You “create content” if what you’re after is just money, and “content” is this malleable goo you have to produce and shove it down the algorithm so that it gets “traffic”, another form of goo that gets “funneled” and “converted” into money.
In other words, it loses all (human) meaning.
So yes, if you care at all, you shouldn’t “create content”. You should be writing essays, recording tutorials, training, music, conversations, etc. the kind of things you care about, for an audience whose attention you don’t take for granted, hoping that they too will care at least a little. If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work.
A long time ago Simon Peyton Jones said Haskell tries to "avoid success at all costs".
He was being cheeky, but it honestly is how I try and approach most of what I do that isn't directly related to my employment (as a software person).
My blog posts are just for me; I don't market them, I don't expect anyone else to read them, I don't spam links to all my friends every time I post anything.
I have no idea if my writing could make any money in any universe, but since it's not my source of income I don't want to be beholden any kind of "monetization incentives".
I agree with everything except the last sentence. Humans are not rational agents, doubly so when it comes to money and spending. There are many communities where charging even a nominal fee for your work leads to backlash due to built up expectations of free contribution.
I'm not sure if they're irrational. Payment/subscription fatigue is a thing. Today it seems like you have to pay to breathe. It's suffocating. I often go through periods where I reject every money ask compulsively, the same way as I would "disconnect".
It's quite interesting how quality of life gets inverted in non intuitive ways. If you travel to a "developing country" you notice you are no longer bombarded with ads. Watching YouTube is close to the premium experience, bc the country presents no ad revenue to Google. You then travel to a "developed" country and you can't watch a 5 minute video without watching 2 ads.
Everything is a transaction, it is too easy to transact. People used to just write, to just make music. Sure, they need to eat, but they lie. You hear people that make insane amouns of money asking for a coffee. imho, writing is a thing you to to share knowledge, to have a conversation, to learn, etc. It is a way to also get people to know you better, and maybe learn about the things you do that they would want to pay for. So unless writing is your full time job, asking money for it leaves a bad taste.
> I'm not sure if they're irrational. Payment/subscription fatigue is a thing.
Payment fatigue is an irrational thing, at least in the context of what a rational economic agent is. Rationally, you pay for what you value, at roughly what it is valued to you, and you don't pay for you want you don't value. Transactions are fatiguing precisely because we are not rational agents. Humans live primarily on emotion and ingrained behavior, with small bursts of applying logic.
It's not the core idea of "fatigue of paying for value" itself but something more akin to "fatigue of keeping track of which things were actually worth paying for, which starts to take more value than you can create with the same amount of time or could get with a few well thought out larger payments". It's usually brought up around subscriptions precisely because they are a lot of work to track but easy to forget.
I am so glad someone said this! I get really mad when a PR person writes the word content in the press release for my company. We don't create content.
To me "content" means you don't know what you are making or you are very embarrassed about it. We make art or entertainment that people pay for.
In general there are two axis I think about in media. One axis is originality, the other axis is durability. Very unoriginal is a transcription of information everyone already knows. Investigative reporting that reveals new information is very original. A creative story is original.
Durability is how long the thing will have some value. They can put the Wizard of Oz in Sphere today. A Tik Tok video will probably be forgotten in a day or two. You could call that "quality" but that's harder to define and measure.
Value is created in being as original and durable as possible. Platforms want you to be the opposite-- that's the slop they call content.
> There is a tug of war between people and platform as such across this diagonal axis.
People want value whereas platforms want content, the incentives between a viewer and platform/content creator are getting broken because of the overhead incentive of the platform/content creator for money aka content.
There are some places where its not the case, namely wikipedia (aside from its recent controversies) and archive.org both being non-profit, though there are issues with non-profits as well in terms of their funding and other things.
Open source being the example of it in terms of how much value it gives us but there is a lack of funding of that as well.
There has to be some balance in all of it but it seems that the balance is binary-like. Either we are seeing mostly open source underfunded software or we are seeing platforms/content-creators using their power for more money.
It also comes to the point that GP comment makes though, content is created by the expectation of profit and so that is its benchmark but value is created for something more emotional but people also like to eat food and would prefer to do so doing work on open source/the work they like for example but then it also pushes itself into content boundary rather than value.
@tombert has a comment about it which says that they are writing blogs and creating value for the sake of it because they have job on the side and its just the first example that I got reading this thread but many people actually create value as such, but as such they are creating value "in-spite" of incentives and the actual incentives are working on the opposite side of value creation.
It is similar to how actual Musicians in music industry are really exploited by all the systems around them yet they still create Music (value) in-spite of all of it because creating music (value) means more to them than all the issues and there is something human about creating value/music. Here's an extremely good video about it[0]
if money follows content and content follows money, perhaps content is just value which follows money and being shallow rather than something deeper and all these dynamics that interact with each other are leading to a tug of war in the first place.
The flexibility you bemoan in content creation is the exact same search people perform when running a startup. Finding product-market fit is a search process and content creators do the same thing. They see what customers like and focus in on that. Is it somewhat soulless? For sure. It is not unique to content creation though.
"You should be writing essays, recording tutorials, training, music, conversations, etc. the kind of things you care about... If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work"
Is an AI company webcrawler sucking up your novel work, for free, only to goop it out to everyone else without compensating you a dime. And while you worked so hard to genuinely create something, that won't be amplified by internet algorithms so no real human will see it, another person will do a dance or be funny, edgy, unethical, controversial, and get 1000x the human eyeballs, money, and power - probably using AI to write the very words they regurgitate.
There are all kinds of people out there generating meaningful content on their own terms that will never get picked up by the algorithm. I hate the content mills as much as anyone else, but the fact is that they exist because internet economy rewards them. The entire ecosystem incentivizes the soulless "goo" you describe over the meaningful work people are doing.
Ice T said it best: "Don't hate the player, hate the game".
Entertaining people is useful! In my opinion, it is probably one of the most ethical ways to make money. I think game development is in that category too. It is a very pure field where you are giving a consumer something they enjoy and seek out.
Ethical all depends on if what you are doing is really you. Whether you are being you. The same way with any creative pursuit. There is a significant difference between creativity for creativities sake and creativity marketed to exploit.
> If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work.
Paying for access to "content" that isn't capital is a bizarre business model. The only reason it ever existed is because the medium (paper, videotape) was expensive. The smart reason you pay people is because you want them to continue producing, not because you want to continue consuming.
If I have something to say, it's a favor people are doing for me when they read it. In the real world, you beg for people to listen to you.
Influential people already know this. I don't sponsor people who do journalism or write about politics so I can entertain myself. I don't need them to continually convince me of things I already believe, and any entertainment that I get from the uncovering of corruption is prurient. The reason I send them money is so that other people might come to believe what I believe, and so that other people will see the corruption that I disapprove of.
Most other free "content creation" is in fact people advertising themselves as useful capital, hoping to be acquired by other people who think that they can make a profit. "Content creation" is a cargo cult; if you're lucky, 1) somebody sees you as capital and buys you, or 2) somebody else who shares your ability to profit off a related range of content notices you, and you create a mutually beneficial community.
If you're unlucky, you just do random stuff with no object. Or I should say very lucky, because you're already being subsidized by someone else - the proof is that you're eating and not cooking.
There's always been way too much "content," long before the internet. In fact, the internet is currently in the midst of an orgy of content destruction in order to protect capital, while criminals are the ones attempting to preserve and distribute that content.
I actually really like the term content creator, because it removes the artificial boundaries that come with being a writer, photographer, filmmaker, etc. and just lets you make stuff. The medium doesn't matter if you're a content creator, to a large extent.
The alternative is "art" but that comes with a lot of other baggage that often sounds unintentionally pretentious, especially if you aren't actually creating paintings/sculptures/traditional/contemporary studio art. The word creative used to serve a similar purpose, but nowadays I think it sounds both blasé and pretentious.
Yes, content does come with an expectation that you're creating things for an commercial audience; however, I think content is tied to media, and not merely any sort of created object. And so by extension you are participating in the global media sphere by making content, and not just painting for your own enjoyment.
It’s also worth pointing out that while Michelangelo did think of himself as an artist and a sculptor and painter, those professions were basically tradesmen at the time. The concept of high art, in the purely non-economic way we think of today, didn’t come for centuries after his life.
As an artist (former, really[0]), I can confirm that the medium really, really matters. It can inform the creation, as much as the creator.
There are top-shelf authors that insist on writing everything in cursive, in legal pads (God help the poor schlubs that have to transcribe it, though). They insist that they can’t be creative, otherwise. There are musicians (like Rhiannon Giddens), that always perform barefoot.
Most of the Great Masters could work in many mediums, and they chose specific media, to do specific works, because they knew that the medium would “push back,” and inform the work.
Michelangelo was quoted as saying something like he “saw the statue in the stone,” and that was why selecting the rock was as important as any other part of the process.
Many folks take great pains, to do their work in specific contexts, as that affects their creativity.
Creativity isn’t something that is easy to commoditize.
I meant that the medium doesn’t lock you into how others perceive you and your work. Not that mediums are interchangeable from the creator’s perspective.
Heh. I have written stuff that has changed the world. Not in a big way, but thousands and thousands of people around the world use my stuff daily, and no one knows I had anything to do with it. I’m still at it. I’m getting ready for the first public test of a fairly ambitious app.
My friends use my stuff all the time, and they are always gobsmacked, when they find out I did it.
I do it for free, and tend to follow my own muse, as opposed to $_BUZZWORD_DU_JOUR, so tech folks aren’t really impressed, when I mention it (like, now, I suspect).
It’s not really very rewarding to talk about it. Either people get all impressed, or insulting (the typical HN reaction). Neither does much for me, so I’m best off just keeping my mouth shut, and my mind on my work. There’s others that are much better than me. I’m just grateful to be able to Give Back.
That’s not pretension; it’s just facts. But there’s often no need to mention the facts.
"Content" is giving in to the idea that what you make only has value because it can fill some hole between ads in somebody else's CMS. What it is doesn't matter, it's just content. Meh.
> The alternative is "art"
Maybe. Or alternative could be to use the words you used in your first sentence: writer, photographer, filmmaker.
If you talk about your work using deflationary words like content then that could affect how you think about it and present it. Do yourself a favor and use grand words because I bet it's important to you.
I'm with you. I would prefer to be known as a "content creator" rather than a "woodworker" or "game developer" or "illustrator" or "writer" or "musician". Especially because all of that work tends to overlap all of the time. It feels so limiting to be described by a singular part of what I do. And I'm neurotic enough to want a 'comprehensive' word, rather than to slash myself to death in a description.
I don't particularly like the term "content creator". It feels too blunt and sterile to be particularly useful. But it does seem to be generally useful in how wide-reachingly descriptive it is.
Anecdata, but I find it funny you mentioning woodworker and musician. I build guitars and I play them. There is /some/ overlap, but only at the end result of me playing the guitar I have built. If I were to distill either of the two disciplines into 'content' each endeavor would lose its own individual meaning for me.
Being a musician has nothing to do with the output of working with wood, and likewise, my prowess on gouges, chisels, and saws is irrespective of my ability to write an interesting chord progression. Using a catch-all term to amalgamate the output of multiple specializations I think detracts from the results being, well... special.
I can certainly understand that, but I don't lend any specialness to anything I do, which may be why I don't consider any of it as needing to be differentiated for its craft. It's very useful to be specific when going in to specifics, but it seems very pedantic to be specific when I'm being general or broad. It might stem from just having so many different areas of interest. Feels braggadocios to keep chiming in with "I do that too", when I could just cover everything with "I create various types of content".
Though, I will admit that I never include cooking in that. Food, for some reason, has never felt, to me, like "content". Can't say I've ever interrogated why.
for me the distinction is that pre-"content" you created a website so you have a place to host your art; with "content" you produce art to have something to put on your website.
I agree. It's a generic word since it has a generic meaning.
I know there's a big bias against 'business speak' among engineers. But a lot of the time, it's just a matter of abstracting in a domain engineers typically don't work in. It's useful to describe from the 'business' point-of-view since terms like this can be used to analyze the similarities across these similar 'content creation' type businesses.
I'm trying to think of a similar case where to an outsider, the 'tech speak' jargon a software engineer would use seems useless to an outsider. Maybe things like 'framework', or 'deployment', or 'library', or web application instead of web site.
I appreciate this push-back. I keep a running list of words like this...content, product, device, experience, space, vehicle, resource, etc. I can't put my finger on why, but all of these make me distrust the speaker.
Yeah I have a similar list. Mine also includes "journey". As soon as a word gets adopted by MBAs to abstract away the real world, it gets added to my list. They're words that project the idea of a smart person but only to stupid people.
I know a few people who unironically call themselves that. They sound awesome, but scratch beneath the surface of what they say... there's nothing there.
I saw a news article recently where the headline was something about someone's "cancer journey". Maybe I'm old - only 51! - but I thought it was kind of a tasteless way to put it. That said, language is a malleable thing and no one needs my approval.
All these words are too broad is why. It allows someone to say something without really knowing what they mean. But also they may know what they mean, so you are not sure!
Device is a handy one though you often want to say "computer, laptop, tablet or phone" in one go. We could call them all computers but that would confuse people I think.
Yeah exactly, It is meant to mean/sound something in a way which could impress people or get any desirable outcome but in reality it means nothing or sometimes even opposite in a way similar to double-speak, recent layoffs and how they are worded seems to be another example.
These words are sometimes like schrodingers cat and this is also what I have observed that within recent layoffs, its really hard to accurately find what the real intent behind it was within some companies and there is no wide consensus.
Perhaps this is their true purpose, to hide the real intent behind things and perhaps (to give the benefit of doubt?)
I don't know how common it is but I can't stand "consume" for "eat/drink". Especially when used in the first person. Why would anybody say that about what they eat?
It’s a conflict of interest. When people organically create things online with no incentive except the love, you can give them a lot of trust. Once someone goes from that to manufacturing “content” (or even worse goes from nothing to “content”) there’s major incentive to either shill for some product for compensation, or to generate outlandish things that get more clicks, views, likes, subscribes. All of this is antithetical to creating about a subject because you enjoy the subject.
From about 1998-2008 I ran one of the largest sites on the internet for a particular niche. Zero advertisers, no ads, no shady links, just content about a subject I loved. I worked hard to make sure it was accurate and up to date. Now someone creating the same site would be loads of referral links or paid ads, so no trust whatsoever in what’s being presented.
I get a similar ick when I hear someone say "I enjoy consuming this type of content." They're not selling anything, but they are still adopting the soulless language. Like, if it still exists after you interact with it, you haven't consumed anything. Second, do you really see yourself this way? Why not just say "I love to read travel blogs"?
Content used to be a bad word, now kids want to become content creators when they grow up.
I was hired at a job the very same day Google released their first Panda update[0]. This was the update that nuked all content farmers from search results. It was complete chaos, I sat in an empty cubicle, not knowing if I should stay or leave while the manager cursed and paced. Our ad revenue went from millions to zero, overnight. Unfortunately, they figured out a trick to game google. Which I guess meant I remained employed.
Defense and Military you can want to work there for such nebulous ideas such as serving your nation, protecting your loved ones, security, etc. This would require you to actually believe in said abstract concepts like nationalism, community, family, culture, or truth, so that you actually want to defend your homeland though. This is easier to believe for me than the innumerable start ups that were making the world a better place via ad placement click through rates.
This resonates with me. I’ve always found the term annoying, because it felt like it was distilling artistic expression down to its most abstract form: content. If all you’re producing is abstract “content,” why should I participate? What makes it special?
I feel the same way. I want to watch movies and listen to music and read books! I don't want to "consume content." That phrase feels like it reduces my role to just be a generic pac-man gobbling up whatever bland grays dots of vague content are "created" and set down in front of me. That's not what it should be.
I see that abstraction as the purpose of the word when viewing it from a 'business' context: when assessing businesses of the same kind, the actual thing that's being produced matters a lot less.
I'd suppose that blog writers and video producers have a lot of the same kinds of business problems: how people can discover [the thing they create] and spread awareness of it or make money off it.
In order to be able to discuss this category of business, it's useful for writers and video producers to be able to relate to each other by abstracting out the thing that actually makes them distinct and particular.
I see it less as devaluing that special thing and more as a lens to put on or take off when certain audiences are interested in the 'non-special' aspects of running businesses based on that special thing.
Since 2002 Richard Stallman has spoken again using term "content" this way.
> using the word as a noun to describe works and communications through which people have expressed themselves adopts an attitude you might rather avoid: it treats them as a commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it disparages all the works by subordinating them to the box that is full.
I believe there is a material difference between "content" and other modes of creative output: content is defined by a pipeline. It is desired for it's recurring revenue.
You could make the tackiest, most commercial and derivative musical, but it's still not content because it's just one.
You could make the most eloquent, poetic and inventive podcast in the world, but so long as you are still doing weekly releases (with ads, plus an ad free patreon, of course) it is content.
The tragedy is that we want artists to have reliable income, but the business models, incentives and consumption habits that come with the reliable output to provide that reliable income lead us to the ugliness that people blame on "content".
I like the kind of output artists make when they work on individual creative projects. I don't really like the kind of output artists make when they feel they need to crank out something every week that has to have roughly equal appeal to the exact same audience.
But the way the internet (and other mass media) scales means that only the latter can really have a business model and reliable income attached.
I think artists are too attached to solo work and should hire people to crank out variants on their successful vision or license their ideas so that they can continue having new ideas.
Thank you to the author for questioning this ridiculous terminology
"Content" implies there is something else, besides content, that is found on the www
It's garbage, not The New Yorker, for example
When data collection, surveilllance and advertising is the sole "business model" then traffic is the business goal, not "content" (The New Yorker does not rely 100% on advertising, it also has subscription revenue)
"Content is king" but it is not an absolute requirement for traffic
That's why "Big Tech" companies are intermediaries (middlemen), they do not need to create "content"
Website operators without content have been buying traffic since the early years of the www
The www is infested with middlemen with no content
They profit from traffic
Content makes good bait for traffic but Big Tech cannot charge subscriptions for it because it isn't theirs; they have to pay for a license
I don't think a content creator would naturally describe themselves as a content creator. The word is useful for contexts where you need to generalize over all the different types, but that's not useful when speaking about yourself. So a writer says "I'm a writer", not "I'm a content creator." But writing this paragraph, I needed a word to generalize.
P.S. The closest alternative word might be artist, but it's not quite right--some writers are artists and some aren't.
I agree, and the audience also matters too. A writer speaking to writers at a writing workshop? "I'm a writer." A writer at an independent business conference? "I'm a content creator", as a means to relate to people making videos, blog posts, photographs, tweets, etc.
Some 'content creators' might also do: videos, blog posts, photographs, tweets, and a lot of other activity that drives the same business: getting user 'engagement' for sponsorship or advertising revenue.
I feel that all the terms mentioned are useful in specific contexts. Web traffic brings visitors to your resource. If they read your blog, they become readers. If they use your products, they become users. When someone buys something from you, they become a customer.
> I feel that all the terms mentioned are useful in specific contexts. Web traffic brings visitors to your resource. If they read your blog, they become readers. If they use your products, they become users. When someone buys something from you, they become a customer.
I'll respectfully disagree. I think those terms make sense if you're talking in general terms, but if you're an individual person talking about your work, they're generic catchall terms with better alternatives.
Like, in concrete terms, let's say I publish funny cartoons on my website and sell prints of those cartoons. It doesn't make sense for me to say "web traffic brings visitors to my resource." What traffic? What resource? It would be more meaningful to say, "Visitors find my website through Google search."
Surprisingly it was quite easy to read the blog post and well written. However, the author definitely has the gift of gab in writing in terms he can write about anything, but at the same time convey nothing meaningful
The answer is quite patently that, in this brave new world, people with noticeable writing skill will face that false cry on a regular basis from the literary lowest-common-denominator.
I keep getting people saying they think my posts are AI-generated because I use hyphens in sentences (not M-dashes though, I can never remember the compose key for it), and because I use the term "load bearing" in a pisstakey way - like for instance, "yet another instance of load-bearing idiocy by management".
> When I found myself using a corp-speak term, I questioned whether there was another word that felt more natural and communicated the same thing.
In other scenarios the non "corp-speak" term feels kind of wrong and the "corp-speak" one is actually better though. I feel like this is all just a realization about what the goal of the business actually is and a realization of just how many different goals you could have. In this case it sounds like it's just to do some good writing, not to grow for the sake of making more money or whatever else. And that makes a huge difference in how you talk about it of course.
Also if someone used the word "lead" I'd conclude that they... work in sales? How can that mean anything about whether they'll be helpful to you or not?
Ok one more thought: sometimes the corp-speak feels way less stuck up than "oh actually, I'm a writer. I measure progress not from other people being willing to pay me some money, but in terms of my own highly refined taste. I have many leather-bound books, and..."
I make electronic music as a hobby, and I feel the same way about the term "producer".
I understand the history behind where that term came from. (The people who were making musical decisions while standing behind the mixing board often were initially producers: people whose job it was to oversee the entire production and coordinate between the musicians, engineers, etc. Then when DJs at discotheques wanted longer versions of songs for dancefloors, remixes were invented. Producers took existing recordings and made longer versions. Then electronic dance music sort of evolved out of that.)
But it still feels like such a soulless term. And most "producers" today are just sitting at home alone with a laptop and Ableton, so the role is very different than it was.
Yes one of my very favorite albums! I'd put it in my top 10 easy, and I listen to a lot of music. I still remember when a friend of mine dropped the needle and I heard it for the first time.
The Thriller album is more popular, but I like Off The Wall better.
The term "user" maybe made sense before any software was commercialized. It differentiated the programmer of the software from the non-programmer that used the software. Even then it was sometimes used derogatorily (especially when people were sneered at as "Lusers"). In the original Tron the Good Guys had to fight for the users.
A good point overall. It's skin-deep, though. Do you think a catch-all name is useful for something like content? Is it only distasteful on the internet/TV/etc. because of the negative impacts of mass-production and commoditisation, or is the idea itself inherently distasteful?
I don't really have anything against the existence of the catchall term "content." Like, I don't expect the CEO of YouTube to say, "music, short film, art, comedy, journalism, ..., creators" every time he talks about YouTube users. It makes sense from their perspective to bucket everything into "content."
The thing I found interesting was just that the language had crossed over to people where it doesn't make sense to bucket everything. If I'm a blogger, I can just say "blogger" and it's more meaningful than "content creator" but I think the people running small businesses or doing creative work have needlessly adopted the big bucket terminology of "content."
> But I did notice an immediate change, especially with words like “traffic.” Traffic makes me feel like I’m just throwing out flypaper and measuring whatever sticks. When I describe website visitors as “readers,” it reminds me that these are real people who have literally billions of other things they could be reading that day, but they’re choosing to spend some of their limited time with me.
Yes I agree. Content is an empty word, and can mean anything, and sort of means nothing. I get why large corporations would want to use the term as they do everything in bulk and need a general term, but for a solo writer, youtuber, etc, better to think of it as the thing, e.g. "tutorial", "podcast", "exploration".
The first paragraph seems to insinuate that "content" is replacing "art", but that doesn't seem at all related to what the author's actual work looks like, nor does it seem related to the thrust of the argument, which is about how descriptions of your work influence how you think about it. The entire blog looks more like "content" than David to my eyes, but maybe that's because most of the blog predates this shift in the author's thinking?
I'm not trying to argue that art is sacred and we have to hold it up over everything else, but I am joking that there is still an implicit boundary where we don't use "content" to refer to things that we respect highly.
I think a lot of people that talk about "art" vs. "content" are talking about art vs. business, but I'm more arguing about big vs. small and aggregation vs. individuality.
It makes sense for YouTube and Twitter and Facebook to refer to everything on the Internet as "content" because there's so much variety and those platforms are trying to capture all of it. But I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
I got all of that, I just found the David example to be distracting from and unrelated to the more interesting argument that you're making, which I do agree with, and which I think you summed it up neatly here:
> I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
As regular reader of his blog, the David example worked for me because I felt revulsion for a second. I had to double check the URL to make sure I was reading the right blog. "When did he embrace the LinkedIn broetry?"
Sometimes when I'm thinking about a blog post, I fall in love with a joke I want to use, but then it constrains how I think about the topic. I still like the David example, but I'm too close to the post to have a balanced perspective, just having finished it today.
Despite not quite being an artist, this resonated with me. This fits well in line with my favourite example of corpo-speak: "challenge" instead of "problem". Lately, I find myself replacing these two in my mind occasionally when reading them and the texts still don't change their meaning.
It's a bit depressing watching language get shallow …
In Molly Lambert's "Jennaworld" podcast, she says that Playboy . com was the one of the first places to use "content" in the way it gets used these days. I definitely believe it; there are a lot of euphemisms in that world!
"content" is meant to trigger the novelty reward , thats why we don't get classics among content creators. But i think we all agreed that AI has put an end to this content-monetization era.
after discovering most of my content has been scraped thousands of times, I don't have any willingness to continue posting my blog. Well, yes, I was expecting that (you know.. by publishing content on the net, everyone could read it -- and profit off!). I've some content for some months, including some analysis.
I wish somebody could motivate me to publish them anyway.
Would you feel the same way about creating open source software that had been forked 1,000's of times and used without your knowledge? Are you interested in living in a world where everyone only does things if they feel they can directly capture the majority of the value created?
There's a whole world of software that people are expected to pay for, one way or another. Some programmers choose to release their work for free. And some people use the paid software without paying. We call those people "pirates".
Are you interested in living in a world where nobody can make a living off of their creative work?
There's a difference between giving your neighbors eggs from the chicken you raise, and the local chain hotel including them in their breakfast buffet.
Even if the output is free, you might enjoy the community, the gratitude or other indirect rewards.
I think it helps to draw a clear boundary between what is "content" and what is "art", since they ultimately serve different purposes and have vastly different factors that go into their creation. To me, "content" is anything created with the goal of maximizing consumption, whereas "art" is an attempt to express or give form to some kind of idea or emotion. The lines blur when you get to things like film, where those two goals often compete, but it's pretty easy to put things into these two categories.
And this isn't to say that "content creation" is any less valid than "creating art". There are plenty of "content creators" who know exactly what they are making at the end of the day (a product) and don't hide that fact or try to dress it up under the pretense of being anything more.
I'd give this article multiple upvotes if I could.
The first section did a great job of grabbing my attention. It feels like these days, all creative works are lumped together as "content", anything not brand-new and bleeding-edge is labelled "legacy" (I see this more on HN than anywhere), and everything is distilled down to "engagement" and "conversions".
I hate business buzzword-jargon, the corporate in-group lingo, and I've also always disliked this use of the word "content". It's too generic - we might as well be calling it "stuff".
As a child, I used to notice that there were some other kids who, upon hearing a word that was new to them, would immediately start using it incessantly, replacing the (sometimes richer) choice of words they'd thus far been brought up to use. Very often wrongly, by slightly misunderstanding the meaning, the context, or the word itself, and never checking first. It was clear how the choice of words used, or even the meaning of words, could subtly change within a small group. As I grew older I realised these people appeared to be in the majority, and that it showed how, via various methods of trying to sound clever or in-group signalling, changes in speech patterns spread out across the larger population.
Anyway that's my view, now I'll go back to yelling at clouds.
Words matter. If you use words that remove meaning to describe a thing, then the thing itself will have have diminished meaning. It's the same with politicians using dehumanizing words to describe a group of people that they want those listening to think of as less than human; "illegals" as topical example.
Ie. If you see yourself as a 'content creator' then the best you're going to be is a slop merchant. If you see yourself as an author or a writer then you at least have a chance at being a real artist, like Michaelangelo.
It uses lots of words to make it's point which, for me, smacks of 'content' (I was expecting there to be a recipe at the end). They haven't stopped 'creating content' but they're attempting to stop calling it that.
That's what I got out of it anyway. But then again I may just be salty that I'm not also a Don Draper (slop merchant).
Great article, I see it is very similar. To me it's about learning, not "producing" — as Jason Fried said [1]:
> I've never created content, I've written things down.
> I've never created content, I've said things out loud.
> I've never created content, I've recorded a video.
> I've never created content, I've shown someone around.
> I've never created content, I've pointed something out.
> They can’t do what we do. And they hate us for it.
You could make a plausible conspiracy theory that this was why so much capital was invested to develop generative AI: Maybe the holy grail of tech CEOs wasn't AGI, it was a web full of content without those annoying content creators...
When I hear people use the generic word "content" it grinds my gears. It lacks any sort of deep meaning, and feels insulting when applied to genuine work that real humans poured their sweat, time, energy and passion into creating and perfecting.
There's slop, and there's masterpiece. In which would you rather invest your time? (Either creating or 'consuming'?)
> She said, “Oh, yeah, he always sends me great leads.” I think she meant it as a compliment, but she might as well have said, “Oh, yeah, he’s so good at spotting gullible marks.”
That’s not what it means. It means that the vendor and you are a good fit for each other. The hard part in almost all these things is that two parties would both benefit if they had common knowledge but they don’t have common knowledge. The guy who puts the two together is useful. That’s who you describe as “sending great leads”.
It’s not clear to me why this style of manufactured grievance writing is popular. The world is full of Pareto wins.
I'm having trouble understanding where we disagree. It seems like you're arguing that she's correct because it was helpful for the mutual acquaintance to refer me to this vendor, which I agree it is.
My point is that the term "lead" implies that she's thinking about making the sale rather than serving me as her client. Do we disagree about the connotation of the word "lead?"
As a more extreme example, if you went to a doctor for an illness and they said, "Wow, I'm going to make so much money treating you," I imagine you'd find it off-putting even if the doctor would only earn the money because they're doing a useful thing by treating your illness.
Is your sentence supposed to be analogous? The difference between a great lead and a bad lead in that context would be sending a patient with a skin lesion to a dermatologist (great lead - “someone who will be happy with what I can do”) vs sending a patient with a brain tumor to a dermatologist (bad lead - “I can’t help this person”). In this context, a “great lead” is someone who has been appropriately prequalified so that both participants are going to benefit from the interaction.
Naturally the grievance writing style pre-supposes extractive malice “oh the dermatologist is happy because they’re going to make money off me” rather than the more mundane “oh the dermatologist is happy because they don’t have to spend this time telling me they can’t help me”.
In any case, far be it from me to tell you not to do this. As a content creator, you have certainly found writer-audience fit. It baffles me why, but this style is certainly popular on this website.
I think we disagree on the connotation of the word "lead."
To me, if someone describes me as a "lead," it implies that they are focused on making the sale rather than on anything else about the business relationship. I would also find it unsettling if a doctor told me that I was a "good lead" because I had a disease they treat.
Jargon is field-specific. In medicine you’d be a good referral (“I’m glad they sent you to me”) or an interesting case. The field does not use “lead” for that in the way that contemporary sales does. Discordant terminology is reasonable to be wary of.
Consider for the moment the two cases of an agent for a player or actor and a doctor. It’s normal for an agent to discuss commission and for a doctor to not, though both will make money off you participating. If you had an agent who said he’s just trying to get you the best deal and “don’t worry about money” that would also trigger red flags as much as a doctor discussing commission rates for referrals.
That doesn’t mean commissions are worse than undiscussed rates. Just that norm-violators are risky deal participants.
Given this discussion, I suspect the best interpretation of your post is not that it is grievance text. It is that unfamiliarity with the terminology of a field has resulted in transferring connotations from unrelated contexts.
To lighten the tone, I am reminded of a HN comment where someone said that “Khan Academy” was a terrible name because it naturally brings to mind a “con man”. Of course, this must have been natural because the two words are homophones in his accent (they are not so in mine). An example of connotation mistaken.
You “create content” if what you’re after is just money, and “content” is this malleable goo you have to produce and shove it down the algorithm so that it gets “traffic”, another form of goo that gets “funneled” and “converted” into money.
In other words, it loses all (human) meaning.
So yes, if you care at all, you shouldn’t “create content”. You should be writing essays, recording tutorials, training, music, conversations, etc. the kind of things you care about, for an audience whose attention you don’t take for granted, hoping that they too will care at least a little. If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work.
What you are saying is true. But YouTube/FB algorithms are deliberately skewed towards regular posters.
It's like your content of love that you produce once or twice a month won't be shown to the users at all.
Where do I get the time after job, family, friends and self-study?
So I don't create content like that at all. I write. And that's all.
But I also want to make videos. The recording, editing timeline is way too high. And then if your stuff is not shown to anybody, that's a huge bummer.
A long time ago Simon Peyton Jones said Haskell tries to "avoid success at all costs".
He was being cheeky, but it honestly is how I try and approach most of what I do that isn't directly related to my employment (as a software person).
My blog posts are just for me; I don't market them, I don't expect anyone else to read them, I don't spam links to all my friends every time I post anything.
I have no idea if my writing could make any money in any universe, but since it's not my source of income I don't want to be beholden any kind of "monetization incentives".
Same here.
I also write software for free, but it’s not a cry in the dark. It’s serious, ship-grade software, released into the App Store, and used by thousands.
It’s just not designed to make money.
I agree with everything except the last sentence. Humans are not rational agents, doubly so when it comes to money and spending. There are many communities where charging even a nominal fee for your work leads to backlash due to built up expectations of free contribution.
I'm not sure if they're irrational. Payment/subscription fatigue is a thing. Today it seems like you have to pay to breathe. It's suffocating. I often go through periods where I reject every money ask compulsively, the same way as I would "disconnect".
It's quite interesting how quality of life gets inverted in non intuitive ways. If you travel to a "developing country" you notice you are no longer bombarded with ads. Watching YouTube is close to the premium experience, bc the country presents no ad revenue to Google. You then travel to a "developed" country and you can't watch a 5 minute video without watching 2 ads.
Everything is a transaction, it is too easy to transact. People used to just write, to just make music. Sure, they need to eat, but they lie. You hear people that make insane amouns of money asking for a coffee. imho, writing is a thing you to to share knowledge, to have a conversation, to learn, etc. It is a way to also get people to know you better, and maybe learn about the things you do that they would want to pay for. So unless writing is your full time job, asking money for it leaves a bad taste.
> I'm not sure if they're irrational. Payment/subscription fatigue is a thing.
Payment fatigue is an irrational thing, at least in the context of what a rational economic agent is. Rationally, you pay for what you value, at roughly what it is valued to you, and you don't pay for you want you don't value. Transactions are fatiguing precisely because we are not rational agents. Humans live primarily on emotion and ingrained behavior, with small bursts of applying logic.
It's not the core idea of "fatigue of paying for value" itself but something more akin to "fatigue of keeping track of which things were actually worth paying for, which starts to take more value than you can create with the same amount of time or could get with a few well thought out larger payments". It's usually brought up around subscriptions precisely because they are a lot of work to track but easy to forget.
I am so glad someone said this! I get really mad when a PR person writes the word content in the press release for my company. We don't create content.
To me "content" means you don't know what you are making or you are very embarrassed about it. We make art or entertainment that people pay for.
In general there are two axis I think about in media. One axis is originality, the other axis is durability. Very unoriginal is a transcription of information everyone already knows. Investigative reporting that reveals new information is very original. A creative story is original.
Durability is how long the thing will have some value. They can put the Wizard of Oz in Sphere today. A Tik Tok video will probably be forgotten in a day or two. You could call that "quality" but that's harder to define and measure.
Value is created in being as original and durable as possible. Platforms want you to be the opposite-- that's the slop they call content.
> There is a tug of war between people and platform as such across this diagonal axis.
People want value whereas platforms want content, the incentives between a viewer and platform/content creator are getting broken because of the overhead incentive of the platform/content creator for money aka content.
There are some places where its not the case, namely wikipedia (aside from its recent controversies) and archive.org both being non-profit, though there are issues with non-profits as well in terms of their funding and other things. Open source being the example of it in terms of how much value it gives us but there is a lack of funding of that as well.
There has to be some balance in all of it but it seems that the balance is binary-like. Either we are seeing mostly open source underfunded software or we are seeing platforms/content-creators using their power for more money.
It also comes to the point that GP comment makes though, content is created by the expectation of profit and so that is its benchmark but value is created for something more emotional but people also like to eat food and would prefer to do so doing work on open source/the work they like for example but then it also pushes itself into content boundary rather than value.
@tombert has a comment about it which says that they are writing blogs and creating value for the sake of it because they have job on the side and its just the first example that I got reading this thread but many people actually create value as such, but as such they are creating value "in-spite" of incentives and the actual incentives are working on the opposite side of value creation.
It is similar to how actual Musicians in music industry are really exploited by all the systems around them yet they still create Music (value) in-spite of all of it because creating music (value) means more to them than all the issues and there is something human about creating value/music. Here's an extremely good video about it[0]
if money follows content and content follows money, perhaps content is just value which follows money and being shallow rather than something deeper and all these dynamics that interact with each other are leading to a tug of war in the first place.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx7baJMQuVA
The flexibility you bemoan in content creation is the exact same search people perform when running a startup. Finding product-market fit is a search process and content creators do the same thing. They see what customers like and focus in on that. Is it somewhat soulless? For sure. It is not unique to content creation though.
I'm sorry but my first thought after reading:
"You should be writing essays, recording tutorials, training, music, conversations, etc. the kind of things you care about... If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work"
Is an AI company webcrawler sucking up your novel work, for free, only to goop it out to everyone else without compensating you a dime. And while you worked so hard to genuinely create something, that won't be amplified by internet algorithms so no real human will see it, another person will do a dance or be funny, edgy, unethical, controversial, and get 1000x the human eyeballs, money, and power - probably using AI to write the very words they regurgitate.
It's a sad world after all.
There are all kinds of people out there generating meaningful content on their own terms that will never get picked up by the algorithm. I hate the content mills as much as anyone else, but the fact is that they exist because internet economy rewards them. The entire ecosystem incentivizes the soulless "goo" you describe over the meaningful work people are doing.
Ice T said it best: "Don't hate the player, hate the game".
You don't need to do that as an activity. You can earn money doing something more useful.
Entertaining people is useful! In my opinion, it is probably one of the most ethical ways to make money. I think game development is in that category too. It is a very pure field where you are giving a consumer something they enjoy and seek out.
Ethical all depends on if what you are doing is really you. Whether you are being you. The same way with any creative pursuit. There is a significant difference between creativity for creativities sake and creativity marketed to exploit.
Do you mean authentic?
> If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work.
Paying for access to "content" that isn't capital is a bizarre business model. The only reason it ever existed is because the medium (paper, videotape) was expensive. The smart reason you pay people is because you want them to continue producing, not because you want to continue consuming.
If I have something to say, it's a favor people are doing for me when they read it. In the real world, you beg for people to listen to you.
Influential people already know this. I don't sponsor people who do journalism or write about politics so I can entertain myself. I don't need them to continually convince me of things I already believe, and any entertainment that I get from the uncovering of corruption is prurient. The reason I send them money is so that other people might come to believe what I believe, and so that other people will see the corruption that I disapprove of.
Most other free "content creation" is in fact people advertising themselves as useful capital, hoping to be acquired by other people who think that they can make a profit. "Content creation" is a cargo cult; if you're lucky, 1) somebody sees you as capital and buys you, or 2) somebody else who shares your ability to profit off a related range of content notices you, and you create a mutually beneficial community.
If you're unlucky, you just do random stuff with no object. Or I should say very lucky, because you're already being subsidized by someone else - the proof is that you're eating and not cooking.
There's always been way too much "content," long before the internet. In fact, the internet is currently in the midst of an orgy of content destruction in order to protect capital, while criminals are the ones attempting to preserve and distribute that content.
I actually really like the term content creator, because it removes the artificial boundaries that come with being a writer, photographer, filmmaker, etc. and just lets you make stuff. The medium doesn't matter if you're a content creator, to a large extent.
The alternative is "art" but that comes with a lot of other baggage that often sounds unintentionally pretentious, especially if you aren't actually creating paintings/sculptures/traditional/contemporary studio art. The word creative used to serve a similar purpose, but nowadays I think it sounds both blasé and pretentious.
Yes, content does come with an expectation that you're creating things for an commercial audience; however, I think content is tied to media, and not merely any sort of created object. And so by extension you are participating in the global media sphere by making content, and not just painting for your own enjoyment.
It’s also worth pointing out that while Michelangelo did think of himself as an artist and a sculptor and painter, those professions were basically tradesmen at the time. The concept of high art, in the purely non-economic way we think of today, didn’t come for centuries after his life.
As an artist (former, really[0]), I can confirm that the medium really, really matters. It can inform the creation, as much as the creator.
There are top-shelf authors that insist on writing everything in cursive, in legal pads (God help the poor schlubs that have to transcribe it, though). They insist that they can’t be creative, otherwise. There are musicians (like Rhiannon Giddens), that always perform barefoot.
Most of the Great Masters could work in many mediums, and they chose specific media, to do specific works, because they knew that the medium would “push back,” and inform the work.
Michelangelo was quoted as saying something like he “saw the statue in the stone,” and that was why selecting the rock was as important as any other part of the process.
Many folks take great pains, to do their work in specific contexts, as that affects their creativity.
Creativity isn’t something that is easy to commoditize.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886
I meant that the medium doesn’t lock you into how others perceive you and your work. Not that mediums are interchangeable from the creator’s perspective.
If you are making meaningful things then you shouldn't be afraid to sound pretentious.
Everyone's so terrified that they might stand out.
Heh. I have written stuff that has changed the world. Not in a big way, but thousands and thousands of people around the world use my stuff daily, and no one knows I had anything to do with it. I’m still at it. I’m getting ready for the first public test of a fairly ambitious app.
My friends use my stuff all the time, and they are always gobsmacked, when they find out I did it.
I do it for free, and tend to follow my own muse, as opposed to $_BUZZWORD_DU_JOUR, so tech folks aren’t really impressed, when I mention it (like, now, I suspect).
It’s not really very rewarding to talk about it. Either people get all impressed, or insulting (the typical HN reaction). Neither does much for me, so I’m best off just keeping my mouth shut, and my mind on my work. There’s others that are much better than me. I’m just grateful to be able to Give Back.
That’s not pretension; it’s just facts. But there’s often no need to mention the facts.
"Content" is giving in to the idea that what you make only has value because it can fill some hole between ads in somebody else's CMS. What it is doesn't matter, it's just content. Meh.
> The alternative is "art"
Maybe. Or alternative could be to use the words you used in your first sentence: writer, photographer, filmmaker.
If you talk about your work using deflationary words like content then that could affect how you think about it and present it. Do yourself a favor and use grand words because I bet it's important to you.
I'm with you. I would prefer to be known as a "content creator" rather than a "woodworker" or "game developer" or "illustrator" or "writer" or "musician". Especially because all of that work tends to overlap all of the time. It feels so limiting to be described by a singular part of what I do. And I'm neurotic enough to want a 'comprehensive' word, rather than to slash myself to death in a description.
I don't particularly like the term "content creator". It feels too blunt and sterile to be particularly useful. But it does seem to be generally useful in how wide-reachingly descriptive it is.
I perfer the term maker because its descriptive without the commercial aspect.
Anecdata, but I find it funny you mentioning woodworker and musician. I build guitars and I play them. There is /some/ overlap, but only at the end result of me playing the guitar I have built. If I were to distill either of the two disciplines into 'content' each endeavor would lose its own individual meaning for me.
Being a musician has nothing to do with the output of working with wood, and likewise, my prowess on gouges, chisels, and saws is irrespective of my ability to write an interesting chord progression. Using a catch-all term to amalgamate the output of multiple specializations I think detracts from the results being, well... special.
Just my .02c
I can certainly understand that, but I don't lend any specialness to anything I do, which may be why I don't consider any of it as needing to be differentiated for its craft. It's very useful to be specific when going in to specifics, but it seems very pedantic to be specific when I'm being general or broad. It might stem from just having so many different areas of interest. Feels braggadocios to keep chiming in with "I do that too", when I could just cover everything with "I create various types of content".
Though, I will admit that I never include cooking in that. Food, for some reason, has never felt, to me, like "content". Can't say I've ever interrogated why.
for me the distinction is that pre-"content" you created a website so you have a place to host your art; with "content" you produce art to have something to put on your website.
I agree. It's a generic word since it has a generic meaning.
I know there's a big bias against 'business speak' among engineers. But a lot of the time, it's just a matter of abstracting in a domain engineers typically don't work in. It's useful to describe from the 'business' point-of-view since terms like this can be used to analyze the similarities across these similar 'content creation' type businesses.
I'm trying to think of a similar case where to an outsider, the 'tech speak' jargon a software engineer would use seems useless to an outsider. Maybe things like 'framework', or 'deployment', or 'library', or web application instead of web site.
I appreciate this push-back. I keep a running list of words like this...content, product, device, experience, space, vehicle, resource, etc. I can't put my finger on why, but all of these make me distrust the speaker.
Yeah I have a similar list. Mine also includes "journey". As soon as a word gets adopted by MBAs to abstract away the real world, it gets added to my list. They're words that project the idea of a smart person but only to stupid people.
Mine is "thought leader" - I've yet to meet someone who calls themselves that who's had a useful thought.
I know a few people who unironically call themselves that. They sound awesome, but scratch beneath the surface of what they say... there's nothing there.
I saw a news article recently where the headline was something about someone's "cancer journey". Maybe I'm old - only 51! - but I thought it was kind of a tasteless way to put it. That said, language is a malleable thing and no one needs my approval.
All these words are too broad is why. It allows someone to say something without really knowing what they mean. But also they may know what they mean, so you are not sure!
Device is a handy one though you often want to say "computer, laptop, tablet or phone" in one go. We could call them all computers but that would confuse people I think.
Yeah exactly, It is meant to mean/sound something in a way which could impress people or get any desirable outcome but in reality it means nothing or sometimes even opposite in a way similar to double-speak, recent layoffs and how they are worded seems to be another example.
These words are sometimes like schrodingers cat and this is also what I have observed that within recent layoffs, its really hard to accurately find what the real intent behind it was within some companies and there is no wide consensus.
Perhaps this is their true purpose, to hide the real intent behind things and perhaps (to give the benefit of doubt?)
For me it's when companies talk about themselves as brands.
What else would you call smaller companies and products within a company?
Whatever they are! Using the literal word "brand" in public messaging is leaking the marketing team's lingo to customers.
Oh I see, you'd think they'd know better then to use jargon publicly...
I don't know how common it is but I can't stand "consume" for "eat/drink". Especially when used in the first person. Why would anybody say that about what they eat?
They're ambiguous words when there's no reason to not be more specific, so either the speaker is lazy or intentionally trying to muddy the waters.
It’s a conflict of interest. When people organically create things online with no incentive except the love, you can give them a lot of trust. Once someone goes from that to manufacturing “content” (or even worse goes from nothing to “content”) there’s major incentive to either shill for some product for compensation, or to generate outlandish things that get more clicks, views, likes, subscribes. All of this is antithetical to creating about a subject because you enjoy the subject.
From about 1998-2008 I ran one of the largest sites on the internet for a particular niche. Zero advertisers, no ads, no shady links, just content about a subject I loved. I worked hard to make sure it was accurate and up to date. Now someone creating the same site would be loads of referral links or paid ads, so no trust whatsoever in what’s being presented.
This makes sense to me.
I get a similar ick when I hear someone say "I enjoy consuming this type of content." They're not selling anything, but they are still adopting the soulless language. Like, if it still exists after you interact with it, you haven't consumed anything. Second, do you really see yourself this way? Why not just say "I love to read travel blogs"?
Content used to be a bad word, now kids want to become content creators when they grow up.
I was hired at a job the very same day Google released their first Panda update[0]. This was the update that nuked all content farmers from search results. It was complete chaos, I sat in an empty cubicle, not knowing if I should stay or leave while the manager cursed and paced. Our ad revenue went from millions to zero, overnight. Unfortunately, they figured out a trick to game google. Which I guess meant I remained employed.
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/content-is-bad
Truly curious - why did you choose to work at a content farm?
Money Why would you work for Insurance, Defense, military, Amazon, killing kittens R Us.
Money.
Defense and Military you can want to work there for such nebulous ideas such as serving your nation, protecting your loved ones, security, etc. This would require you to actually believe in said abstract concepts like nationalism, community, family, culture, or truth, so that you actually want to defend your homeland though. This is easier to believe for me than the innumerable start ups that were making the world a better place via ad placement click through rates.
"I want to be a Kardashian when I grow up..."
This resonates with me. I’ve always found the term annoying, because it felt like it was distilling artistic expression down to its most abstract form: content. If all you’re producing is abstract “content,” why should I participate? What makes it special?
I feel the same way. I want to watch movies and listen to music and read books! I don't want to "consume content." That phrase feels like it reduces my role to just be a generic pac-man gobbling up whatever bland grays dots of vague content are "created" and set down in front of me. That's not what it should be.
I see that abstraction as the purpose of the word when viewing it from a 'business' context: when assessing businesses of the same kind, the actual thing that's being produced matters a lot less.
I'd suppose that blog writers and video producers have a lot of the same kinds of business problems: how people can discover [the thing they create] and spread awareness of it or make money off it.
In order to be able to discuss this category of business, it's useful for writers and video producers to be able to relate to each other by abstracting out the thing that actually makes them distinct and particular.
I see it less as devaluing that special thing and more as a lens to put on or take off when certain audiences are interested in the 'non-special' aspects of running businesses based on that special thing.
People seem to be content with content.
Since 2002 Richard Stallman has spoken again using term "content" this way.
> using the word as a noun to describe works and communications through which people have expressed themselves adopts an attitude you might rather avoid: it treats them as a commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it disparages all the works by subordinating them to the box that is full.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#Content
I believe there is a material difference between "content" and other modes of creative output: content is defined by a pipeline. It is desired for it's recurring revenue.
You could make the tackiest, most commercial and derivative musical, but it's still not content because it's just one.
You could make the most eloquent, poetic and inventive podcast in the world, but so long as you are still doing weekly releases (with ads, plus an ad free patreon, of course) it is content.
The tragedy is that we want artists to have reliable income, but the business models, incentives and consumption habits that come with the reliable output to provide that reliable income lead us to the ugliness that people blame on "content".
> The tragedy is that we want artists to have reliable income
If artists create art that people are willing to pay for, great!
I don't really want to pay artists for art I don't like.
I remember when Nirvana suddenly became successful. Many in the local community called them "sellouts", which is quite unfair.
I like the kind of output artists make when they work on individual creative projects. I don't really like the kind of output artists make when they feel they need to crank out something every week that has to have roughly equal appeal to the exact same audience.
But the way the internet (and other mass media) scales means that only the latter can really have a business model and reliable income attached.
I think artists are too attached to solo work and should hire people to crank out variants on their successful vision or license their ideas so that they can continue having new ideas.
Songwriters do this! Write the songs, give them to others to perform
Lots of people have erratic income, such as anyone who owns a business. The options are:
1. buy a Lambo, then get it reposessed
2. save/invest on the peaks
Thank you to the author for questioning this ridiculous terminology
"Content" implies there is something else, besides content, that is found on the www
It's garbage, not The New Yorker, for example
When data collection, surveilllance and advertising is the sole "business model" then traffic is the business goal, not "content" (The New Yorker does not rely 100% on advertising, it also has subscription revenue)
"Content is king" but it is not an absolute requirement for traffic
That's why "Big Tech" companies are intermediaries (middlemen), they do not need to create "content"
Website operators without content have been buying traffic since the early years of the www
The www is infested with middlemen with no content
They profit from traffic
Content makes good bait for traffic but Big Tech cannot charge subscriptions for it because it isn't theirs; they have to pay for a license
Different people should use different words.
I don't think a content creator would naturally describe themselves as a content creator. The word is useful for contexts where you need to generalize over all the different types, but that's not useful when speaking about yourself. So a writer says "I'm a writer", not "I'm a content creator." But writing this paragraph, I needed a word to generalize.
P.S. The closest alternative word might be artist, but it's not quite right--some writers are artists and some aren't.
I agree, and the audience also matters too. A writer speaking to writers at a writing workshop? "I'm a writer." A writer at an independent business conference? "I'm a content creator", as a means to relate to people making videos, blog posts, photographs, tweets, etc.
Some 'content creators' might also do: videos, blog posts, photographs, tweets, and a lot of other activity that drives the same business: getting user 'engagement' for sponsorship or advertising revenue.
I feel that all the terms mentioned are useful in specific contexts. Web traffic brings visitors to your resource. If they read your blog, they become readers. If they use your products, they become users. When someone buys something from you, they become a customer.
OP here. Thanks for reading!
> I feel that all the terms mentioned are useful in specific contexts. Web traffic brings visitors to your resource. If they read your blog, they become readers. If they use your products, they become users. When someone buys something from you, they become a customer.
I'll respectfully disagree. I think those terms make sense if you're talking in general terms, but if you're an individual person talking about your work, they're generic catchall terms with better alternatives.
Like, in concrete terms, let's say I publish funny cartoons on my website and sell prints of those cartoons. It doesn't make sense for me to say "web traffic brings visitors to my resource." What traffic? What resource? It would be more meaningful to say, "Visitors find my website through Google search."
Even more concrete, IMHO: "People find my comics through Google search. Some of them become fans and subscribe."
Totally agree with this one: being an indie business owner, you can do it however you want.
Surprisingly it was quite easy to read the blog post and well written. However, the author definitely has the gift of gab in writing in terms he can write about anything, but at the same time convey nothing meaningful
This is the most polite diss I've ever read
It’s AI slop, that’s why.
OP here. I wrote the post myself with no AI (modulo grammar checks).
What makes you think it's AI-generated?
The answer is quite patently that, in this brave new world, people with noticeable writing skill will face that false cry on a regular basis from the literary lowest-common-denominator.
I keep getting people saying they think my posts are AI-generated because I use hyphens in sentences (not M-dashes though, I can never remember the compose key for it), and because I use the term "load bearing" in a pisstakey way - like for instance, "yet another instance of load-bearing idiocy by management".
> When I found myself using a corp-speak term, I questioned whether there was another word that felt more natural and communicated the same thing.
In other scenarios the non "corp-speak" term feels kind of wrong and the "corp-speak" one is actually better though. I feel like this is all just a realization about what the goal of the business actually is and a realization of just how many different goals you could have. In this case it sounds like it's just to do some good writing, not to grow for the sake of making more money or whatever else. And that makes a huge difference in how you talk about it of course.
Also if someone used the word "lead" I'd conclude that they... work in sales? How can that mean anything about whether they'll be helpful to you or not?
Ok one more thought: sometimes the corp-speak feels way less stuck up than "oh actually, I'm a writer. I measure progress not from other people being willing to pay me some money, but in terms of my own highly refined taste. I have many leather-bound books, and..."
I make electronic music as a hobby, and I feel the same way about the term "producer".
I understand the history behind where that term came from. (The people who were making musical decisions while standing behind the mixing board often were initially producers: people whose job it was to oversee the entire production and coordinate between the musicians, engineers, etc. Then when DJs at discotheques wanted longer versions of songs for dancefloors, remixes were invented. Producers took existing recordings and made longer versions. Then electronic dance music sort of evolved out of that.)
But it still feels like such a soulless term. And most "producers" today are just sitting at home alone with a laptop and Ableton, so the role is very different than it was.
Michael Jackson was smart enough to hire Quincy Jones to produce his albums, and his work took a great leap forward as a result.
Oh yeah, Quincy Jones was a genius. I listened to the whole "Off the Wall" album a while back with headphones on and it's just a sonic masterpiece.
Yes one of my very favorite albums! I'd put it in my top 10 easy, and I listen to a lot of music. I still remember when a friend of mine dropped the needle and I heard it for the first time.
The Thriller album is more popular, but I like Off The Wall better.
For me the term users sometimes sounds similar to traffic. I prefer customers - that you serve with your product.
The term "user" maybe made sense before any software was commercialized. It differentiated the programmer of the software from the non-programmer that used the software. Even then it was sometimes used derogatorily (especially when people were sneered at as "Lusers"). In the original Tron the Good Guys had to fight for the users.
Customer is a much nicer term. Words do matter.
A good point overall. It's skin-deep, though. Do you think a catch-all name is useful for something like content? Is it only distasteful on the internet/TV/etc. because of the negative impacts of mass-production and commoditisation, or is the idea itself inherently distasteful?
OP here. Thanks for reading!
I don't really have anything against the existence of the catchall term "content." Like, I don't expect the CEO of YouTube to say, "music, short film, art, comedy, journalism, ..., creators" every time he talks about YouTube users. It makes sense from their perspective to bucket everything into "content."
The thing I found interesting was just that the language had crossed over to people where it doesn't make sense to bucket everything. If I'm a blogger, I can just say "blogger" and it's more meaningful than "content creator" but I think the people running small businesses or doing creative work have needlessly adopted the big bucket terminology of "content."
The author addresses this, no?
> But I did notice an immediate change, especially with words like “traffic.” Traffic makes me feel like I’m just throwing out flypaper and measuring whatever sticks. When I describe website visitors as “readers,” it reminds me that these are real people who have literally billions of other things they could be reading that day, but they’re choosing to spend some of their limited time with me.
Stanley Kubrick, Kane Parsons, and Mr. Beast walk into a bar. Bartender says, "Sorry,we don't serve content creators here."
Who gets kicked out?
Kane Parsons is 20 years old
(Sorry to use a meme but I couldn't drop this oddly perfect opportunity. Also Kane Parsons is 21 years old)
Well done, my first thought after I realized what you did was the Slow clap meme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1N5lZw7e78
Yes I agree. Content is an empty word, and can mean anything, and sort of means nothing. I get why large corporations would want to use the term as they do everything in bulk and need a general term, but for a solo writer, youtuber, etc, better to think of it as the thing, e.g. "tutorial", "podcast", "exploration".
The first paragraph seems to insinuate that "content" is replacing "art", but that doesn't seem at all related to what the author's actual work looks like, nor does it seem related to the thrust of the argument, which is about how descriptions of your work influence how you think about it. The entire blog looks more like "content" than David to my eyes, but maybe that's because most of the blog predates this shift in the author's thinking?
OP here. Thanks for reading!
I'm not trying to argue that art is sacred and we have to hold it up over everything else, but I am joking that there is still an implicit boundary where we don't use "content" to refer to things that we respect highly.
I think a lot of people that talk about "art" vs. "content" are talking about art vs. business, but I'm more arguing about big vs. small and aggregation vs. individuality.
It makes sense for YouTube and Twitter and Facebook to refer to everything on the Internet as "content" because there's so much variety and those platforms are trying to capture all of it. But I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
I got all of that, I just found the David example to be distracting from and unrelated to the more interesting argument that you're making, which I do agree with, and which I think you summed it up neatly here:
> I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
As regular reader of his blog, the David example worked for me because I felt revulsion for a second. I had to double check the URL to make sure I was reading the right blog. "When did he embrace the LinkedIn broetry?"
Which, I believe, was the intention.
I appreciate the critique!
Sometimes when I'm thinking about a blog post, I fall in love with a joke I want to use, but then it constrains how I think about the topic. I still like the David example, but I'm too close to the post to have a balanced perspective, just having finished it today.
Despite not quite being an artist, this resonated with me. This fits well in line with my favourite example of corpo-speak: "challenge" instead of "problem". Lately, I find myself replacing these two in my mind occasionally when reading them and the texts still don't change their meaning.
It's a bit depressing watching language get shallow …
In Molly Lambert's "Jennaworld" podcast, she says that Playboy . com was the one of the first places to use "content" in the way it gets used these days. I definitely believe it; there are a lot of euphemisms in that world!
Not unrelated: https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2025/07/06/content-creator/
"content" is meant to trigger the novelty reward , thats why we don't get classics among content creators. But i think we all agreed that AI has put an end to this content-monetization era.
Related, Patrick H Willems did a long video about it and I recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAtbFwzZp6Y
Bill Gates is responsible for the proliferation of the term "content". We can add this to the list of his other crimes.
Digital marketing creative investment into audience experience with goal of subsequent monetisation. Like and subscribe.
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I could not resist playing this game of words...
I stopped creating (public) content when Facebook was launched. Totally missed I had to announce it here.
I'm not producing any youtube videos. I should let everybody know.
(Reminds me of https://theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesn...)
after discovering most of my content has been scraped thousands of times, I don't have any willingness to continue posting my blog. Well, yes, I was expecting that (you know.. by publishing content on the net, everyone could read it -- and profit off!). I've some content for some months, including some analysis.
I wish somebody could motivate me to publish them anyway.
Would you feel the same way about creating open source software that had been forked 1,000's of times and used without your knowledge? Are you interested in living in a world where everyone only does things if they feel they can directly capture the majority of the value created?
There's a whole world of software that people are expected to pay for, one way or another. Some programmers choose to release their work for free. And some people use the paid software without paying. We call those people "pirates".
Are you interested in living in a world where nobody can make a living off of their creative work?
There's a difference between giving your neighbors eggs from the chicken you raise, and the local chain hotel including them in their breakfast buffet.
Even if the output is free, you might enjoy the community, the gratitude or other indirect rewards.
I don’t think it is majority of the value created, but it might have to be a significant portion of the value expended to make it worthwhile at all.
When those forkers are large corporations then it probably should make most people think twice.
I think it helps to draw a clear boundary between what is "content" and what is "art", since they ultimately serve different purposes and have vastly different factors that go into their creation. To me, "content" is anything created with the goal of maximizing consumption, whereas "art" is an attempt to express or give form to some kind of idea or emotion. The lines blur when you get to things like film, where those two goals often compete, but it's pretty easy to put things into these two categories.
And this isn't to say that "content creation" is any less valid than "creating art". There are plenty of "content creators" who know exactly what they are making at the end of the day (a product) and don't hide that fact or try to dress it up under the pretense of being anything more.
What about really good information? Instructions? Guides?
I'd give this article multiple upvotes if I could.
The first section did a great job of grabbing my attention. It feels like these days, all creative works are lumped together as "content", anything not brand-new and bleeding-edge is labelled "legacy" (I see this more on HN than anywhere), and everything is distilled down to "engagement" and "conversions".
I hate business buzzword-jargon, the corporate in-group lingo, and I've also always disliked this use of the word "content". It's too generic - we might as well be calling it "stuff".
As a child, I used to notice that there were some other kids who, upon hearing a word that was new to them, would immediately start using it incessantly, replacing the (sometimes richer) choice of words they'd thus far been brought up to use. Very often wrongly, by slightly misunderstanding the meaning, the context, or the word itself, and never checking first. It was clear how the choice of words used, or even the meaning of words, could subtly change within a small group. As I grew older I realised these people appeared to be in the majority, and that it showed how, via various methods of trying to sound clever or in-group signalling, changes in speech patterns spread out across the larger population.
Anyway that's my view, now I'll go back to yelling at clouds.
Words matter. If you use words that remove meaning to describe a thing, then the thing itself will have have diminished meaning. It's the same with politicians using dehumanizing words to describe a group of people that they want those listening to think of as less than human; "illegals" as topical example.
Ie. If you see yourself as a 'content creator' then the best you're going to be is a slop merchant. If you see yourself as an author or a writer then you at least have a chance at being a real artist, like Michaelangelo.
It uses lots of words to make it's point which, for me, smacks of 'content' (I was expecting there to be a recipe at the end). They haven't stopped 'creating content' but they're attempting to stop calling it that.
That's what I got out of it anyway. But then again I may just be salty that I'm not also a Don Draper (slop merchant).
Great article, I see it is very similar. To me it's about learning, not "producing" — as Jason Fried said [1]:
> I've never created content, I've written things down. > I've never created content, I've said things out loud. > I've never created content, I've recorded a video. > I've never created content, I've shown someone around. > I've never created content, I've pointed something out.
[1] https://x.com/jasonfried/status/1831763756856307880
> They can’t do what we do. And they hate us for it.
You could make a plausible conspiracy theory that this was why so much capital was invested to develop generative AI: Maybe the holy grail of tech CEOs wasn't AGI, it was a web full of content without those annoying content creators...
When I hear people use the generic word "content" it grinds my gears. It lacks any sort of deep meaning, and feels insulting when applied to genuine work that real humans poured their sweat, time, energy and passion into creating and perfecting.
There's slop, and there's masterpiece. In which would you rather invest your time? (Either creating or 'consuming'?)
It's one level of abstraction below "enrichment"
Ironic that this piece is mostly discontent.
Stewart Lee did an hour of standup comedy on this same theme.
It's called "Stewart Lee: Content Provider" and its hilarous.
https://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x6i59y
> She said, “Oh, yeah, he always sends me great leads.” I think she meant it as a compliment, but she might as well have said, “Oh, yeah, he’s so good at spotting gullible marks.”
That’s not what it means. It means that the vendor and you are a good fit for each other. The hard part in almost all these things is that two parties would both benefit if they had common knowledge but they don’t have common knowledge. The guy who puts the two together is useful. That’s who you describe as “sending great leads”.
It’s not clear to me why this style of manufactured grievance writing is popular. The world is full of Pareto wins.
OP here. Thanks for reading!
I'm having trouble understanding where we disagree. It seems like you're arguing that she's correct because it was helpful for the mutual acquaintance to refer me to this vendor, which I agree it is.
My point is that the term "lead" implies that she's thinking about making the sale rather than serving me as her client. Do we disagree about the connotation of the word "lead?"
As a more extreme example, if you went to a doctor for an illness and they said, "Wow, I'm going to make so much money treating you," I imagine you'd find it off-putting even if the doctor would only earn the money because they're doing a useful thing by treating your illness.
Is your sentence supposed to be analogous? The difference between a great lead and a bad lead in that context would be sending a patient with a skin lesion to a dermatologist (great lead - “someone who will be happy with what I can do”) vs sending a patient with a brain tumor to a dermatologist (bad lead - “I can’t help this person”). In this context, a “great lead” is someone who has been appropriately prequalified so that both participants are going to benefit from the interaction.
Naturally the grievance writing style pre-supposes extractive malice “oh the dermatologist is happy because they’re going to make money off me” rather than the more mundane “oh the dermatologist is happy because they don’t have to spend this time telling me they can’t help me”.
In any case, far be it from me to tell you not to do this. As a content creator, you have certainly found writer-audience fit. It baffles me why, but this style is certainly popular on this website.
I think we disagree on the connotation of the word "lead."
To me, if someone describes me as a "lead," it implies that they are focused on making the sale rather than on anything else about the business relationship. I would also find it unsettling if a doctor told me that I was a "good lead" because I had a disease they treat.
Jargon is field-specific. In medicine you’d be a good referral (“I’m glad they sent you to me”) or an interesting case. The field does not use “lead” for that in the way that contemporary sales does. Discordant terminology is reasonable to be wary of.
Consider for the moment the two cases of an agent for a player or actor and a doctor. It’s normal for an agent to discuss commission and for a doctor to not, though both will make money off you participating. If you had an agent who said he’s just trying to get you the best deal and “don’t worry about money” that would also trigger red flags as much as a doctor discussing commission rates for referrals.
That doesn’t mean commissions are worse than undiscussed rates. Just that norm-violators are risky deal participants.
Given this discussion, I suspect the best interpretation of your post is not that it is grievance text. It is that unfamiliarity with the terminology of a field has resulted in transferring connotations from unrelated contexts.
To lighten the tone, I am reminded of a HN comment where someone said that “Khan Academy” was a terrible name because it naturally brings to mind a “con man”. Of course, this must have been natural because the two words are homophones in his accent (they are not so in mine). An example of connotation mistaken.