well enough to know that's not you. But it makes me think of a thing that I really hadn't thought about before this, which is that in addition to not protecting creators, because these platforms don't necessarily take a heavily involved hand and because things like that can happen — people can steal your account, from someone taking your password to someone doing what you just described of setting up an entirely different page — or just the interest in a subject changing and the eye of Sauron turning towards something different.

Or you put up a video and you think you're doing a good job and then it turns out it gets you banned, whatever it is. If you are a grifter, if you are just dipping a toe into what seems popular to see how much engagement you can get and how much money you can make because of that, and you're like, "Okay, well, that didn't work out," I start a new account, I come in with something else.

It's like the snake oil salesman, right? They pull up stakes, they go to the next town, all of a sudden they're selling baby turtles. It doesn't matter to them what they're peddling because that's not their actual thing. There's no incentive to truly be deeply immersed in a topic or a mission because when it's no longer the popular thing or something like what happened to you happens, you're just like, "Okay, well, I guess I'll just do something else. This is too much trouble now."

And that ends up with a lot of people just putting out whatever old thing comes to their mind as long as it gets engagement. And with ADHD, because the symptoms are so vast and vague to a lot of people, especially if you don't really understand it, you can do all kinds of stuff with that and just keep turning it over and over. Is that what you see when you're in that world? Is that what you see people doing?

Cate: Yeah, I think that's a really fair way of saying it. It's interesting seeing the trends. Because when I first started making content, a lot of it was just around diagnosis and late diagnosis, what ADHD can look like in especially older women, that kind of thing. But now there's this trend of attachment styles and that kind of thing.

There's been other sort of variations on the conversation, and as those conversations shift and change, that's when you start to see the grifters coming out of the woodwork to add their two cents into the conversation. The other thing also has to do with a lot of how the apps have changed. TikTok was a completely different app five years ago.

But they've added the TikTok shop and the TikTok marketplace and all of these incentives, they incentivize creators to participate in shop, in marketplace, in a way that devalues all of the other content on the app. For example — this is a true story, it's crazy — they asked me to be part of this "TikTok creator recommends," right?

So they're like, "We'll tell you, we will tell you, you don't get to choose, we will tell you what products we want you to promote. And if you promote these products, you get a commission." So there are tons of people who are making a living on TikTok just making content that is just enough about ADHD or is just enough about whatever to get the 10 to 15 percent commission rate on however many units of vitamin powder or supplements that they sell.

But they incentivize it even further. I got brought out to LA, I got brought out to the TikTok headquarters to be in this big meeting where they're like, "We're bringing out these creators because we value you so much." And what it was, was literally like an MLM sales pitch that was, "And if you sell enough of this, you get entered into a raffle to win a cruise or to win a Rolex."

And it's all just the vitamin powder and the mushroom powder and the greens powder and this kind of stuff. And here's what you can't say and here's what you can't promise and here's our standards around claiming that it'll cure your cancer — you can't do that — but you can say that it will help with these things or it might support these things.

And so there is specific meddling and specific impact being done by the platform itself in order to incentivize people to sell stuff on their platform. And so what they're doing inadvertently is just giving grifters a silver platter on which to make money, to collect the commissions, while educators like myself who aren't necessarily selling anything, who aren't necessarily coming to it trying to get that sweet, sweet commission, now I'm getting suppressed in the algorithm because I'm not participating in that system.

And I'm opting out of profiting off of my community, and so I get punished for that. So now educators who are doing it ethically and well and trying to do their due diligence in terms of the style of content they're creating, they're literally not being shown by the algorithm because TikTok itself as an organization is prioritizing people who are making them money off of the TikTok shop. And it's so goddamn unfair. And I know that "it's not fair" is not like a useful thing —

Rae: No, but I think this is an unfair thing that you have to specify it, otherwise it just seems normal.

Cate: Yeah, and it's all different places where you can make money. But the number one place that you can make money as a creator is getting commissions by recommending products or mentioning products or even showing products in a video. And as somebody — and again, this is maybe just me being pure as the driven snow or whatever — but I really intentionally said I don't want to make money off of my community in that way.

I would like to make money off of my content in so much as when people look at my content, I make money. So I get money off of views and stuff like that. So I want to make good content. I want to make educational content. But I don't want to paywall my content. I don't want people to feel like they have to buy something in order to earn access to my content. And right now, the only thing that I am even beginning to sell is my book.

And it's not self-published, it's coming out through Simon & Schuster. And so that has even been kind of strange because TikTok doesn't even — if you're not selling through TikTok shop, they still don't want you talking about your stuff. So even when I'm like "I have this book coming out," because the book is not yet out, it can't be sold in the TikTok shop because they don't do pre-orders.

So even trying to ethically bring people to my content to be like, "Hey, I did do this thing and you can pre-order this book if you like," they're still de-prioritizing that over self-published or otherwise created things that already exist, whether or not they are well-written or useful in any way, shape, or form.

Rae: I mean, this is a hard follow to the deeply dystopian world that we have been inhabiting for this entire interview. But is there any hope? Is there any place where — we can't count on the platforms. There's no incentive for them to change the way that they incentivize behavior, right?

But as consumers of social media, which we all are basically at this point, I would say, whether it's deeply or casually, you can't really avoid it. How, as someone who's seen it from behind the curtain, can people on the other side consume content in a more thorough or thoughtful way that does something to circumvent the grifters? Or is that even possible at all?

Cate: I definitely think it is. I think some of it is really putting on your critical analysis hat when you are looking at content. There are several big creators in the neurodivergent space who are essentially nothing but call-out creators.

Their whole brand, their whole thing is just "This person said something in a way that I don't particularly like and so we're all going to pile on this person and criticize them and get mad." If that's the kind of content you are consuming because it is part of the neurodivergency online conversation, ask yourself what are they getting out of it? Are they actually protecting the community? Are they actively advocating for the community or are they trying to make themselves the biggest fish in the pond by ousting people who they feel threatened or otherwise opposed to, I guess.

The second thing is looking for creators who are citing sources, who are citing studies. That's a big thing, not to toot my own horn, but that's something that I always do. If I'm referring to a study, it is screenshotted in the background behind me because I want people to be able to go to that study and say, "Hey, Cate, actually you misinterpreted this" or "This is actually not a great explanation."

So citing studies, talking about studies, being aware of just the messaging. Are you less than? Are you broken? Being aware of the way that they talk about neurodivergency, the way that they focus on — is it all based in struggles and everything is bad and you're broken and life is terrible and nobody accepts us? Or is it coming from a place of education and support and giving you skills?

There's so many — I've been guilty of this too — but there's so many videos that's "Here's a terrible problem that a lot of people have, bye." And it's like, okay, well, who is that helping, right?

The other thing, and I think the most important thing, is that once you find a creator who you respect, who you admire, whose content is something that is helping you, figuring out where they are keeping their information. In particular, joining newsletters, signing up for Patreons, that kind of thing. That is such a powerful way to support creators.

Especially right now, we're seeing this really interesting turn in social media where influencer culture is kind of dying. I think that's sort of a direct response to the economy and the way that people are struggling. But what that means is that a lot of creators like myself who aren't necessarily influencers, we're also seeing our numbers go down, we're also seeing our ability to get our messaging and our education out there.

And so joining a newsletter, being able to be in direct contact with that creator in a space that they own, going to their website, that kind of thing, that's really important and really crucial to keeping those creators able to work and able to give you the content that you are enjoying.

Thank you so much to Cate for coming on today. Cate is going on tour across the U.S. starting in spring, and she's also got a new book coming out. It's called "The ADHD Field Guide for Adults" and you can pre-order it now. And she hosts the "Sorry I Missed This" podcast for us here at Understood.org.

We'll have links to Cate's website and tour dates and her podcast in the show notes. 

"Hyperfocus" is made by me, Rae Jacobson, and Cody Nelson.

Our music comes from Blue Dot Sessions. Our research correspondent is Dr. KJ Wynne. Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Alyssa Shea.

Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director. Production support provided by Andrew Rector.

If you have any questions for us or ideas for future episodes, write me an email or send a voice memo to hyperfocus@understood.org. 

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson.

Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences, like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, donate at understood.org/give.