stop saying “content”

why?

why have we gotten to this point? what caused it?

I don’t know, really. a leading theory by a friend of mine is that influencers started realizing that people hated influencers, and decided to distance themselves from the term.

that’s a nice theory, I guess, and I want to think it’s kind of true. I haven’t heard the term “influencer” used seriously in quite a while. rats, they all are.

though I don’t think that’s the whole story. I think things kinda just, changed in our interfaces--how the corporate marketers described their userbase has shifted. a little, at least. youtube changed the description of “things uploaded on your channel” from “videos” to “content” some time between september 2020 and january 2021 (I don’t recommend opening these in a non-private session lest one wishes to plague their recommendations with entrepreneur slop). I don’t think this was a response to shifting language, but rather the source of the language shift. when the words used to describe a thing are imbued in the interfaces one uses to interact with the creation of a thing, the new language shadows the original words.

youtube used “youtuber” in october 2020, yet ”creators” that produced “exceptional content” in 2024. of course, they’ve always kinda used “content” if you ctrl+f hard enough, but I feel like we, as beings in the world, thought of it as “corporate speak” that we shouldn’t adopt

and yet we did

it sucks though

creatures make things. living things with sentience make things. they make videos, books, posts, blogs, art, music, whatever. it’s a creative process, one that laborious hours, days, weeks, maybe months, and maybe years are put into. by calling the things we create “content”, we lose that creative process. it shifts the focus of art from the process--the creative juices and work put into an art piece--to the result. the thing to be Consumed, by Consumers, as part of the Content Market, where likes are power and money’s the end all be all of whatever you create.

by calling things “content”, we implicitly support this dynamic. the dynamic of corporations controlling the art we create, reducing it to views, likes, and followers. we implicitly shift our mind to the false idea that the end result is the sole part of creation that matters. not relaxation, not allowing our creative mind to flow, not for the simple self-fulfillment of pursuing an idea. what matters is that your Followers get the Content that they want, and your enjoyment of creation should be put on the sideline for them

this “creator economy” is fueled by malice. we constantly butt heads with others and put ourselves down over the most menial things--”this art isn’t worth $5000”, “you shouldn’t be gatekeeping information”, “why did this get 1000 likes, but my serious work only gets 50?”. these problems have always existed--I’m not saying they’re new by any means--but it kinda feels more. I dunno. harsh now. meaningful? by stealing away followers and likes, ruining the “economy” brought on by the Gods above, who can make whatever changes they want for whatever reason? yeah. it’s hard to describe.

it’s a stupid dilemma of “artists need to make money because our shitty society doesn’t have UBI” and “art should be for the artist’s sake, not for anyone else’s”. the 2nd breaks down because the 1st is true. when artists need to create art to survive, they’re not creating for their own sake, but rather for the sake of others, wherein likes bring in ad revenue and adopts and sticker sales and t-shirt sales and what have you. all for the benefit of the corporations running the “platforms” we use.

society is a mess.

am I alone?

I’ve only seen one person blog about this and one other person make a reddit post about it. maybe there’s more laments across microblogging sites or youtube videos or private MUCs, but not many people are saying it outright

so, I dunno, be loud about it. call the things your favorite artists make art. your favorite documentarians’ videos documentaries. your favorite blogger’s blog posts… blog posts. books, novels, short stories, audio, music, sound design, gadgets, doodads, doohickeys, whatever. the more people stop using that corporatized, demeaning, way-too-general word, the better in my books

just stop saying it

I’m not saying ban it all together, of course. that’d be awkward. “table of contents” is a pretty established phrase I’d say, and trying to change that due to the actions of corporatespeak isn’t quite the battle we should be fighting. content is still a perfectly fine word when used to describe… the contents of something. “the content of the video”, “the content of this post”--there’s no better word for that kind of thing. I’m just saying to not use the word to describe the thing that some being made itself

I propose a split of the word--capital-C Content and lowercase-c content. reserve Content for the youtube trending tab. reserve Content for the seo-optimized slop that plagues a googler’s front page. reserve Content as an insult, not as the default. make Content Creator an insult to those making Content for the sole purpose of gaming something--living off our attention, and not for their own sake. then reserve the words identifying the thing created for the living beings. the artists. the documentarians. the bloggers. all the like. an artist makes art--or music, sometimes; a blogger builds a blog; a documentarian makes documentaries; an essayist makes opinion pieces, video essays, whatever it may be. just, not “content”. lowercase-c content shall be used when appropriate, of course. the content of this blog post supports that claim

thanks for reading. more text-focused content on the way. be sure to Follow and Like each post, as that’s obviously what matters the most