The Four Dirty C-Words of the Internet
pauljun.me
pauljun.me
“I am truly excited to have The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, one of the world’s most epic fantasy franchises join the Embracer family, opening up more transmedia opportunities including synergies across our global group. I am thrilled to see what lies in the future for this IP with Freemode and Asmodee as a start within the group. Going forward, we also look forward to collaborating with both existing and new external licensees of our increasingly stronger IP portfolio.”
When I think “Tolkien”, I think “transmedia opportunities including synergies across a global group”.
An assessment on the potential value of this IP.
[0] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/disney-netflix-comcast-j...
Big tech speaks of content and creators in the abstract; but big publishing commits an even worse sin: LARPing as authors of those works while talking about them purely in terms of their lucrativeness. Just like how social media turns creativity into content slurry, traditional publishing turns creativity into spectacle slurry - e.g. a string of expensive special effects strung together into an unconscionable number of movies.
As opposed to "art" being the end result of someone's personal expression manifesting into an artifact that can be experienced by others.
I realize it's all semantics, but there is a hint of intent somewhere in there.
Intent is nearly impossible to prove, in any context, so it feels not worth worrying worrying about.
The secret? A f**ing bookmark with a mark on it so that the reader can remember what line he left the book at.
Unbearable.
It was 100% "I will crank out whatever it takes to grab and retain your attention for the sake of monetizing it sooner or later"
Theory: I believe the quote is absolutely right but that big youtubers started referring to themselves as content creators as a way of signaling that they had "special access" to youtube "corp". "Content creator" is youtube exec lingo, and if in a video you called yourself that a few years ago, that'd mean you're one of the few that are "in", even though the phrase is empty of meaning. Then after a while it just took off and is now common parlance.
The quote about the purpose of terms like "content" and "content creator" is spot on. It's the shipping container of the internet, a way to standardize units of things to sell and consume. Call it a necessity of the market, a knock-on effect of Amazon omni-retailers, but it's dehumanizing to reduce all creative effort to indistinguishable units, and strange that so many people take on the mantle willingly.
It's also expedient. Take a subset of YouTubers, they're likely doing different things across multiple disciplines. Video editing, music, education, performance, it's hard to name all those things. Easier to say "artist". Or "content creator". So I don't think it's all due to the machine.
[0] https://www.thefreelibrary.com/E+unibus+pluram%3A+television...
Criticism is a necessary component of sense-making — and its destruction an intentional act to render us compliant.
This is a bit vague. Your comment is itself an example of using a tool (HN) to critique, eh?
Similarly, I don't go to YouTube thinking "I'll watch some content". Generally I have a structured, if vague, idea of what I want to see: old Amiga information or gamedev tutorials or podcasts or something. Come to think of it, the best example I can think of of content for content's sake is the Elsagate stuff which, again, is pretty disgusting.
But SXSW is a community. There are people who work year round to make SXSW happen once a year, and they don't stop working once the concerts end. People who just go to SXSW are not in that community, however.
That makes SXSW sound like a job, or a career (if we're looking for c-words), not a community.
Most of the time it's basically synonymous with either "Youtuber/Video Creator" or "Streamer", but why not just say that instead?
It is, occasionally, useful to have a broad umbrella term.
Calling him a "content creator" would communicate none of those things, he could be sculptor, juggler and flautist for all I know.
(As an aside - the distinction between "graphic novels" and "comic books" is another pet peeve of mine - if a term can be summed up as "like this other thing, but but for grown ups", then maybe the "other thing" should just be respected by everybody instead of trying to reverse no true Scotsman the perceived good bits into another category)
> Calling him a "content creator" would communicate none of those things, he could be sculptor, juggler and flautist for all I know.
And some people are that madly multimedia, albeit none I can think of off the top of my head.
> (As an aside - the distinction between "graphic novels" and "comic books" is another pet peeve of mine - if a term can be summed up as "like this other thing, but but for grown ups", then maybe the "other thing" should just be respected by everybody instead of trying to reverse no true Scotsman the perceived good bits into another category)
I've certainly seen "graphic novel" used that way, but I prefer to use it to refer to works with defined end-points, as opposed to open-ended series; you can certainly talk about Neil's run on Miracleman as a distinct entity, but Miracleman itself is ongoing with no defined endpoint, unlike, say, Sandman or, to use another author, Watchmen. Of course, reality intrudes and decrees that both of those will get sequels, and might yet continue to get sequels, but I still think the distinction is useful enough. For one thing, in a graphic novel, the main character can get killed off for real because the property doesn't have to continue for another half-century or longer.
It's self-serving complaining about your publisher reducing what you do to its commodity form, while at the same time insisting what you do is more than that. Both sides of the transaction are trying to get a better price, and the art of it lies in the mystification (for the producer) or the demystification (for the consumer) of the commodity.
If you want to insist that what you produce for a living be called something other than what it is in a transactional relationship, then you need to do it outside the realm of transactions.
The complaint about "community" and "creator" is fair - but at the same time, it's companies trying to sell the benefits of some underlying thing they've created, by positing the social activity around that commodity as a special property of the thing itself (just like the author saying what they do is more than content).
I'll have you know that YouTube Poop is a legitimate art form.
This one is one of my favorites, although it's not quite as extreme as the style eventually became. I have great memories of being put into near hysterics the first time I saw it with a friend of mine (who has a pretty goofy laugh which makes anything twice as funny when you're with him).
This thing has worked its way deep into my brain, i can't even say "let's go" without subtly referencing it 10 years after I first saw it.
This one is in a similar vein, though it may not really count as true YTP. The first time I saw this, I was caught off guard, thinking it was a different viral video. The subversion of that expectation hit me so hard, I was literally crying with laughter.
I'm sure to some these will just seem powerfully stupid, but there's something about them and the way that they take normal things and remix them that really makes me laugh.
And therein lies the problem. The focus is on the platform. It's all about the platform. The "creators" churn out "content" to make the "platform" better. The platform drives the machine; the individuals are reduced to cogs in the machine.
The healthy, sane priorities are inverted: tools should help the artist.
Also allows for three questions over one general question.
The xyzlib code repo contributors don't have a "shared culture." They're not a "community." They don't have anything useful to offer "as a community" on the great questions our world faces. They don't need to have a defined set of opinions about issues beyond the unresolved issues in the repo.
Iranian nuclear scientists, Israeli settlers, Palestinian militias, Democrats, Russians, and even Republicans are all active users of and contributors to these intrinsically neutral tools being created. And there's actually a magic in that which is lost when projects feel compelled to try to define and enforce some sort of imagined culture and community.
Technically, on a purely scientific level, contributors to a given library do have a "culture". There are rules and attitudes that they follow, more or less consciously, that are different from those that are followed by the contributors to a different library. Each of these groups also technically form a "community", as they are groups of individuals that share a common purpose. A hypothetical research paper that compared the inner workings of different open source contributor groups would be very legitimised in using the words "culture" and "community" to describe them, and researching these topics can be of great interest.
However, the problem arises when these terms are reified towards laypeople, sometimes with somewhat of a self-serving, marketing, or self-congratulatory purpose from the user of the words: «Everyone knows Culture is a good thing! As is Community! And this Community has this Culture! Let's talk about the Culture of this Community! Are you a part of this Community? What can we do for this Community? How can we work on its Culture?» (I felt mentally exhausted just by writing this caricature)
I've seen ads from a company named Consumer Cellular. That name alone makes me not want their products or services.
-"There is nothing so depraved as labeling someone a creative when the reality is every human being is creative or has the innate capacity to be creative."
JP kicked this one in the d*ck, when he pointed out that published creatives are very rare. Also as a separate, supporting point, the ratio of uploaded videos on youtube that get above 1k views, is tiny. Something like 98% of videos uploaded to youtube die in obscurity or were never meant to be mass appeal "creative products".
Innatism is a good idea, yet it is not without flaw. Leaning the whole definition of creativity on what people can innately do, is quite narrow.
The huge benefit of community and "content" is that even though you lose the quality production that I truly love, you get a fantastic ability to convey knowledge across the largest chasms. I can flick open youtube and get a near-expert introduction on a whole bunch of stuff (or at least the gist). This effect was most emphasized from roughly 2016 to 2020.
Youtube has been leaning into questionably farming out recommendation channels as the primary source of useful content, which has it's downsides. But the author undervalues what community and content meant, which was access like we've never seen before to people all over the world and in their highly specialized niches.
To me, 'consumer' was always the worst offender of the 'c' words. Who wants to be a consumer? A Customer gets a modicum of respect and a somewhat two way street with the company. A consumer is just an open mouth on the end of a factory production line, unpleasant.
It'll be a very sad day when youtube or content 'creators' start hiding or deleting their old videos in an attempt to push revenue up for new stuff.
I have come to see high production values as a strong indication that the video is not worth watching. It's not always true, but it seems true about 80% of the time.
That's what they all have in another c-word: common.
Wow. C-deep is easy. Everyone jump in!
In another words, the financial capitalization / "value" that content generates exist somewhat tangentially to the efforts made / values found in the content. I see some people are starting to refer Google et al. as "digital landed proprietors"; the cash flow they enjoy seem to have little to do with anything going on, but rather solely from legal statuses that they own the "land".
I don't know if it is a good or bad thing, my instinctive response would be that it's bad because it's not making me rich presently, but it's ... cooking something.
When someone views me as a "coder" they’ve already diminished my work and reduced my pay. They’ve locked me into a specific output and function.
edit: My personal preference is "programmer". Calling a programmer "coder" is like calling a writer "typer" to me
I'll always back you on that one. I wish I could make every company I've worked for not call me that. I'd accept literally anything else, but I always liked programmer. Developer seems like a fine compromise, I don't see what's wrong with that. It seems to convey building something potentially multi-faceted or sprawling via a variety of different activities plus programming, but when it comes down to it just by any means necessary.
Similarly, the people making game engines are software engineers while the people making games with them are (probably) not, even if they spend just as much time programming.
There’s many roles where your day-to-day work is largely composed of writing code, but only some particular specialisms put robustness and long term maintainability at the top of their priority list. Just because many individual engineers suck at that side of the job doesn’t change the job description.
Software Engineer was bearable if the person was skilled but kinda got its image ruined by being the de facto styling of people fresh out their 6 week React bootcamp
Once, I came across a programmer calling themselves a contractor. I wanted to ask them what they did: hang drywall and install toilets? That's what a general contractor does.
And along the same lines, to most people a developer is someone who buys land and builds houses, not someone who writes and fixes programs. Don't call yourselves that, unless you want people to potentially misunderstand your job.
Programmer is a word that is specific, succinct, and widely understood even by grandmas.
Now, we have individual contributor. That sounds like you gave money to someone's kickstarter project.
Now that is it framed in a better way, we can choose.. do we want to consume that persons content?
If you look at Netflix, you have documentaries, tv shows, stand up specials, films. When you want to refer to those things in aggregate, “content” is a better term than “stuff to watch”.
Likewise, some of the people on YouTube are artists, documentarians, educators, entertainers… “creators” is a perfectly reasonable umbrella term.
The problem with these two terms is how conversations that involve them have a tendency to treat them as fodder, and are more interested in the numbers than the actual contents of the content.
In a similar vein, community is a perfectly reasonable word for “the people involved in this thing at large”, and culture for “the ways those people interact and their shared references”. You can eg say that the Rust community is much more welcoming than the Scala community (whether you agree or not is a different matter). The problem is when togetherness and belonging don’t exist as grassroots movements, and those words get abused as a way to astroturf.
I once contacted for a company that renamed their human resources department to "People and Culture" to make themselves seem more approachable.
I thought it was fairly patronizing. Maybe human resources will eventually become a forbidden job title that will continue to require euphemisms like secretary and janitor.
My content generator reminds me of what it is like to work in an office - vague, meandering conversations where people try to accomplish something. anything. It distracts me when I want to be distracted. Novel notions jump out at me and capture my attention. I can't bear the hours of silence, the ruminating over the past that my mind will dwell on, copies of music recordings that pushed the zeitgeist in a different time. The content generator drones on banally, occasionally pitching products at me that I have no desire for.
No one will be impressed by the content I've been served, except the content generator - who so desperately wants my attention.
Actually, a lot of art that people go to see, was actually produced by artists cranking out “content”.
Leonardo da Vinci hired a bunch of assistants to help him crank out content that his patrons wanted. This is one of the things that make it hard to figure out if a painting is actually by da Vinci or one of his students.
Michaelangelo didn’t paint the Sistine chapel out of some artistic compulsion. Rather he was paid by the Pope to crank out enough content to cover the ceiling.
Artists have been producing “content” for their patrons since time immemorial. The big change now is that instead of people paid a large commission or retainer by a wealthy individual or family, am they are now paid a tiny bit by a large number of people via ads.
I would go there to look at art, and I go to youtube to consume content - sometimes listen, sometimes view, sometimes click through the paused, muted video. I don't understand why it's a misnomer to use "content" or people who produce these "content creators".
I always had a massive personal problem with "community" depending on usage. Are you talking about a neighborhood where people know each other? Little League? Block parties? Barn raisin's? Totally fine. That's community. Bacteria? Bees? Cool, that's a biological definition.
Extend it to something like a corporate apartment complex where I've never said more than one sentence at a time to a neighbor on my way in? ("Join our community, sign a lease today!") Now you're getting gross. Programming languages, ala 'ruby community', 'c++ community'? I'm giving you the side eye. You'd better be referring specifically to the people who go to conferences, meet each other, serve on committees, and write in journals or at least blogs so that members of this alleged community know of each other a little. If you call everybody who writes C++ code 'the C++ community' I don't want to talk to your euphemistic ass anymore.
But the most revolting usage of all, the one that's sure to make me have to lie down and breath, is extending it to Internet-Only Shit. Forums. Groups. Discords. I don't know you, I've never met you, I've never seen you, I don't know whether you're a dog, if I even recognize your gibberish username chances are excellent that I don't like you, I'm here because I have a crippling addiction not because we're all buildin' somethin' together....
Oh dear. What was the other one?
Oh yeah. Culture. It's quite like community. Anthropological and biological definitions. It's basically fine as a descriptive word. But this one... I've never enjoyed the actual thing that it points to, at least in many cases. I never liked how people almost always glorify these so-called cultures. Talk about them glowingly, with reverence. Can't say anything bad or criticize a culture unless you're sure everyone agrees it's really really bad! Meanwhile ignoring that culture also transmits much grief, suffering, and cruelty. But then when people do try to bring up certain bad cultures I don't always like that either, depending.
And then the implications of everybody in a group being involuntarily programmed to talk the same, act the same, think the same, participate in dumb-as-fuck rituals that I would never say anything bad about of course, one of us, one of us, one of us... Shudder. Culture is the fuckin' twilight zone, man. Fine word though.
So is "creator".