I Don’t Make Content

I make things. I don’t make content. This distinction matters. More than ever. When I sit down to write, I am crafting words. Put a camera in my hands and I make photographs. Swap that out for a guitar and I write and record songs.

All of these are specific kinds of artefacts. They all come from long traditions. Each has its own kind of vocabulary and grammar. Each has its own unique history of interacting with and changing technology.

And they are unique. Each thing is an expression of stylistic choices and personal history. You can try to copy my writing style. But you can’t write like me. Grab my camera and your photos will still look different. Strum my guitar and even the most basic song will still sound like it comes from someone else.

AI Is Not The Answer

Someone might say this can be done now with AI. But it can’t. Feed every word I’ve ever written into an AI and it is still only making predictions based on the past. The so-called AI doesn’t know the exercises I did in a writing workshop. The things I learnt in a writing class last month. The book I’m currently reading that is making me rethink how point of view works. Or the ideas I’m trying to play with around paragraph structure. It can’t hear the birds outside my window, the kids playing somewhere down the street, the wind in the trees, or the way these sensations are shifting my body and emotions and shaping the words I write.

Every time we create something, we are pulling from a vast array of present and past experiences. We can make different things and yet they reflect our creative voice. This is the core of artistry. Of our own style.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a quintessentially Nolan-esque film. But it doesn’t look or feel the same as The Prestige or Memento, which were also quintessentially Nolan-esque when they were made. The music Prince made later in his career was distinctly an expression of his style, but also very different from the songs he recorded in the ’80s.

Nolan makes films. Prince made music. Neither of them made content.

What Is Content?

Content has become a ubiquitous term to describe what we see on screens, be it words, sounds, or images. News sites are filled with content. Same with streaming services. Or whatever it is that social media platforms have become.

Content is standard-sized containers filled with a measured dose of whatever you prefer to consume. The digital equivalent of that self-serve corner in a budget eatery that has a stack of glasses and a drinks-dispensing machine. Cola or Lemonade. News or Gossip. Choose your content. Above all, make it easy to consume.

Standard sizing and interchangeability make it easier for the social media companies. Content is never unique. Never distinctive. And it never stands out. Content is quickly forgotten. And it never changes anyone.

Silicon Valley tried to turn artists into content creators. Now they are trying to replace content with AI slop. Algorithms and search engines tried to force us to make all our work look and feel the same. Averaging out the differences that make unique voices stand out.

One of Silicon Valley’s greatest lies was that curation was as important as creation. It sat alongside other lies like “everything is a remix” and “all great artists steal”. They produced a torpid cultural moment where everything is just a personal choice and nothing is properly challenging. It’s no wonder that people now ask a computer a few questions and think they are making music or art from that process.

If Not Content Then What?

So what is the point of being on social media, or having a blog or newsletter, if we aren’t making content? Three things come to mind.

1. Stamina as Strategy
First is displaying stamina. The content era was marked by people who appeared out of nowhere as ready-made experts. That reflected a long trend away from expertise. But we’re now living with the consequences of that cultural decision. There’s an ethical dimension to showing how we work and how long we’ve been working at what we do.

2. Human Touch
We want to know about the people who make the things we enjoy. We care about what kind of people they are. How they treat the world and those around them. This is part of why we feel cheated by AI. It comes from nowhere. Well, actually, it comes from cheating the very type of creativity we want to celebrate. Whatever the means of production I want to avoid supporting exploitation of human labour, and AI as it is now is always exploitative.

3. Fun Times
I think we’ve forgotten that making things for public consumption can be fun. Dancing in public is fun. Playing guitar and leading a sing-along by a campfire is fun. When I started this blog, it was fun. And during the best seasons, it was fun. Even the behind-the-scenes stuff was fun.

Coming Back To The Beginning

For years, the strap-line on this site was “sounds – images – words”. It was a summary of the things I was paid to do. For a while, it played well here and on social media in its early days. But it was always too broad. There’s no place for a Renaissance person in a content-driven world.

Now that everything online feels broken, maybe it’s time to go reclaim that line? Maybe it’s time for all of us to be less conformist and compliant. For it to be harder to curate and classify. And to have more fun in the process.

For me, it begins with saying this: I don’t make content.