content
♪ here comes the content / it's a beautiful day to stay inside ♫
Every few weeks I see somebody criticizing the word "content", generically referring to stuff people make online, and derivatives like "content creator". For, I think, commoditizing those creations, which should be more specifically referred to as art, text, videos, music, games, what have you; for subtly centering the consumer (or, worse, the advertiser) as the content's raison d'être, by way of implying that the content is there to "fill up" the consumer's feed, rather than centering the creator or the thing being made itself. I think?
And I kind of get it... if one of the more precise labels fits, then sure, it's probably good to use it. It feels bad to have your creations commoditized. But also...
- "content" is a useful hypernym. Creators of art, and games, and videos, and bespoke interactive thingamajigs, are different, but have similar concerns and struggles. Promoting yourself, finding an audience, connecting with similar creators, fending off copycats or thieves, staying motivated, earning a living or balancing it with your day job, explaining what you do to your family. It's just sometimes useful to refer to all these things together.
- Sometimes the stuff you make does not fit neatly into any of those existing narrower categories. It's just a bespoke thingamajig you can load on the computer. But it's definitely content. Or, maybe each thing you make does fit into one of those categories, but not always the same one, so you don't want to describe yourself as just an artist, or just a writer, or just a musician. You just create whatever you feel like, whatever medium or format the idea you have calls for. You can of course say you're multiple of these, but it's still useful to have one term you can lead with and that you feel fits you. I also think it's freeing to anchor your identity to the abstract notion of making stuff rather than to making any specific kind of content.
I don't think of myself as a content creator, but I do make stuff and put it online sometimes, and personally I'm fine calling that stuff "content" because I don't know a better word that encompasses all of it. (Admittedly I don't actually refer to the stuff collectively in practice, so maybe I don't really have a point.) What word encompasses meandering blog posts, and strange mini-web-apps, and of course puzzles, and the occasional video, and the very occasional programming language?
If you think you have a better word, though, feel free to let me know.