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".
I Stopped “Creating Content”
101–110 of 249 posts
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#103I 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.
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.
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#104Stewart Lee did an hour of standup comedy on this same theme.
It's called "Stewart Lee: Content Provider" and its hilarous.
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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 ingr…
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.
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#107You “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, conve…
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.
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#109You “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, conve…
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".
Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
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