The Other, Other, C Word
I used to hate the word Content. The weird corporate-speak-catch-all for the creative things we make online. I watched with anger as this word thrust its way into being sometime in the early aughts. I was a young buck with a lot of dreams and no particular plans on how to achieve them. I detested that word with my entire being, like it was somehow stealing something from me personally. I wanted to fight to call it what I thought it rightfully was: Art.
A lot has changed since then. For one, I can appreciate a corporate-speak-catch-all if it makes things more efficient. Art is ethereal. Content gets budgets. People get it. It’s snappy. There’s a pipeline. A funnel. A bunch of like-minded creative producers broke their backs for years building the foundations upon which entire new media content industries have been built. Content rules now. The war was won. We lost. Look at Meta. Look at Netflix. Look at Barstool. Content, as a term, now just reads the same to me as the word “God” does; not in the literal sense, but as a quick way of explaining some overarching, connective tissue.
Connective tissue. I’m seeing that phrase a lot these days, too. It’s like the next phase of us trying to explain to our parents what we all do for a living. But you can almost see the word content right there in inside of it. It’s just multimedia production, people. Broadcast, podcast, simulcast, cross-channel, cross-functional, digital, audio, video, social, experiential. We all make shit. Your Aunt Linda makes shit. Felix in finance. We just do it at a much larger scale.
What I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is what this all means deep in my soul and if it aligns with a worthy value—a purpose, something that I could explain at the pearly gates, if the situation were ever to present itself. And I’ve come up with an answer for now that at least lets me sleep better, and lets me be okay with the C word. It’s just storytelling; which I’m starting to think is art in its most basic form.
When it comes to business, I recognize that there is always going to be a perceived necessary evil in promoting something worthwhile. “Look at this!” becomes “Look at me!” to cynics. And there is a lot of truth to that. But if you can focus on creating that art and telling those stories and making better and weirder and more creative and wonderful experiences for all of us to enjoy, does anyone really care if people will pay you for it?
That’s my hot take on Content, and Other C Words. People need stories. And my aim professionally is to be someone who knows the power of efficiency but whose job it is to create art.