This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history. Let me back up a bit.
This is why I absolutely cannot fucking stand creative work being referred to as “content”. “Content” is how you refer to the stuff on a website when you’re designing the layout and don’t know what actually goes on the page yet. “Content” is how you refer to the collection of odds and ends in your car’s trunk. “Content” is what marketers call the stuff that goes around the ads.
“Content”… is Whatever.
I was going to make a comment on the Stubsack thread about how it kind of ticks me off how “content creator” has permeated its way so deep into the vernacular. I can forgive it when it’s used as a clumsy term to talk about creative workers across multiple media, but something like a video essayist calling another video essayist a content creator just gives me the ick. Have some pride and solidarity in your art form, for fuck’s sake.
I hate to be a language prescriptivist, and I fully recognise that times change, language evolves. But I can’t help but feel frustrated and disappointed that this term become the norm. Everyone has latched on to it, unaware of the connotation, I think. And now it’s here, it feels like it’ll never go away.
I was going to make a comment on the Stubsack thread about how it kind of ticks me off how “content creator” has permeated its way so deep into the vernacular. I can forgive it when it’s used as a clumsy term to talk about creative workers across multiple media, but something like a video essayist calling another video essayist a content creator just gives me the ick. Have some pride and solidarity in your art form, for fuck’s sake.
I hate to be a language prescriptivist, and I fully recognise that times change, language evolves. But I can’t help but feel frustrated and disappointed that this term become the norm. Everyone has latched on to it, unaware of the connotation, I think. And now it’s here, it feels like it’ll never go away.
Geordi, disgusted: being a _con_tent creator
Geordi, interested: being a con_tent_ creator
discontent creator