Interestingly enough, this has been a problem (obviously in different forms) for centuries now, going back to what Marx described as “reification”(from Latin res/rei, “thing”), that he believed was one of the core characteristics of capitalism. The idea that art and culture are not valuable in and of themselves but rather their value comes exclusively from how much we are willing to pay for it (in this case, with our time), almost always leads to the kind of distortions that you describe here.
I am not a sales person but, for a number of reasons, spent a few years in sales. At one level, the purpose of sales is to solve a problem; person has <x> need, I have the solution, shake hands and a sale happens. When done properly it is an art form and a win for both sides of the transaction. Enter the mechanics; I'm given a quota and my pay for the year is based on attainment of said quota. Since I'm not good at sales, the quota soon became 'the thing'. I understand why bad sales reps have such a horrible reputation. At the point you're working for the commission, the job stops being art and turns into a grind. I've seen similar processes in engineering (work to the deadline or budget rather than solving a problem). This process just sucks the life out of any activity.
Interesting approach on metrics. They need to have a target or number to understand performance, but I feel that companies usually mistakes "metrics" with the "drivers" of performance.
Veering off topic a bit, sorry: What I found interesting in sales was the whole process. A company decides how much money they need to make the next year and establish a budget. Included in this budget is some targeted mix of product lines. Marketing gets involved to establish ad campaigns and also to develop a secondary rewards system (sell x of y and get a cool gift). Sales puts together a commission schedule weighted to cause reps to sell products to meet the product sales goals. All very cool, analytical, and aligns incentives with required outcomes. Commission plan is presented to the sales reps. The good reps (in this case meaning reps who typically bring in the most money) take the plan, bounce it off their actual territory dynamics, and rewrite it in a way that guarantees the rep the biggest payout but is rarely matched with the company's objective. It was f'n fascinating to watch. Not once in all the time I was in sales did management ever pull in the senior reps to debug the commission plan.
We were starting to feel self-conscious about how frequently we used the word "content" (2% of all the words in our last post). At first, we thought it was just a convenient way to vary how we referred to "posts", "articles", "writing", etc. by tossing in another generalization of the stuff people create and share with the digital world. But now that you mention it, it feels more like a way to shift the attention toward the platform while sanding down the edges of all the cool things people are actually creating.
From a platform's perspective, calling everything "content" neatly packages the "product", but it doesn't seem right to refer to creativity as the product. The platform's product should be the infrastructure that enables the exchange of ideas. If that truly is the case, then using the word "content" doesn't make much sense - the "content" would exist *on* the platform, not inside it, all neatly packaged.
I always found it very dumb to call online posts "content", regardless of medium or genre. It is the most vague classification of all time and has led to people distilling their craft into something you can blindly sell to an investor. The way folks tend to undersell themselves or sound generic when they talk about themselves by describing themselves as "content creators" has been the saddest thing about it to me. I am not blaming creators for doing this, just for the record
Agree, is really sad. The definition is really vague, because content creation goes from posting a comment here (which will be added to the algorithm mixer), all the way to creating hollywood movies. There's a segmentation between where "the content" is published too.
Though many people do start making online “content” in order to communicate something specific, I’d venture that just as many do so solely in order to become famous, thereby justifying the aforementioned managers and marketers. Some creators don’t really care what content they post as long as it gets views, goes viral, and makes money. Isn’t that how “influencer” became a job in the first place? Once fame and money came to the early lucky few who went mega-viral, it became easier and more common, and now even mid-level “content creators” can make it into a full-time career. It’s also interesting that the phenomenon of early YouTube celebrities has largely faded, even though they, too, were creating “content”; but the algorithms of Instagram and TikTok changed internet fame as we knew it, and today’s YouTubers must also pump out as much content as possible or fade into oblivion.
Like the many creatives who feel “influencer creep”, the other side of that coin is the phenomenon of UGC (User-Generated Content) accounts, which are marketing students who literally study content creation and “viralization”, making a career out of being walking, talking commercials. They make content solely for the purpose of making content and, by extension, money for themselves and their sponsors. Their posts are viewed by millions, their affiliate links clicked thousands of times, but the comment sections are only filled with other “[name].ugc” accounts artificially and, perhaps, automatedly praising them and spamming heart-eye emojis to boost the post for the algorithm.
It’s odd. I guess it’s only natural that the internet became so commodified, but I hate the fact that people who started with a real passion have become hollow shells of themselves, pumping out “content” that lacks real content. So, thanks for staying true to yourself.
It's never been clear to me why people who make content as content with no deeper purpose don't just work. If making things is a means to an end, how is that any different to having a job? I guess they get to be their own boss at least?
I've always been interested in monetising my creative efforts, but that journey hasn't exactly been easy and the only thing that keeps me going is my art/purpose. There's no way I could be bothered to make content if it was just content for the sake of it. Formal employment is much more stable and probably more fulfilling too, depending on the industry you're in.
Platformization sounds like an important component of technofeudalism, a theory of economist Yanis Varoufakis. I don't him mentioning the term, but he discusses the mechanics of it.
I've known friends who wouldn't go the commercial route with their hobbies. They felt it would change the meaning of art for them and feared they might not derive the same joy and peace from it any longer.
"Content" in the modern day sounds more like an "abstraction" used by people in the industry of entertainment and advertisement, where they can apply the usual techniques for virality, often without much bearing of whatever the content entails.
im both a social media content writer (for brands) and a content writer for myself. ive been thinking a lot about the weigh of the word “content” also. how it simplifies different formats and exploration of art, information, and others. it’s cruel ngl… so i guess thank you for writing this—made me feel like im not the only one overthinking about just the one word: content. have a nice rest of week!
Nice post. I wrote a reported essay on this last year, if you're interested in the content marketing history (and Bill Gates' "content is king" essay) that all gave rise to our modern content trend. https://longformlowdown.substack.com/p/let-them-call-it-content
‘Content’ is a fundamentally empty word, and to my mind ‘linguistics’ misses he point. What we want, what we need, is fundamentally human, its feeling, passion, opinion, the articulation through media of the fundamentally embodied experience, in all of its vicissitudes, of life. Commercially, I’ve always preferred ‘editorial’, as it’s about opinion, the expression of a point of view. To make that switch, transforms one’s relationship to the audience, the viewer, the reader, not simply as a metric of eyeball attention, but as a person one is communicating with, reaching towards. The basis of all art, one might say.
This is such an interesting piece. I always felt so uncomfortable with people using the words "consuming content" to talk about art like watching movies or reading books, I thought this was some sort of internal elitism I was unconcoiusly feeling but this explains my discomfort better.
I love this idea "I make linguistics videos not because I want to make videos, but because I want to communicate about linguistics."
I'm exactly the same, I always think about how I'm not really a writer, I don't care much for writing, rather I'm a man with ideas who has found writing to be the best way to share these ideas. People can get so wrapped up in what they're doing they miss the point, I'm afraid.
Interestingly enough, this has been a problem (obviously in different forms) for centuries now, going back to what Marx described as “reification”(from Latin res/rei, “thing”), that he believed was one of the core characteristics of capitalism. The idea that art and culture are not valuable in and of themselves but rather their value comes exclusively from how much we are willing to pay for it (in this case, with our time), almost always leads to the kind of distortions that you describe here.
I am not a sales person but, for a number of reasons, spent a few years in sales. At one level, the purpose of sales is to solve a problem; person has <x> need, I have the solution, shake hands and a sale happens. When done properly it is an art form and a win for both sides of the transaction. Enter the mechanics; I'm given a quota and my pay for the year is based on attainment of said quota. Since I'm not good at sales, the quota soon became 'the thing'. I understand why bad sales reps have such a horrible reputation. At the point you're working for the commission, the job stops being art and turns into a grind. I've seen similar processes in engineering (work to the deadline or budget rather than solving a problem). This process just sucks the life out of any activity.
Goodhart's law: as soon as a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a good metric
Interesting approach on metrics. They need to have a target or number to understand performance, but I feel that companies usually mistakes "metrics" with the "drivers" of performance.
Veering off topic a bit, sorry: What I found interesting in sales was the whole process. A company decides how much money they need to make the next year and establish a budget. Included in this budget is some targeted mix of product lines. Marketing gets involved to establish ad campaigns and also to develop a secondary rewards system (sell x of y and get a cool gift). Sales puts together a commission schedule weighted to cause reps to sell products to meet the product sales goals. All very cool, analytical, and aligns incentives with required outcomes. Commission plan is presented to the sales reps. The good reps (in this case meaning reps who typically bring in the most money) take the plan, bounce it off their actual territory dynamics, and rewrite it in a way that guarantees the rep the biggest payout but is rarely matched with the company's objective. It was f'n fascinating to watch. Not once in all the time I was in sales did management ever pull in the senior reps to debug the commission plan.
We were starting to feel self-conscious about how frequently we used the word "content" (2% of all the words in our last post). At first, we thought it was just a convenient way to vary how we referred to "posts", "articles", "writing", etc. by tossing in another generalization of the stuff people create and share with the digital world. But now that you mention it, it feels more like a way to shift the attention toward the platform while sanding down the edges of all the cool things people are actually creating.
From a platform's perspective, calling everything "content" neatly packages the "product", but it doesn't seem right to refer to creativity as the product. The platform's product should be the infrastructure that enables the exchange of ideas. If that truly is the case, then using the word "content" doesn't make much sense - the "content" would exist *on* the platform, not inside it, all neatly packaged.
We are going to use the word less now...
I always found it very dumb to call online posts "content", regardless of medium or genre. It is the most vague classification of all time and has led to people distilling their craft into something you can blindly sell to an investor. The way folks tend to undersell themselves or sound generic when they talk about themselves by describing themselves as "content creators" has been the saddest thing about it to me. I am not blaming creators for doing this, just for the record
Agree, is really sad. The definition is really vague, because content creation goes from posting a comment here (which will be added to the algorithm mixer), all the way to creating hollywood movies. There's a segmentation between where "the content" is published too.
Though many people do start making online “content” in order to communicate something specific, I’d venture that just as many do so solely in order to become famous, thereby justifying the aforementioned managers and marketers. Some creators don’t really care what content they post as long as it gets views, goes viral, and makes money. Isn’t that how “influencer” became a job in the first place? Once fame and money came to the early lucky few who went mega-viral, it became easier and more common, and now even mid-level “content creators” can make it into a full-time career. It’s also interesting that the phenomenon of early YouTube celebrities has largely faded, even though they, too, were creating “content”; but the algorithms of Instagram and TikTok changed internet fame as we knew it, and today’s YouTubers must also pump out as much content as possible or fade into oblivion.
Like the many creatives who feel “influencer creep”, the other side of that coin is the phenomenon of UGC (User-Generated Content) accounts, which are marketing students who literally study content creation and “viralization”, making a career out of being walking, talking commercials. They make content solely for the purpose of making content and, by extension, money for themselves and their sponsors. Their posts are viewed by millions, their affiliate links clicked thousands of times, but the comment sections are only filled with other “[name].ugc” accounts artificially and, perhaps, automatedly praising them and spamming heart-eye emojis to boost the post for the algorithm.
It’s odd. I guess it’s only natural that the internet became so commodified, but I hate the fact that people who started with a real passion have become hollow shells of themselves, pumping out “content” that lacks real content. So, thanks for staying true to yourself.
It's never been clear to me why people who make content as content with no deeper purpose don't just work. If making things is a means to an end, how is that any different to having a job? I guess they get to be their own boss at least?
I've always been interested in monetising my creative efforts, but that journey hasn't exactly been easy and the only thing that keeps me going is my art/purpose. There's no way I could be bothered to make content if it was just content for the sake of it. Formal employment is much more stable and probably more fulfilling too, depending on the industry you're in.
Platformization sounds like an important component of technofeudalism, a theory of economist Yanis Varoufakis. I don't him mentioning the term, but he discusses the mechanics of it.
*I don't remember him
I've known friends who wouldn't go the commercial route with their hobbies. They felt it would change the meaning of art for them and feared they might not derive the same joy and peace from it any longer.
"Content" in the modern day sounds more like an "abstraction" used by people in the industry of entertainment and advertisement, where they can apply the usual techniques for virality, often without much bearing of whatever the content entails.
im both a social media content writer (for brands) and a content writer for myself. ive been thinking a lot about the weigh of the word “content” also. how it simplifies different formats and exploration of art, information, and others. it’s cruel ngl… so i guess thank you for writing this—made me feel like im not the only one overthinking about just the one word: content. have a nice rest of week!
any kind of gathering that is targeted at "content creators" is ultimately just a sermon on the grindset in a capitalist church
What the content actual is vs what the industry wants content to be is the difference between a creative and a creator.
Nice post. I wrote a reported essay on this last year, if you're interested in the content marketing history (and Bill Gates' "content is king" essay) that all gave rise to our modern content trend. https://longformlowdown.substack.com/p/let-them-call-it-content
I like that I can hear this in your voice 💚
‘Content’ is a fundamentally empty word, and to my mind ‘linguistics’ misses he point. What we want, what we need, is fundamentally human, its feeling, passion, opinion, the articulation through media of the fundamentally embodied experience, in all of its vicissitudes, of life. Commercially, I’ve always preferred ‘editorial’, as it’s about opinion, the expression of a point of view. To make that switch, transforms one’s relationship to the audience, the viewer, the reader, not simply as a metric of eyeball attention, but as a person one is communicating with, reaching towards. The basis of all art, one might say.
This is such an interesting piece. I always felt so uncomfortable with people using the words "consuming content" to talk about art like watching movies or reading books, I thought this was some sort of internal elitism I was unconcoiusly feeling but this explains my discomfort better.
I love this idea "I make linguistics videos not because I want to make videos, but because I want to communicate about linguistics."
I'm exactly the same, I always think about how I'm not really a writer, I don't care much for writing, rather I'm a man with ideas who has found writing to be the best way to share these ideas. People can get so wrapped up in what they're doing they miss the point, I'm afraid.
Authors need to create *pages* of writing