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, conversations, etc. the kind of things you care about, for an audience whose attention you don’t take for granted, hoping that they too will care at least a little. If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work.
xboxnolifes 8 minutes ago [-]
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.
TACIXAT 32 minutes ago [-]
The flexibility you bemoan in content creation is the exact same search people perform when running a startup. Finding product-market fit is a search process and content creators do the same thing. They see what customers like and focus in on that. Is it somewhat soulless? For sure. It is not unique to content creation though.
CodingJeebus 57 minutes ago [-]
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 game".
ktallett 54 minutes ago [-]
You don't need to do that as an activity. You can earn money doing something more useful.
TACIXAT 28 minutes ago [-]
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.
randysalami 43 minutes ago [-]
I'm sorry but my first thought after reading:
"You should be writing essays, recording tutorials, training, music, conversations, etc. the kind of things you care about... If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work"
Is an AI company webcrawler sucking up your novel work, for free, only to goop it out to everyone else without compensating you a dime. And while you worked so hard to genuinely create something, that won't be amplified by internet algorithms so no real human will see it, another person will do a dance or be funny, edgy, unethical, controversial, and get 1000x the human eyeballs, money, and power - probably using AI to write the very words they regurgitate.
It's a sad world after all.
keiferski 3 hours ago [-]
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 paintings/sculptures/traditional/contemporary studio art. The word creative used to serve a similar purpose, but nowadays I think it sounds both blasé and pretentious.
Yes, content does come with an expectation that you're creating things for an commercial audience; however, I think content is tied to media, and not merely any sort of created object. And so by extension you are participating in the global media sphere by making content, and not just painting for your own enjoyment.
It’s also worth pointing out that while Michelangelo did think of himself as an artist and a sculptor and painter, those professions were basically tradesmen at the time. The concept of high art, in the purely non-economic way we think of today, didn’t come for centuries after his life.
ChrisMarshallNY 3 hours ago [-]
As an artist (former, really[0]), I can confirm that the medium really, really matters. It can inform the creation, as much as the creator.
There are top-shelf authors that insist on writing everything in cursive, in legal pads (God help the poor schlubs that have to transcribe it, though). They insist that they can’t be creative, otherwise. There are musicians (like Rhiannon Giddens), that always perform barefoot.
Most of the Great Masters could work in many mediums, and they chose specific media, to do specific works, because they knew that the medium would “push back,” and inform the work.
Michelangelo was quoted as saying something like he “saw the statue in the stone,” and that was why selecting the rock was as important as any other part of the process.
Many folks take great pains, to do their work in specific contexts, as that affects their creativity.
Creativity isn’t something that is easy to commoditize.
I meant that the medium doesn’t lock you into how others perceive you and your work. Not that mediums are interchangeable from the creator’s perspective.
golly_ned 2 hours ago [-]
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 to think of a similar case where to an outsider, the 'tech speak' jargon a software engineer would use seems useless to an outsider. Maybe things like 'framework', or 'deployment', or 'library', or web application instead of web site.
Jtarii 52 minutes ago [-]
If you are making meaningful things then you shouldn't be afraid to sound pretentious.
Everyone's so terrified that they might stand out.
catapart 3 hours ago [-]
I'm with you. I would prefer to be known as a "content creator" rather than a "woodworker" or "game developer" or "illustrator" or "writer" or "musician". Especially because all of that work tends to overlap all of the time. It feels so limiting to be described by a singular part of what I do. And I'm neurotic enough to want a 'comprehensive' word, rather than to slash myself to death in a description.
I don't particularly like the term "content creator". It feels too blunt and sterile to be particularly useful. But it does seem to be generally useful in how wide-reachingly descriptive it is.
rc5150 3 hours ago [-]
Anecdata, but I find it funny you mentioning woodworker and musician. I build guitars and I play them. There is /some/ overlap, but only at the end result of me playing the guitar I have built. If I were to distill either of the two disciplines into 'content' each endeavor would lose its own individual meaning for me.
Being a musician has nothing to do with the output of working with wood, and likewise, my prowess on gouges, chisels, and saws is irrespective of my ability to write an interesting chord progression. Using a catch-all term to amalgamate the output of multiple specializations I think detracts from the results being, well... special.
Just my .02c
zem 3 hours ago [-]
for me the distinction is that pre-"content" you created a website so you have a place to host your art; with "content" you produce art to have something to put on your website.
criddell 2 hours ago [-]
"Content" is giving in to the idea that what you make only has value because it can fill some hole between ads in somebody else's CMS. What it is doesn't matter, it's just content. Meh.
> The alternative is "art"
Maybe. Or alternative could be to use the words you used in your first sentence: writer, photographer, filmmaker.
If you talk about your work using deflationary words like content then that could affect how you think about it and present it. Do yourself a favor and use grand words because I bet it's important to you.
firefoxd 3 hours ago [-]
Content used to be a bad word, now kids want to become content creators when they grow up.
I was hired at a job the very same day Google released their first Panda update[0]. This was the update that nuked all content farmers from search results. It was complete chaos, I sat in an empty cubicle, not knowing if I should stay or leave while the manager cursed and paced. Our ad revenue went from millions to zero, overnight. Unfortunately, they figured out a trick to game google. Which I guess meant I remained employed.
Truly curious - why did you choose to work at a content farm?
elictronic 40 minutes ago [-]
Money
Why would you work for
Insurance, Defense, military, Amazon, killing kittens R Us.
Money.
ecshafer 26 minutes ago [-]
Defense and Military you can want to work there for such nebulous ideas such as serving your nation, protecting your loved ones, security, etc. This would require you to actually believe in said abstract concepts like nationalism, community, family, culture, or truth, so that you actually want to defend your homeland though. This is easier to believe for me than the innumerable start ups that were making the world a better place via ad placement click through rates.
2 hours ago [-]
glial 3 hours ago [-]
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.
EPWN3D 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah I have a similar list. Mine also includes "journey". As soon as a word gets adopted by MBAs to abstract away the real world, it gets added to my list. They're words that project the idea of a smart person but only to stupid people.
bombcar 2 hours ago [-]
Mine is "thought leader" - I've yet to meet someone who calls themselves that who's had a useful thought.
lemonberry 2 hours ago [-]
I saw a news article recently where the headline was something about someone's "cancer journey". Maybe I'm old - only 51! - but I thought it was kind of a tasteless way to put it. That said, language is a malleable thing and no one needs my approval.
duggan 2 hours ago [-]
For me it's when companies talk about themselves as brands.
tayo42 2 hours ago [-]
What else would you call smaller companies and products within a company?
duggan 2 hours ago [-]
Whatever they are! Using the literal word "brand" in public messaging is leaking the marketing team's lingo to customers.
ambicapter 3 hours ago [-]
They're ambiguous words when there's no reason to not be more specific, so either the speaker is lazy or intentionally trying to muddy the waters.
ohyoutravel 2 hours ago [-]
It’s a conflict of interest. When people organically create things online with no incentive except the love, you can give them a lot of trust. Once someone goes from that to manufacturing “content” (or even worse goes from nothing to “content”) there’s major incentive to either shill for some product for compensation, or to generate outlandish things that get more clicks, views, likes, subscribes. All of this is antithetical to creating about a subject because you enjoy the subject.
From about 1998-2008 I ran one of the largest sites on the internet for a particular niche. Zero advertisers, no ads, no shady links, just content about a subject I loved. I worked hard to make sure it was accurate and up to date. Now someone creating the same site would be loads of referral links or paid ads, so no trust whatsoever in what’s being presented.
glial 2 hours ago [-]
This makes sense to me.
I get a similar ick when I hear someone say "I enjoy consuming this type of content." They're not selling anything, but they are still adopting the soulless language. Like, if it still exists after you interact with it, you haven't consumed anything. Second, do you really see yourself this way? Why not just say "I love to read travel blogs"?
sgarland 3 hours ago [-]
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?
ryandrake 3 hours ago [-]
I feel the same way. I want to watch movies and listen to music and read books! I don't want to "consume content." That phrase feels like it reduces my role to just be a generic pac-man gobbling up whatever bland grays dots of vague content are "created" and set down in front of me. That's not what it should be.
golly_ned 2 hours ago [-]
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 discuss this category of business, it's useful for writers and video producers to be able to relate to each other by abstracting out the thing that actually makes them distinct and particular.
I see it less as devaluing that special thing and more as a lens to put on or take off when certain audiences are interested in the 'non-special' aspects of running businesses based on that special thing.
ClikeX 3 hours ago [-]
People seem to be content with content.
hyperpape 3 hours ago [-]
Different people should use different words.
I don't think a content creator would naturally describe themselves as a content creator. The word is useful for contexts where you need to generalize over all the different types, but that's not useful when speaking about yourself. So a writer says "I'm a writer", not "I'm a content creator." But writing this paragraph, I needed a word to generalize.
P.S. The closest alternative word might be artist, but it's not quite right--some writers are artists and some aren't.
golly_ned 2 hours ago [-]
I agree, and the audience also matters too. A writer speaking to writers at a writing workshop? "I'm a writer." A writer at an independent business conference? "I'm a content creator", as a means to relate to people making videos, blog posts, photographs, tweets, etc.
Some 'content creators' might also do: videos, blog posts, photographs, tweets, and a lot of other activity that drives the same business: getting user 'engagement' for sponsorship or advertising revenue.
advisedwang 3 hours ago [-]
I believe there is a material difference between "content" and other modes of creative output: content is defined by a pipeline. It is desired for it's recurring revenue.
You could make the tackiest, most commercial and derivative musical, but it's still not content because it's just one.
You could make the most eloquent, poetic and inventive podcast in the world, but so long as you are still doing weekly releases (with ads, plus an ad free patreon, of course) it is content.
The tragedy is that we want artists to have reliable income, but the business models, incentives and consumption habits that come with the reliable output to provide that reliable income lead us to the ugliness that people blame on "content".
WalterBright 49 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
sajithdilshan 3 hours ago [-]
Surprisingly it was quite easy to read the blog post and well written. However, the author definitely has the gift of gab in writing in terms he can write about anything, but at the same time convey nothing meaningful
NetOpWibby 2 hours ago [-]
This is the most polite diss I've ever read
ohyoutravel 2 hours ago [-]
It’s AI slop, that’s why.
mtlynch 2 hours ago [-]
OP here. I wrote the post myself with no AI (modulo grammar checks).
What makes you think it's AI-generated?
ErroneousBosh 2 hours ago [-]
I keep getting people saying they think my posts are AI-generated because I use hyphens in sentences (not M-dashes though, I can never remember the compose key for it), and because I use the term "load bearing" in a pisstakey way - like for instance, "yet another instance of load-bearing idiocy by management".
ecshafer 29 minutes ago [-]
Bill Gates is responsible for the proliferation of the term "content". We can add this to the list of his other crimes.
1-more 46 minutes ago [-]
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!
MASNeo 31 minutes ago [-]
I stopped creating (public) content when Facebook was launched. Totally missed I had to announce it here.
neochief 4 hours ago [-]
I feel that all the terms mentioned are useful in specific contexts. Web traffic brings visitors to your resource. If they read your blog, they become readers. If they use your products, they become users. When someone buys something from you, they become a customer.
mtlynch 4 hours ago [-]
OP here. Thanks for reading!
> I feel that all the terms mentioned are useful in specific contexts. Web traffic brings visitors to your resource. If they read your blog, they become readers. If they use your products, they become users. When someone buys something from you, they become a customer.
I'll respectfully disagree. I think those terms make sense if you're talking in general terms, but if you're an individual person talking about your work, they're generic catchall terms with better alternatives.
Like, in concrete terms, let's say I publish funny cartoons on my website and sell prints of those cartoons. It doesn't make sense for me to say "web traffic brings visitors to my resource." What traffic? What resource? It would be more meaningful to say, "Visitors find my website through Google search."
egypturnash 16 minutes ago [-]
Even more concrete, IMHO: "People find my comics through Google search. Some of them become fans and subscribe."
neochief 2 hours ago [-]
Totally agree with this one: being an indie business owner, you can do it however you want.
munificent 2 hours ago [-]
I make electronic music as a hobby, and I feel the same way about the term "producer".
I understand the history behind where that term came from. (The people who were making musical decisions while standing behind the mixing board often were initially producers: people whose job it was to oversee the entire production and coordinate between the musicians, engineers, etc. Then when DJs at discotheques wanted longer versions of songs for dancefloors, remixes were invented. Producers took existing recordings and made longer versions. Then electronic dance music sort of evolved out of that.)
But it still feels like such a soulless term. And most "producers" today are just sitting at home alone with a laptop and Ableton, so the role is very different than it was.
WalterBright 47 minutes ago [-]
Michael Jackson was smart enough to hire Quincy Jones to produce his albums, and his work took a great leap forward as a result.
minusLik 2 hours ago [-]
Despite not quite being an artist, this resonated with me. This fits well in line with my favourite example of corpo-speak: "challenge" instead of "problem". Lately, I find myself replacing these two in my mind occasionally when reading them and the texts still don't change their meaning.
It's a bit depressing watching language get shallow …
For me the term users sometimes sounds similar to traffic. I prefer customers - that you serve with your product.
krupan 4 hours ago [-]
The term "user" maybe made sense before any software was commercialized. It differentiated the programmer of the software from the non-programmer that used the software. Even then it was sometimes used derogatorily (especially when people were sneered at as "Lusers"). In the original Tron the Good Guys had to fight for the users.
Customer is a much nicer term. Words do matter.
miyoji 4 hours ago [-]
The first paragraph seems to insinuate that "content" is replacing "art", but that doesn't seem at all related to what the author's actual work looks like, nor does it seem related to the thrust of the argument, which is about how descriptions of your work influence how you think about it. The entire blog looks more like "content" than David to my eyes, but maybe that's because most of the blog predates this shift in the author's thinking?
mtlynch 3 hours ago [-]
OP here. Thanks for reading!
I'm not trying to argue that art is sacred and we have to hold it up over everything else, but I am joking that there is still an implicit boundary where we don't use "content" to refer to things that we respect highly.
I think a lot of people that talk about "art" vs. "content" are talking about art vs. business, but I'm more arguing about big vs. small and aggregation vs. individuality.
It makes sense for YouTube and Twitter and Facebook to refer to everything on the Internet as "content" because there's so much variety and those platforms are trying to capture all of it. But I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
miyoji 3 hours ago [-]
I got all of that, I just found the David example to be distracting from and unrelated to the more interesting argument that you're making, which I do agree with, and which I think you summed it up neatly here:
> I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
firefoxd 3 hours ago [-]
As regular reader of his blog, the David example worked for me because I felt revulsion for a second. I had to double check the URL to make sure I was reading the right blog. "When did he embrace the LinkedIn broetry?"
Which, I believe, was the intention.
mtlynch 3 hours ago [-]
I appreciate the critique!
Sometimes when I'm thinking about a blog post, I fall in love with a joke I want to use, but then it constrains how I think about the topic. I still like the David example, but I'm too close to the post to have a balanced perspective, just having finished it today.
stopamertime 5 hours ago [-]
A good point overall. It's skin-deep, though. Do you think a catch-all name is useful for something like content? Is it only distasteful on the internet/TV/etc. because of the negative impacts of mass-production and commoditisation, or is the idea itself inherently distasteful?
mtlynch 4 hours ago [-]
OP here. Thanks for reading!
I don't really have anything against the existence of the catchall term "content." Like, I don't expect the CEO of YouTube to say, "music, short film, art, comedy, journalism, ..., creators" every time he talks about YouTube users. It makes sense from their perspective to bucket everything into "content."
The thing I found interesting was just that the language had crossed over to people where it doesn't make sense to bucket everything. If I'm a blogger, I can just say "blogger" and it's more meaningful than "content creator" but I think the people running small businesses or doing creative work have needlessly adopted the big bucket terminology of "content."
azeirah 4 hours ago [-]
The author addresses this, no?
> But I did notice an immediate change, especially with words like “traffic.” Traffic makes me feel like I’m just throwing out flypaper and measuring whatever sticks. When I describe website visitors as “readers,” it reminds me that these are real people who have literally billions of other things they could be reading that day, but they’re choosing to spend some of their limited time with me.
nancyminusone 4 hours ago [-]
Stanley Kubrick, Kane Parsons, and Mr. Beast walk into a bar. Bartender says, "Sorry,we don't serve content creators here."
Who gets kicked out?
rkagerer 28 minutes ago [-]
When I hear people use the generic word "content" it grinds my gears. It lacks any sort of deep meaning, and feels insulting when applied to genuine work that real humans poured their sweat, time, energy and passion into creating and perfecting.
There's slop, and there's masterpiece. In which would you rather invest your time? (Either creating or 'consuming'?)
nicbou 27 seconds ago [-]
It's one level of abstraction below "enrichment"
seydor 2 hours ago [-]
"content" is meant to trigger the novelty reward , thats why we don't get classics among content creators. But i think we all agreed that AI has put an end to this content-monetization era.
Digital marketing creative investment into audience experience with goal of subsequent monetisation. Like and subscribe.
--
I could not resist playing this game of words...
BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago [-]
Words matter. If you use words that remove meaning to describe a thing, then the thing itself will have have diminished meaning. It's the same with politicians using dehumanizing words to describe a group of people that they want those listening to think of as less than human; "illegals" as topical example.
Ie. If you see yourself as a 'content creator' then the best you're going to be is a slop merchant. If you see yourself as an author or a writer then you at least have a chance at being a real artist, like Michaelangelo.
It uses lots of words to make it's point which, for me, smacks of 'content' (I was expecting there to be a recipe at the end). They haven't stopped 'creating content' but they're attempting to stop calling it that.
That's what I got out of it anyway. But then again I may just be salty that I'm not also a Don Draper (slop merchant).
jun_lung 3 hours ago [-]
I think it helps to draw a clear boundary between what is "content" and what is "art", since they ultimately serve different purposes and have vastly different factors that go into their creation. To me, "content" is anything created with the goal of maximizing consumption, whereas "art" is an attempt to express or give form to some kind of idea or emotion. The lines blur when you get to things like film, where those two goals often compete, but it's pretty easy to put things into these two categories.
And this isn't to say that "content creation" is any less valid than "creating art". There are plenty of "content creators" who know exactly what they are making at the end of the day (a product) and don't hide that fact or try to dress it up under the pretense of being anything more.
serhack_ 3 hours ago [-]
after discovering most of my content has been scraped thousands of times, I don't have any willingness to continue posting my blog. Well, yes, I was expecting that (you know.. by publishing content on the net, everyone could read it -- and profit off!). I've some content for some months, including some analysis.
I wish somebody could motivate me to publish them anyway.
jasonshen 3 hours ago [-]
Would you feel the same way about creating open source software that had been forked 1,000's of times and used without your knowledge? Are you interested in living in a world where everyone only does things if they feel they can directly capture the majority of the value created?
egypturnash 11 minutes ago [-]
There's a whole world of software that people are expected to pay for, one way or another. Some programmers choose to release their work for free. And some people use the paid software without paying. We call those people "pirates".
Are you interested in living in a world where nobody can make a living off of their creative work?
cwmoore 3 hours ago [-]
I don’t think it is majority of the value created, but it might have to be a significant portion of the value expended to make it worthwhile at all.
tonyedgecombe 3 hours ago [-]
When those forkers are large corporations then it probably should make most people think twice.
m0llusk 3 hours ago [-]
Ironic that this piece is mostly discontent.
abanana 3 hours ago [-]
I'd give this article multiple upvotes if I could.
The first section did a great job of grabbing my attention. It feels like these days, all creative works are lumped together as "content", anything not brand-new and bleeding-edge is labelled "legacy" (I see this more on HN than anywhere), and everything is distilled down to "engagement" and "conversions".
I hate business buzzword-jargon, the corporate in-group lingo, and I've also always disliked this use of the word "content". It's too generic - we might as well be calling it "stuff".
As a child, I used to notice that there were some other kids who, upon hearing a word that was new to them, would immediately start using it incessantly, replacing the (sometimes richer) choice of words they'd thus far been brought up to use. Very often wrongly, by slightly misunderstanding the meaning, the context, or the word itself, and never checking first. It was clear how the choice of words used, or even the meaning of words, could subtly change within a small group. As I grew older I realised these people appeared to be in the majority, and that it showed how, via various methods of trying to sound clever or in-group signalling, changes in speech patterns spread out across the larger population.
Anyway that's my view, now I'll go back to yelling at clouds.
zazuke 2 hours ago [-]
Great article, I see it is very similar. To me it's about learning, not "producing" — as Jason Fried said [1]:
> I've never created content, I've written things down.
> I've never created content, I've said things out loud.
> I've never created content, I've recorded a video.
> I've never created content, I've shown someone around.
> I've never created content, I've pointed something out.
> They can’t do what we do. And they hate us for it.
You could make a plausible conspiracy theory that this was why so much capital was invested to develop generative AI: Maybe the holy grail of tech CEOs wasn't AGI, it was a web full of content without those annoying content creators...
pentagrama 58 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
arjie 3 hours ago [-]
> She said, “Oh, yeah, he always sends me great leads.” I think she meant it as a compliment, but she might as well have said, “Oh, yeah, he’s so good at spotting gullible marks.”
That’s not what it means. It means that the vendor and you are a good fit for each other. The hard part in almost all these things is that two parties would both benefit if they had common knowledge but they don’t have common knowledge. The guy who puts the two together is useful. That’s who you describe as “sending great leads”.
It’s not clear to me why this style of manufactured grievance writing is popular. The world is full of Pareto wins.
mtlynch 3 hours ago [-]
OP here. Thanks for reading!
I'm having trouble understanding where we disagree. It seems like you're arguing that she's correct because it was helpful for the mutual acquaintance to refer me to this vendor, which I agree it is.
My point is that the term "lead" implies that she's thinking about making the sale rather than serving me as her client. Do we disagree about the connotation of the word "lead?"
As a more extreme example, if you went to a doctor for an illness and they said, "Wow, I'm going to make so much money treating you," I imagine you'd find it off-putting even if the doctor would only earn the money because they're doing a useful thing by treating your illness.
arjie 2 hours ago [-]
Is your sentence supposed to be analogous? The difference between a great lead and a bad lead in that context would be sending a patient with a skin lesion to a dermatologist (great lead - “someone who will be happy with what I can do”) vs sending a patient with a brain tumor to a dermatologist (bad lead - “I can’t help this person”). In this context, a “great lead” is someone who has been appropriately prequalified so that both participants are going to benefit from the interaction.
Naturally the grievance writing style pre-supposes extractive malice “oh the dermatologist is happy because they’re going to make money off me” rather than the more mundane “oh the dermatologist is happy because they don’t have to spend this time telling me they can’t help me”.
In any case, far be it from me to tell you not to do this. As a content creator, you have certainly found writer-audience fit. It baffles me why, but this style is certainly popular on this website.
mtlynch 2 hours ago [-]
I think we disagree on the connotation of the word "lead."
To me, if someone describes me as a "lead," it implies that they are focused on making the sale rather than on anything else about the business relationship. I would also find it unsettling if a doctor told me that I was a "good lead" because I had a disease they treat.
arjie 2 hours ago [-]
Jargon is field-specific. In medicine you’d be a good referral (“I’m glad they sent you to me”) or an interesting case. The field does not use “lead” for that in the way that contemporary sales does. Discordant terminology is reasonable to be wary of.
Consider for the moment the two cases of an agent for a player or actor and a doctor. It’s normal for an agent to discuss commission and for a doctor to not, though both will make money off you participating. If you had an agent who said he’s just trying to get you the best deal and “don’t worry about money” that would also trigger red flags as much as a doctor discussing commission rates for referrals.
That doesn’t mean commissions are worse than undiscussed rates. Just that norm-violators are risky deal participants.
Given this discussion, I suspect the best interpretation of your post is not that it is grievance text. It is that unfamiliarity with the terminology of a field has resulted in transferring connotations from unrelated contexts.
To lighten the tone, I am reminded of a HN comment where someone said that “Khan Academy” was a terrible name because it naturally brings to mind a “con man”. Of course, this must have been natural because the two words are homophones in his accent (they are not so in mine). An example of connotation mistaken.
Rendered at 20:54:33 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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, conversations, etc. the kind of things you care about, for an audience whose attention you don’t take for granted, hoping that they too will care at least a little. If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work.
Ice T said it best: "Don't hate the player, hate the game".
"You should be writing essays, recording tutorials, training, music, conversations, etc. the kind of things you care about... If they do, they will pay you because they will rather part with money than part with your work"
Is an AI company webcrawler sucking up your novel work, for free, only to goop it out to everyone else without compensating you a dime. And while you worked so hard to genuinely create something, that won't be amplified by internet algorithms so no real human will see it, another person will do a dance or be funny, edgy, unethical, controversial, and get 1000x the human eyeballs, money, and power - probably using AI to write the very words they regurgitate.
It's a sad world after all.
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 paintings/sculptures/traditional/contemporary studio art. The word creative used to serve a similar purpose, but nowadays I think it sounds both blasé and pretentious.
Yes, content does come with an expectation that you're creating things for an commercial audience; however, I think content is tied to media, and not merely any sort of created object. And so by extension you are participating in the global media sphere by making content, and not just painting for your own enjoyment.
It’s also worth pointing out that while Michelangelo did think of himself as an artist and a sculptor and painter, those professions were basically tradesmen at the time. The concept of high art, in the purely non-economic way we think of today, didn’t come for centuries after his life.
There are top-shelf authors that insist on writing everything in cursive, in legal pads (God help the poor schlubs that have to transcribe it, though). They insist that they can’t be creative, otherwise. There are musicians (like Rhiannon Giddens), that always perform barefoot.
Most of the Great Masters could work in many mediums, and they chose specific media, to do specific works, because they knew that the medium would “push back,” and inform the work.
Michelangelo was quoted as saying something like he “saw the statue in the stone,” and that was why selecting the rock was as important as any other part of the process.
Many folks take great pains, to do their work in specific contexts, as that affects their creativity.
Creativity isn’t something that is easy to commoditize.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886
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 to think of a similar case where to an outsider, the 'tech speak' jargon a software engineer would use seems useless to an outsider. Maybe things like 'framework', or 'deployment', or 'library', or web application instead of web site.
Everyone's so terrified that they might stand out.
I don't particularly like the term "content creator". It feels too blunt and sterile to be particularly useful. But it does seem to be generally useful in how wide-reachingly descriptive it is.
Being a musician has nothing to do with the output of working with wood, and likewise, my prowess on gouges, chisels, and saws is irrespective of my ability to write an interesting chord progression. Using a catch-all term to amalgamate the output of multiple specializations I think detracts from the results being, well... special.
Just my .02c
> The alternative is "art"
Maybe. Or alternative could be to use the words you used in your first sentence: writer, photographer, filmmaker.
If you talk about your work using deflationary words like content then that could affect how you think about it and present it. Do yourself a favor and use grand words because I bet it's important to you.
I was hired at a job the very same day Google released their first Panda update[0]. This was the update that nuked all content farmers from search results. It was complete chaos, I sat in an empty cubicle, not knowing if I should stay or leave while the manager cursed and paced. Our ad revenue went from millions to zero, overnight. Unfortunately, they figured out a trick to game google. Which I guess meant I remained employed.
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/content-is-bad
Money.
From about 1998-2008 I ran one of the largest sites on the internet for a particular niche. Zero advertisers, no ads, no shady links, just content about a subject I loved. I worked hard to make sure it was accurate and up to date. Now someone creating the same site would be loads of referral links or paid ads, so no trust whatsoever in what’s being presented.
I get a similar ick when I hear someone say "I enjoy consuming this type of content." They're not selling anything, but they are still adopting the soulless language. Like, if it still exists after you interact with it, you haven't consumed anything. Second, do you really see yourself this way? Why not just say "I love to read travel blogs"?
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 discuss this category of business, it's useful for writers and video producers to be able to relate to each other by abstracting out the thing that actually makes them distinct and particular.
I see it less as devaluing that special thing and more as a lens to put on or take off when certain audiences are interested in the 'non-special' aspects of running businesses based on that special thing.
I don't think a content creator would naturally describe themselves as a content creator. The word is useful for contexts where you need to generalize over all the different types, but that's not useful when speaking about yourself. So a writer says "I'm a writer", not "I'm a content creator." But writing this paragraph, I needed a word to generalize.
P.S. The closest alternative word might be artist, but it's not quite right--some writers are artists and some aren't.
Some 'content creators' might also do: videos, blog posts, photographs, tweets, and a lot of other activity that drives the same business: getting user 'engagement' for sponsorship or advertising revenue.
You could make the tackiest, most commercial and derivative musical, but it's still not content because it's just one.
You could make the most eloquent, poetic and inventive podcast in the world, but so long as you are still doing weekly releases (with ads, plus an ad free patreon, of course) it is content.
The tragedy is that we want artists to have reliable income, but the business models, incentives and consumption habits that come with the reliable output to provide that reliable income lead us to the ugliness that people blame on "content".
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.
What makes you think it's AI-generated?
> I feel that all the terms mentioned are useful in specific contexts. Web traffic brings visitors to your resource. If they read your blog, they become readers. If they use your products, they become users. When someone buys something from you, they become a customer.
I'll respectfully disagree. I think those terms make sense if you're talking in general terms, but if you're an individual person talking about your work, they're generic catchall terms with better alternatives.
Like, in concrete terms, let's say I publish funny cartoons on my website and sell prints of those cartoons. It doesn't make sense for me to say "web traffic brings visitors to my resource." What traffic? What resource? It would be more meaningful to say, "Visitors find my website through Google search."
I understand the history behind where that term came from. (The people who were making musical decisions while standing behind the mixing board often were initially producers: people whose job it was to oversee the entire production and coordinate between the musicians, engineers, etc. Then when DJs at discotheques wanted longer versions of songs for dancefloors, remixes were invented. Producers took existing recordings and made longer versions. Then electronic dance music sort of evolved out of that.)
But it still feels like such a soulless term. And most "producers" today are just sitting at home alone with a laptop and Ableton, so the role is very different than it was.
It's a bit depressing watching language get shallow …
Customer is a much nicer term. Words do matter.
I'm not trying to argue that art is sacred and we have to hold it up over everything else, but I am joking that there is still an implicit boundary where we don't use "content" to refer to things that we respect highly.
I think a lot of people that talk about "art" vs. "content" are talking about art vs. business, but I'm more arguing about big vs. small and aggregation vs. individuality.
It makes sense for YouTube and Twitter and Facebook to refer to everything on the Internet as "content" because there's so much variety and those platforms are trying to capture all of it. But I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
> I just realized it's silly for me, an individual author to refer to my work as "content" when I could just as easily say "book" or "blog posts."
Which, I believe, was the intention.
Sometimes when I'm thinking about a blog post, I fall in love with a joke I want to use, but then it constrains how I think about the topic. I still like the David example, but I'm too close to the post to have a balanced perspective, just having finished it today.
I don't really have anything against the existence of the catchall term "content." Like, I don't expect the CEO of YouTube to say, "music, short film, art, comedy, journalism, ..., creators" every time he talks about YouTube users. It makes sense from their perspective to bucket everything into "content."
The thing I found interesting was just that the language had crossed over to people where it doesn't make sense to bucket everything. If I'm a blogger, I can just say "blogger" and it's more meaningful than "content creator" but I think the people running small businesses or doing creative work have needlessly adopted the big bucket terminology of "content."
> But I did notice an immediate change, especially with words like “traffic.” Traffic makes me feel like I’m just throwing out flypaper and measuring whatever sticks. When I describe website visitors as “readers,” it reminds me that these are real people who have literally billions of other things they could be reading that day, but they’re choosing to spend some of their limited time with me.
Who gets kicked out?
There's slop, and there's masterpiece. In which would you rather invest your time? (Either creating or 'consuming'?)
--
I could not resist playing this game of words...
Ie. If you see yourself as a 'content creator' then the best you're going to be is a slop merchant. If you see yourself as an author or a writer then you at least have a chance at being a real artist, like Michaelangelo.
It uses lots of words to make it's point which, for me, smacks of 'content' (I was expecting there to be a recipe at the end). They haven't stopped 'creating content' but they're attempting to stop calling it that.
That's what I got out of it anyway. But then again I may just be salty that I'm not also a Don Draper (slop merchant).
And this isn't to say that "content creation" is any less valid than "creating art". There are plenty of "content creators" who know exactly what they are making at the end of the day (a product) and don't hide that fact or try to dress it up under the pretense of being anything more.
I wish somebody could motivate me to publish them anyway.
Are you interested in living in a world where nobody can make a living off of their creative work?
The first section did a great job of grabbing my attention. It feels like these days, all creative works are lumped together as "content", anything not brand-new and bleeding-edge is labelled "legacy" (I see this more on HN than anywhere), and everything is distilled down to "engagement" and "conversions".
I hate business buzzword-jargon, the corporate in-group lingo, and I've also always disliked this use of the word "content". It's too generic - we might as well be calling it "stuff".
As a child, I used to notice that there were some other kids who, upon hearing a word that was new to them, would immediately start using it incessantly, replacing the (sometimes richer) choice of words they'd thus far been brought up to use. Very often wrongly, by slightly misunderstanding the meaning, the context, or the word itself, and never checking first. It was clear how the choice of words used, or even the meaning of words, could subtly change within a small group. As I grew older I realised these people appeared to be in the majority, and that it showed how, via various methods of trying to sound clever or in-group signalling, changes in speech patterns spread out across the larger population.
Anyway that's my view, now I'll go back to yelling at clouds.
> I've never created content, I've written things down. > I've never created content, I've said things out loud. > I've never created content, I've recorded a video. > I've never created content, I've shown someone around. > I've never created content, I've pointed something out.
[1] https://x.com/jasonfried/status/1831763756856307880
You could make a plausible conspiracy theory that this was why so much capital was invested to develop generative AI: Maybe the holy grail of tech CEOs wasn't AGI, it was a web full of content without those annoying content creators...
That’s not what it means. It means that the vendor and you are a good fit for each other. The hard part in almost all these things is that two parties would both benefit if they had common knowledge but they don’t have common knowledge. The guy who puts the two together is useful. That’s who you describe as “sending great leads”.
It’s not clear to me why this style of manufactured grievance writing is popular. The world is full of Pareto wins.
I'm having trouble understanding where we disagree. It seems like you're arguing that she's correct because it was helpful for the mutual acquaintance to refer me to this vendor, which I agree it is.
My point is that the term "lead" implies that she's thinking about making the sale rather than serving me as her client. Do we disagree about the connotation of the word "lead?"
As a more extreme example, if you went to a doctor for an illness and they said, "Wow, I'm going to make so much money treating you," I imagine you'd find it off-putting even if the doctor would only earn the money because they're doing a useful thing by treating your illness.
Naturally the grievance writing style pre-supposes extractive malice “oh the dermatologist is happy because they’re going to make money off me” rather than the more mundane “oh the dermatologist is happy because they don’t have to spend this time telling me they can’t help me”.
In any case, far be it from me to tell you not to do this. As a content creator, you have certainly found writer-audience fit. It baffles me why, but this style is certainly popular on this website.
To me, if someone describes me as a "lead," it implies that they are focused on making the sale rather than on anything else about the business relationship. I would also find it unsettling if a doctor told me that I was a "good lead" because I had a disease they treat.
Consider for the moment the two cases of an agent for a player or actor and a doctor. It’s normal for an agent to discuss commission and for a doctor to not, though both will make money off you participating. If you had an agent who said he’s just trying to get you the best deal and “don’t worry about money” that would also trigger red flags as much as a doctor discussing commission rates for referrals.
That doesn’t mean commissions are worse than undiscussed rates. Just that norm-violators are risky deal participants.
Given this discussion, I suspect the best interpretation of your post is not that it is grievance text. It is that unfamiliarity with the terminology of a field has resulted in transferring connotations from unrelated contexts.
To lighten the tone, I am reminded of a HN comment where someone said that “Khan Academy” was a terrible name because it naturally brings to mind a “con man”. Of course, this must have been natural because the two words are homophones in his accent (they are not so in mine). An example of connotation mistaken.