Watching the rise of Donald Trump it seems to be such a natural confluence of human tendencies, and changes in the media.

From the earliest times of the town crier alerting people to events to the instagram image people have been drawn to those elements of life that are the most provocative.The news adage “If it bleeds, it leads” has never been more true.

With the rise of news outlets from personal Facebook pages to blogs, forums, and every traditional media outlet all publishing and sharing the same news the law of supply and demand comes into effect. Since the human attraction to the most provocative, dramatic and lurid is so profound, the most adrenaline producing news has come to have even greater importance.

Hence news in the form of text, images, video, since it can appear in so many places is devalued. As that devaluation has taken place we’ve seen the rise of mobile internet use. By its nature, the mobile consumption of media is typically more brief.

Every single media outlet has been forced to cut back, push harder for viewers or readers or listeners since they must compete with so many other ways people’s attention can be directed. This means that the most violent, bloody, or dramatic news possible in an attempt to get and hold people’s attention is ever more common.

Donald Trump understands this perhaps better than any other person in politics. He is willing to be provocative, to say things that produce anger, opposition, and gain the attention of the media. Indeed, by writing about Donald Trump here, even in an observational way about the effect his behavior has on the media. his name will show up in search engines, and gain attention, probably some comments, and give him even more attention.

He is leveraging the increasingly short human attention span, the human interest in the provocative, and the anger people feel toward politicians who can seemingly accomplish very little. That itself is in part the product of the polarized media with Democrats and Republicans lobbing verbal bombshells at one another but gaining no real ground. Worse, they come no closer to compromise and genuine progress.

It’s useful to remain aware of the potential to be manipulated by paying attention to only one set of voices. Listen to all of them.

Make up your own mind.