Corvus Robotica
Derek Powazek 🐐I’ll never forgive the internet for training a generation of artists and writers to call what they make “content.”
Boxes have contents. You’re a fucking ARTIST. You make ART. Own it.
@fraying twelve years ago: http://www.powazek.com/2006/04/000576.html
Kevin Marks@fraying I like the way you think: http://epeus.blogspot.com/2005/11/not-consumers-or-users-but-amateurs.html
eena meena me@fraying " Can you imagine a writer saying "I am a content provider" when asked what they do?"
a whole generation of youtubers are calling themselves "content creators" the term that youtube and other platforms invented for them.
Ed Vielmetti W8EMVdiscontent
alt for @@fraying As a full-time writer and sysadmin: yes, this.
"Content" is a term for business people and web admins.
"Art" is for what you gleefully create.
Once you start thinking of your joy as your product, your career is over.
Demonkind@demonkind @fraying People have always tried to sell out to Mammon. Mammon's rarely buying.
The Net makes it easier to get dribbles of money for your art, and too many people focus on maximizing the dribble rather than what brings them joy.
I'm writing #terrapinSkyTango because it makes me happy.
Once I finish, sure, I'll put it up for sale. It's how I pay my bills. But money can't enter the creative process, or it'll destroy my joy. And readers can feel my joy.
Infrequently social@fraying even grosser is “content creator.”
Dawn@fraying And that people who make that "content" should be grateful to work for free.
@westphillydawn that, I’m afraid, is not unique to this generation.
alcinnz@fraying "I only started hearing about content when the container industry felt threatened."
Barlow (Grateful Dead, EFF)
Mordecai P. Martin@fraying I'm a big proponent of calling what we do here writing, what the platform does is publishing. We are contributing to the world, we are contributing to a tradition of language and conversation.
Doc Edward Morbius ❌
jay 🌱@fraying I mean, visually speaking the internet is made up of a bunch of 2D boxes... 
@joamo hah. Fair.
Russ SharekI remember you from the beginning of my internet experience. So glad to have accidentally re-found you and see you in my feed again.
Keep fighting the good fight.
@RussSharek aw, hello again! My favorite thing about this place is how it feels like the older, smaller web.
Indeed. I wonder what other early web celebs are going to come out of the woodwork to play here.
Alexandra Soroca 🎹@fraying Just to imagine that Frederic Chopin was creating "content".
Axel 🏴@fraying counterpoint: a lot of internet artists/writers/musicians have to self promote so that they can sell their art in order to make a living
content is a handy catch-all term for their creative work if they make more than one form of art
I'm not a fan of it either to be honest but it's the reality for a lot of people and they have to do these things to get by.
@axel_axe I'd dare to say that this term has been forced on us by Facebook and such, where content = money (for them).
A musician who says that she makes music or writes songs is more likely to attract genuinely interested audience. An artist who says that he paints seascapes is more likely to attract those who might buy his paintings. And so on, and so forth.
The word "content" means nothing. It doesn't tell what the person has to offer to the world. It takes art and makes it craft.
@SeventhMagpie @SeventhMagpie the word content does have meaning, but as I said it's a catch all term for the sum of someone's output if they make more than one type of thing. I know some people who are critical of the word but use it anyway due to how ubiquitous it is.
you could say the same thing about any word with broad connotations
"I make music" that says nothing about the work itself
"I draw art" great that means nothing either in itself
@axel_axe "I produce content" is the worst possible thing to label one's artistic work. Sounds like "I produce crap". :)
Trying to sell own art is nothing to be ashamed of. However, if you're trying to find customers, it would be useful to describe what you're selling for starters.
I'm not even touching on the Facebook philosophy those "content creators" are enabling. But if you're trying to sell me something, you'd better not advertise it as "different stuff". That's counterproductive.
@SeventhMagpie you're not getting my point but nevermind, have a nice day
@axel_axe Hypocrisy doesn't suit you. Or anyone, for that matter. Sincere "fuck you" is always better than a saccharine false "have a nice day".
@SeventhMagpie that wasn't my intention at all and it's on you that you read my reply in bad faith, but go off I guess.
pippa@fraying that word is also really intimidating and, for me personally, heads straight to "i'm a gd fraud"-land.
Strypey@fraying @alcinnz @dredmorbius "content" has its uses as a technical term though. If you are building a general-purpose thing like a CMS, it might be used for journalism, or opinion, or art, or any one of 10,000 other things, but from the POV of managing it in the software, it's all content, and the users uploading and managing it are content creators.
@fraying @alcinnz @dredmorbius when you break it down, "art" is a similarly generic term. Writers produce writing. Musicians produce music. Film-makers produce films. Even these are generic containers, that could be broken down further. Not sure you can get any more generic than "content" though ;)
@strypey @alcinnz @dredmorbius yes, of course, other terms are good too. I love all those terms. Be as specific as possible, I say!
@dredmorbius @fraying @alcinnz true, and "speech" is perhaps a more empowering generic term than "content", especially in the US context where speech has special protection it doesn't have everywhere else. That said, it might be confusing for CMS developers (for example) to use "speech" instead of "content".
@dredmorbius @fraying @alcinnz yes, so was I. See:
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/100616505002341088
https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/100616505002341088
Strypey (was at Quitter.se) (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] "content" has its uses as a technical term though. If you are building a general-purpose thing like a CMS, it might be used for journalism, or opinion, or art, or any one of 10,000 other things, but from the POV of managing it in the software, it's all content, and the users uploading and managing it are content creators.
xylo@fraying there's literally another toot on my timeline saying youtubers aren't artists.
People say the same about writers, podcasts... everybody's gotta fucking dictate labels for everyone else.
'(vidak) _(:3」∠)_@fraying totally agree
Wolphie@fraying Gosh, that's true omg
Apis 🐝 Cerana@fraying
Not just artists and writers either. Apparently that's what we all do now. Create "content." And I abhor that we've collectively internalised that.
Not just artists and writers either. Apparently that's what we all do now. Create "content." And I abhor that we've collectively internalised that.
@InvaderXan reject it! I have.
Spark Purcell (they/them)@fraying YES to this post... I've been complaining about this problem online for as long as I've been online... Art is NOT a product! Music and art should not be a commodity and it is not content. Capitalism destroys creativity and words mean things.
raphael, now @@fraying yes, this. it’s one of the issue where i go d’accord with stallman – the words we use are important, and we should choose them thoughtfully.
content is a marketer’s concept, who doesn’t care what he panders, just how effectively and in what manner he does so.
if people don’t like the connotations of ‘art(ist)’, we have the beautifully nonspecific ‘maker,’ for example. and we can always make up words to exactly fit our notions of what we do.
content is a marketer’s concept, who doesn’t care what he panders, just how effectively and in what manner he does so.
if people don’t like the connotations of ‘art(ist)’, we have the beautifully nonspecific ‘maker,’ for example. and we can always make up words to exactly fit our notions of what we do.
@gekitsu yes! I love it.
Sjn@fraying
Seconded/well said!
Seconded/well said!
Olm-e ☮️@fraying this is not new ... and is a consequence of the "technical reproducibility of art" as W. Benjamin analysed already in early XXth, while in the '70th the art movement fought back somehow as in "In defense of amateur" by Stan Brakhage...
just a new more pervasive medium, but same problems
just a new more pervasive medium, but same problems
Jim@fraying I think you'd hear similar complaints from print journalists that were around when the web really took hold.
@sullybiker I know. I was one of them.
@fraying In other words the death of the traditional reporter/photographer/editor newsroom model, giving way to the 'production editor' and the obsession with 'content'.