When I started out in media, a bunch of us made music videos. We’d get together, pool our gear and skills, and shoot them for mates in mostly terrible bands. The big dream was to get them played on one of the local music shows on TV. We put our heart and soul into them.
You know what we never called this work, we never called it content. It was something we were proud of. It made us feel special and important (probably a little too important, lol). We’d made a thing out of nothing.
Thirty years later, I was talking to a friend about the newsletter and the podcast, and I heard myself say I needed to create some new content for the newsletter. It had crept in without me noticing. I was labelling my faarking hard work content.
“CONTENT”
Being all fancy, I asked AI where the word came from. Turns out it’s from the Latin contentum (look at me, all Roman). That which is contained. Think about where else the word content turns up. What’s in your stomach? Contents. What’s in a box? The contents. It should not be the word for the article, the film, or the podcast you’ve busted a gut to make.
This feels like a good spot for a quote from someone famous. Here’s Emma Thompson at the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention in September 2023
“When I hear people talk about ‘content’, it makes me feel like the stuffing inside a sofa cushion.”
She called it a rude word for creative people. I think she’s right.
Think about the people throughout history who have made a bunch of stuff. Seneca wrote a fair bit. Shakespeare, hell, he was flat out. Taylor Swift never stops. Nobody dares call any of it content or them content creators. Now I’m not saying you’re a Seneca, a Shakespeare or a Taylor, but you’re putting real time and real effort into whatever you make. So stop calling it content.
Why is this important?
A song is a song whether it’s on vinyl or coming out of your phone. The fact that it reaches you through a platform (container) like Spotify, YouTube or Facebook doesn’t turn your hard work into content. Your work is not grist for their mill.
There’s an actual cost here. The machines are always hungry for something faster, shorter, and preferably angrier. You find yourself chained to the work of feeding them. Before you know it, you’ve become a content supplier/creator instead of a creative worker.
Call it content, and you become a supplier to a machine that’s always hungry.
If you subscribe to this newsletter, I don’t think that’s what you’re after. You’ve already spent decades making stuff for the man. The campaigns. The reports. Why would you hand your creative skills to a faceless content mill now? Don’t just become another content creator.
The one thing a platform can’t manufacture, and an algorithm can’t fake, is a human making a specific thing on purpose. Naming your work, a newsletter, an essay, a show, is a small way of insisting it’s a made thing. Not fuel for the beast.
Try This
For the next week, catch yourself every time you call your own work content, even in your head. You’ll be surprised how automatic it’s become.
Then rename it. Say “my newsletter”, “my show”, “the thing I’m making”. Out loud if you have to. Don’t let yourself, or anyone else, file your hard work under the heading of content.
Those terrible music videos were precious to us because we knew we’d made them. The stuff you’re making now deserves the same. Give it a name, but whatever you do don’t call it content.
It’s yours.
💯