  A hallmark of the attention economy is the competition for the attention of
others. Thus people persistently upload content to social media sites, hoping
for the highly unlikely outcome of topping the charts and reaching a wide
audience. And yet, an analysis of the production histories and success dynamics
of 10 million videos from \texttt{YouTube} revealed that the more frequently an
individual uploads content the less likely it is that it will reach a success
threshold. This paradoxical result is further compounded by the fact that the
average quality of submissions does increase with the number of uploads, with
the likelihood of success less than that of playing a lottery.
