The emergence of new media marks the formation of an attention economy that is conceptualized as the inversion of the "information economy", in which information is plentiful and attention is the scarce resource. Most of the researchers, whose ideas we rely, consider the attention economy at the macro level - from the point of view of global corporations' interests and their pragmatic goals. This explains the emphasis on the economic, political, marketing, etc. aspects of this phenomenon. There is a certain theoretical gap in the study of the attention economy at the micro level - from the point of view of the users themselves. Our article is intended to make a certain contribution to this area. For this purpose, we reveal the reasons why people participate in the attention economy (not only voluntarily, but also involuntarily), as well as the factors that contribute to their involvement. We conclude that the attention economy is associated with the formation of a new social type of person - demonstrative.