I’m pretty sure “content” ought to be considered a slur.

To be clear, I’m talking about the word when it’s used in the context of “content creator” – a term which now seems to apply to anyone who creates anything to be shared anywhere on the internet. That includes writers, artists, vloggers, musicians, streamers, academics, and shit-posters; all under one label.

Am I irked by these different subjects being treated equally in linguistic terms? No. They’re all different fields with different audiences and different fans. Lots of overlap, I’m sure, but the main point I’m trying to make here is that each topic, each medium, and each creator is an individual, and those individuals are making things that are unique and interesting in their own ways, in their own rights.

I’m irked that we call it all content.

Content, in ye-olde pre-internet English, is thusly defined:

Noun
content

1. Something contained —usually used in plural
2. The topics or matter treated in a written works

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/content

The more recent usage, I’m pretty sure, comes from the ‘content’ of a video, or the ‘content’ of a specific post, but whenever I hear the word that isn’t the way it comes across. It comes across as being the content of the social sites. When someone is called a “content creator” what I hear in the word is person who makes the content of <insert social media site here.>

To the modern consciousness, you are not an artist. You aren’t a writer. You aren’t a filmmaker, or a journalist – you make content. You make filler to stick into YouTube and Twitter and AO3 and Instagram. You make stuff so unimportant they can’t bother to check what it is you’re making as they scroll by. It’s not a word that celebrates your work the same way as any of those older terms, it devalues and anonymizes creators until they’re unimportant cogs in the social-media machine.

I don’t like it. I’ve decided for myself that I won’t use it.

If you want to define a creative by their work, mention the work. Don’t disparage it by calling it shovel-ware content.

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