Nobody should be a "content creator"
christianheilmann.com
christianheilmann.com
I don't even see most of the viral content unless somebody else shows me. Anf since I don't have an account with most social media sites, they have to show me directly on their own devices. I also filter on all email with the word 'unsubscribe' and route it appropriately.
The short of it is: do better at filtering with allow listing or aggressive block lists. Consume content you search for. Or accept the fact that an algorithm will spoon feed you 99% filler.
It doesn’t seem to me you understood what this post was saying, and I don’t care to explain it further. The state of content will continue to degrade with this very oafish mindset.
So, you just have to look. Do your part as a consumer. Again, believe it or not, but you do have to put in a bit more effort to look for stuff that might appeal more to you, creators, artists, musicians, rather than just complaining that things aren't served to you while doing nothing. Or you could just complain and wait for better algos or whatever, for somebody to do the curation job for you. Also, again, just so snobby. I'm sure your taste is oh so superior to everyone else.
How so?
> It may surprise you to know there was a time when people created content for the sake of it.
What time did you have in mind when talking about this?
Yes, those times existed, and they still exist. But there was never a time where mainstream media (which has now shifted to happening to social media platforms) wasn't slop and molded by bad monetary incentives. And still during all that time talented creators kept on creating for the sake of it, while often ignored by the masses - a tale as old as time.
"We should be more than that", "real discourse", "original content". The point of the blog post is unclear. It has disjointed bolded section titles with a softly condescending main title. I would describe it as self-flagellation with a splash of nostalgia. Soft terms being thrown around so casually, I find it hard to distinguish from the maligned AI posts described - spelling error and all!
The concept that someone could be passionate and authentic about their work and want or need to make a living at it just doesn't compute. Maybe it's something in the programmer/engineer mindset that sees anything beyond pure code and information as essentially puerile and meaningless.
https://gavinhoward.com/2024/09/to-broadcast-or-not-to-broad...
Content
> If you want to describe a feeling of comfort and satisfaction, by all means say “content,” but using it to describe written and other works of authorship embodies a specific attitude towards those works: that they are an interchangeable commodity whose purpose is to fill a box and make money. In effect, it treats the works themselves with disrespect.
> Those who use this term are often the publishers that push for increased copyright power in the name of the authors (“creators,” as they say) of the works. The term “content” reveals what they really feel.
> As long as other people use the term “content provider,” political dissidents can well call themselves “malcontent providers.”
Creator
> The term “creator” as applied to authors implicitly compares them to a deity (“the creator”). The term is used by publishers to elevate the authors’ moral stature above that of ordinary people, to justify increased copyright power that the publishers can exercise in the name of the authors.
¹ https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/fsfs/rms-essays.pdf
Note: I have a paper copy of this book at home but I found very hard to find this text on the web via Duck Duck Go or Google. Thankfully, the Wikipedia article had links to the original.
I mean... "malcontent providers?" Really?
Impossible to have deep conversations due to character limits, promotes really ephemeral discourse which taps into the everything-is-super-urgent FOMO dark pattern, and has so much low effort content to sift through due to its encouragement of brevity.
There are so many good people, making good content, on several platforms. A bare minimum effort is required, just like when you visit a bookstore you have to take a little bit of time to find the book that is appealing to you.
The thing is, though... people don't care. It currently has 15 users. And I've published it in a few groups with thousands of users... but nobody cared to click the link. Reddit and other communities absolutely refuse to allow you to share anything, even if it's a free product.
I can see why people just say F it, and start running ads and go the way of monetization.
E.g., I checked your Hacker News submissions and found your platform via your Show HN submission.¹ As someone interested in philosophy and the concepts of stoicism, it looks good but unfortunately I’m too busy at the moment and don’t have enough time to engage with it properly so I’ve bookmarked it to come back to it later.
I think there is a lot more use to the label than that, and the reason why some people in the space happily self-label as "content creators".
For one it creates a delineation to "influencers" with the contrast that a "content creator" _creates_ something. They also create _content_, which could on the one hand be seen as "anything that fills a void", or more positively "something that's interesting". Most of the examples that the author highlighted I would classify as non-content/slop.
I think "content creator" is also a good descriptor for people that work as "independent creators in the digital media space", whose activities spread across multiple social media platforms, and would thus be hard to pidgeon hole into just one of: youtuber, streamer, podcaster, etc. as people working in the space full time often do all of that.
I don't disagree with a lot in the post, but it is odd to tie it to the "creator" term.
You could easily aim the same criticism at books and book titles and cover art, which by the same standards is in a constant state of sloppified titles and cover art that never strays too far from the norm. But who cares? There's still enjoyable and valuable content in those books, regardless of how they represent on the outside.
> “ Good thing I have this blog. Here is where I make the rules. Maybe this will get a lot of readers, maybe it won’t. I don’t make any money with it either way. It’s out of my head now, and that is what counts. Do wonderful things that make you happy, folks. Chasing the numbers will not give you any fulfilment. Quite the opposite.”
That doesn't preclude quality from coming out of it eventually - one of my favorite examples is Walter Miller's 'Canticle for Leibowitz' which was reworked from several of his pulp short stories into a single novel. It's a really great book! I think the incentive structure encouraged volume over quality, but quality still did matter. There wasn't the same algorithm-hacking incentive at play, and you still had to get your works past an editor and approved. Those are important distinctions!
that said, as an aside, im a little nonplussed by the inclusion of hiphop as opposed to, say, 'pop' or 'country', music.
Because I thought 'content creator' was synonymous with 'onlyfans model'. I was then genuinely surprised by the content of the article and by calling 'content creator' a generic term.
I'm not sure -- is it an ambiguous title, or is my context way off?
Though given the scare quotes I can see why you assumed it was being used euphemistically rather than “person who makes slop to feed an algorithmic feed”.
> If your goal is to make money, good luck trying to compete with the deluge of AI slop.
> If your goal is to get reach as an influencer, this is also getting trickier as a lot of people want a slice of that pie. We are in a post Mr. Beast world and quite some ground has been scorched.
> If your goal is to use it as a source of passive income, there’s still some bits to gain, but you’d also have to keep abiding to the rules of the platforms.
And if you answered "Yes" to any of those, you are part of the reason social media is a huge social problem, and you should not have been allowed on it in the first place.