Archives
Please - Do Not Call It Content
Somewhere a while back I wrote a post (or maybe it was a comment when someone else was rambling on about ‘content’) , that went something like …
”book, novel, short story, article, white paper, promotional piece, advert, painting, sculpture, song, opera, photograph ….
(.. the list was a lot longer, but you get the drift. )
please … anything … anything but ‘content’.
Why?
Because as long as ‘we the creators’ fall into the trap of using ‘their’ words to describe **our work, our soul, our passion, our beliefs** as ‘content’, then our work will continue to be viewed as **’free - to - cheap - to - low - cost’, as ‘homogenized, non differentiated, interchangeable fodder’*\\*
.. and if that is the case, then the resultant payment for your art will continue to race to the bottom. It is not in our interests to allow that , so why allow their interests to define how we think.
Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, anything will do kind of word. Which is why ’content has no value. It is in the best interests of buyers of our sweat, labour, thought and time to keep price down. But our costs are not kept down. So our earnings suffer. And they are suffering badly.
It isn’t in the interests of buyers to change their behavior and vocabulary. So we should. Starting now.
I just discovered this snippet and wanted to capture it properly in my newly emerging archive of ‘words wot I writ’ (sic)
See also Owning Your Own Work