Thread by @normative

I know this makes me hopelessly elderly, but I really despise the contemporary usage of “content” (and, by extension “content creator”). Imagine describing your favorite novelist or composer or painter or director as a “content creator.”

https://twitter.com/BCDreyer/status/1470460506444124163

It’s a depressing way of thinking about creative work, because it admits the work itself is essentially filler. Never mind whether what you’re creating is political argument or comedy sketches or musical performance.

Shovel some undifferentiated sludge into your skullholes! The idle minutes and hours of your tedious existience must be filled with something! And that something is content!

I understand why tech executives would talk this way. They built a shiny container, and whatever’s getting stuffed in it & monetized is the “content.” It’s just a little depressing when the marketers’ terminology becomes the dominant frame even for the creators.

I get the same cringe when fans talk about a forthcoming game/movie/show as a “new IP.” Those are totally reasonable terms for investors & corporate lawyers to think in, but why is it colonizing the conversation between fans? What’s wrong with “story”?

It’s as if people suddenly started referring to their own pets as “the livestock.”