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?
> 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.
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."
Even in a commercial context they aren't the same. The user is who sits in front of the screen, and the customer is who you have to please to make money.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
> 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"
That's how you read the term. Unfortunately, for most of your potential viewers, "content" is "art" but commissioned by the ton, like beef.
The medium doesn't matter, because the majority of content creators are mediocre at best on making said "content". They are just good at selling you the idea that their content matters for you to waste your time with it.
If your title is "content creator" your end goal is money/attention not making the content for the sake of making it.
Perhaps it's pretentious because you're _not_ an artist. The labels matter, to an extent. I'd rather see a movie from a filmmaker over a movie from a content creator, for instance.
> 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 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.
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".
> 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...
It was to replace workers. That's the holy dream of all capitalists - free revenue with no need for actual work or costs. In other words, becoming a landlord. But what is the land in the analogy? They can only hope to have something to hold onto, maybe a brand with goodwill or being the only one with a certain LLM.
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 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.
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.
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
"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.
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.
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.
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.
"so that it gets “traffic”, another form of goo that gets “funneled” and “converted” into money."
How is this any different from a small business hot dog stand, setting up outside a game to get more of the "traffic" instead of paying rent somewhere busy. You're a small business trying to get eyeballs, you do what you gotta do and call it what you want, instead of paying for ads like the big boys.
At a certain point in the process, a little additional content multiplies the value of your existing efforts. But that is misunderstood (survivor bias?) as "make lots of content, because the successful people did".
To that end, I don't like creating that corpus of work _for social media_. As a musician, I don't think it converts to ticket sales. At a certain level it's required to keep a musician's name in the conversation if you're, say, a big EDM artist, but at that level it's nothing more than just a "dumb piece of content" without any of the labor of love you mentioned.
So then where as a musician does the content go on the internet if it doesn't convert? I feel I'd be better off putting up posters outside venues or some of those roller glue posters on boards in the artsy part of town.
What this reminded me of was the fiasco of the McDonald's CEO referring to the Big Arch as a "product". Is it a product? Sure. That is about the least specific word he could have used for it, and it implies that he doesn't care that it is a cheeseburger, but that any type of item produced by any company he happened to lead would have made him equally happy.
It is likely true that he is just there to run a business and feels no sense of pride in its specific offerings, but the accidental honesty was amusing.
No, it's just that it was an accidental leakage of business vernacular, like product managers or when managers in a company talk about a certain product they're working on.
That's a bit too cynical and missing the point. "Content" is what people want. You create what people want.
> 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.
Yeah, that's called content. "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" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
This is no different than a job except for some reason people attribute this type of work with "meaning" and not others. Yes, if you want to make money, you must produce something others want. If you want to make something with "meaning" then do so once you're financially rich. Your comment is literally the starving artist stereotype.
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 …
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).
73 comments
[ 2.0 ms ] story [ 65.9 ms ] thread> 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.
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."
Who gets kicked out?
Whatever you call it, I participate to find out if it’s crap or not.
I wish somebody could motivate me to publish them anyway.
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.
> The alternative is "art"
That's how you read the term. Unfortunately, for most of your potential viewers, "content" is "art" but commissioned by the ton, like beef.
Like it doesn’t fit podcasts at all really.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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...
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 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
--
I could not resist playing this game of words...
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.
> 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
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.
How is this any different from a small business hot dog stand, setting up outside a game to get more of the "traffic" instead of paying rent somewhere busy. You're a small business trying to get eyeballs, you do what you gotta do and call it what you want, instead of paying for ads like the big boys.
So then where as a musician does the content go on the internet if it doesn't convert? I feel I'd be better off putting up posters outside venues or some of those roller glue posters on boards in the artsy part of town.
It is likely true that he is just there to run a business and feels no sense of pride in its specific offerings, but the accidental honesty was amusing.
> 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.
Yeah, that's called content. "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" doesn't quite roll off the tongue.
It's a bit depressing watching language get shallow …
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).