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I Stopped “Creating Content”

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Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#131

Post by account42 »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #102
figassis wrote: post #99

Earlier 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…

What if what I value is that something is not corrupted by monetary incentives?

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#132

Post by andai »

So the main issue here is that corporate language is dehumanizing? Well, "human resources" might have been a hint, I suppose!

I have to agree. It is dehumanizing. But, it's unfortunate, because the language of business is the language of business. We have this one. We don't have a separate, identically shaped one, made up of nicer sounding words.

Would be nice if we did, though.

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#133

Post by sebastiennight »

sltr wrote: post #115

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/philoso…

I was searching for this exact link to share here, and then DuckDuckGo surfaced your post.

Reading this article a few years ago was extremely influential for me, as I had been feeling awkward for a while about how we (authors and videomakers) have been going from "sharing actionable information and advice" to feeding the platforms so we can get crumbs from their monetization efforts.

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#134

Post by inigyou »

danielciocirlan wrote: post #59

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, conve…

> malleable goo

I see you read https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2025/07/06/content-creator/

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#135

Post by inigyou »

georgeecollins wrote: post #107
danielciocirlan wrote: post #59

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, 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 unorigina…

> "content" means you don't know what you are making

This again reminds me of the Telecom New Zealand rebranding. They changed their name from Telecom (meaningful) to Spark (maximally meaningless) and their logo from the word Telecom with a pair of wires passing through the O, to a Claude-esque generic inkblot (maximally meaningless). It gives the impression it got taken over by new management who have no idea what the company actually does, which is probably true.

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#136

Post by inigyou »

wolvesechoes wrote: post #129
CodingJeebus wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

"Don't hate the player, hate the game" I believe lack of social ostracization is one of the reason we find ourselves in current state. Because players are what perpetuates the game.

Capital is far more powerful than social ostracization. Consider the middle east situation: most of the money is on the opposite side from most of the people. You get kicked out of most groups for advertising that you support the money side. But the money side still won because it paid off everyone important.

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#137

Post by inigyou »

golly_ned wrote: post #51
keiferski wrote: post #18

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 pa…

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…

https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2025/07/06/content-creator/

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#138

Post by account42 »

1-more wrote: post #77

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!

"Asset" also has an, uhm, meaning in that world that is compatible with the bizspeak use.

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#139

Post by theandrewbailey »

glial wrote: post #33

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.

For me, its "learnings" and "performant". We've had "lessons" and "fast"; what do those words not capture?

Re: I Stopped “Creating Content”

#140

Post by inigyou »

golly_ned wrote: post #55
sgarland wrote: post #12

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 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 dis…

It's bad that this even works in a business context. A business that treats itself as producing undifferentiated slop to fill the slop-trough of TV attention time should lose out to every business that produces Stranger Things, or produces Avengers, or produces any other specific thing because that business actually knows and cares what it's making.

But it does not.

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