The Platform Lords

“…design stories that feel inevitable rather than arbitrary.”

As writers, we benefit from a clearer understanding of our world.
So, I asked Copilot A.I. “What kind of people today operate beyond the control of nations?”

COPILOT:
A hybrid class has emerged. These are the technologists, capital allocators, data monopolists, algorithmic governors, and attention merchants. They control cloud infrastructure, global communication channels, AI models, data flows, digital identity, and supply chains.

This new class controls the infrastructure of thought, shapes public attention, influences elections, mediates commerce, and sets the terms of digital life. These are the meta‑actors who control the environment in which all other actors operate.

Writers benefit from understanding these “Dominant Actors” in world-building. They can use them to build societies with coherent power dynamics; design factions that feel inevitable rather than arbitrary; and show how knowledge, secrecy, and technology shape their civilization.
It’s a worldbuilding scaffold as strong as Campbell’s monomyth.

Take the phrase “Attention merchants” for example. It includes them all:
Advertisers sell products. Politicians sell narratives and votes. Newscasters sell urgency and worldview. Pundits sell identity and allegiance. Influencers sell lifestyle and parasocial intimacy. Even some educators and activists sell frameworks and moral clarity.
All of them operate in the same economy: the attention economy. And the currency? Your time, your focus, your emotional bandwidth.
It’s a powerful lens for writers, too. You can ask: Who are the attention merchants in my story? What are they selling -and to whom? What tactics do they use: fear, beauty, outrage, charm? What happens when a character refuses to buy?
“Attention merchants” is one of those phrases that slices clean through the noise.

When you see that we’re living under “Platform Lords,” you suddenly have clearer villains, clearer stakes, and clearer systemic pressures. Writers who understand the real power structures of their era write sharper, more resonant stories.

[Image and COPILOT content by Copilot A.I.]