In last week's episode, we talked about Yarrr!
Content.
Let's see what you had to say.
Also, I'm not going to do the content voice every time.
SPEAKER 2: [inaudible] Are you telling me?
I'm telling everybody.
Fireworksparkler makes a really good point,
which is the fact that the line between what is and is not,
internet, what sort of comes from or is of the internet
is not exactly a clear one.
You know, is Netflix not the internet?
And is, then, its contents not technically content?
And I think this is a really great point.
And I think that there is really a very strong--
there's a feeling about a lot of this stuff
that I think is hard to really put down
on paper as a set of hard and fast rules.
But I do think that there is this sense that something
like a Netflix or an Amazon, you know,
has a large media pedigree.
And so there-- it is less likely that people
will refer to those things as content
and those things will just be TV shows.
But even that is a complicated distinction
to make, as we sort of talked about in our streaming series
episode, that those things are TV,
but not really TV in the way traditional TV is TV.
So yeah, this is a really important,
interesting distinction.
You know, there were comments, people saying,
like, man, this is three or four more episodes
to really drill down to all of the things that are at work
that make content what it is.
And this is a whole other conversation, but very related.
[inaudible],, along the same lines,
makes the point that it might not
be the source of a piece of media that determines
whether or not it's content, but the almost availability
of the person who has made it.
And that if-- the example that they use is Benedict
Cumberbatch, that Benedict Cumberbatch is not a content
creator, because he is a performer in the large-scale
works of other people, and that you do not necessarily--
or that they do not, and it is understandable
that maybe many people do not go see Benedict Cumberbatch
films simply because Benedict Cumberbatch is in it
and they are invested in his work and his success and him
as a person who exists in the media ecosystem.
And that this is maybe brought more into focus
with a comparison to someone like John Green, where
a lot of people feel as though they have more access to him,
that he is mainly in things of his own creation,
and you will perhaps engage with those things
simply because John is involved with them.
And so in the place of John or Benedict Cumberbatch,
you can replace--
you can put any other internet creator
versus more sort of pop culture, classically or traditionally
famous actors or people who make things for mass media.
And I think this is--
I didn't really think about this,
and I think this is a really interesting way
to draw the content, not content distinction.
I would wonder how it would sort of stand up
to someone becoming more available or identifiable
throughout their career.
You know, if Benedict Cumberbatch, for whatever
reason, starts a YouTube channel tomorrow
or starts releasing podcasts, as [inaudible] suggests he could.
There is the possibility.
Would you eventually come around to the things
that he makes as being content, and would he then
be a content creator in that sense?
Or would he always be Benedict Cumberbatch?
And I think, yeah.
I'm going to think about this a lot.
I think this is a very interesting way
of looking at this.
TsiTai points out that one of the things that
might draw the content distinction
is the existence or nonexistence of something
resembling a gatekeeper.
And that when you have films that
have to go through producers and film studios and distribution
deals, and you have someone who writes for a newspaper,
they have an editor, and then the newspaper itself.
You have a lot of gatekeepers.
There are a lot of gatekeepers in that process.
And that if you have someone who is writing on Tumblr,
writing on a blog, uploading YouTube videos,
uploading or podcasting on SoundCloud,
there are remarkably fewer gatekeepers.
I think it's important to remember that on the internet,
there aren't no gatekeepers, that there
are a lot of, I think, infrastructural and social
things that could be cast as gatekeepers.
But I think if we're talking about corporate structure,
and we're talking about editorial structures
and distribution structures, then
yeah, it is absolutely true that there is seemingly
a lot less that has that traditional gatekeeping feel
to it with a lot of the stuff that we call content.
Alana S. actually has almost an opposite sense
of the word "content" from mine and a lot
of people in the comments.
And I think, you know, sort of goes
to show you why getting on the same page
in these conversations is really interesting.
You get to see what other people's perspectives
on these sort of reflexively used words are.
And Alana's sense is that actually,
things that have meaning and require
a kind of decoding, that need digesting,
whatever metaphor you want to use--
those things are content.
If you have to think about it and you have to sort of meet it
on its level, that is content.
Whereas a brainless movie is something that you just watch.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't argue with you, but that's
very different from the way I think about it.
Zoofus-- it happened very quickly.
Very, very quickly.
And continues to happen.
At this point, it's just a strange sound that comes out
of my mouth sometimes. .
Ahmed Abdallah and a couple other people
asked what word they should say instead of "content."
And, you know, my answer to this is
going to be a real "your mileage may vary" kind of thing.
Because I think if you like it and you feel like it accurately
describes how you feel about a certain piece of media
and your attitude towards it, then by all means,
do not stop using it because I made a video,
or I complained for a little while.
But personally, I really like to just say "work."
If I'm complimenting someone, or I
want to tell them that I like the things that they make,
sometimes I say, I really like the things that you make.
But if I want a catch-all word, I will say "work."
I really like your work.
And when talking about a particular piece of media,
I try to just say what that piece of media is.
So podcast, video, essay, whatever.
And I think, you know, there are a lot of other words
that work that way.
People say "stuff."
People say "media."
But I like "work" because I think it confronts
sort of what the thing is.
It's what they do.
They've invested some time into it.
And I like being specific when talking about individual pieces
of media.
QIUZ, on the other hand, asked a slightly more complicated
question, which is, if someone is not
to be called a content creator because
of the potential problems with the word "content,"
what should they be called?
And this, I do not think, is an--
there's no easy thing for this.
This is like when someone asks me what I do for a living,
and the easiest answer that I always give
is, I make YouTube videos for PBS.
But I can't put that on my tax returns
or on visa applications and stuff.
And I usually say "host."
I host things.
And I feel like that doesn't really
capture anything-- that doesn't capture what I do.
Neither does "writer," even though that
is what I spend the vast majority of most
of my days doing--
writing.
So if someone is a content creator,
if you don't want to call them that, what do you call them?
The easiest answer is, I think, "entertainer."
And that just feels dirty, doesn't it?
It feels empty and meaningless.
So I don't know.
What do you all think?
What is a good--
I feel like replacing the "work," finding a new word
for the "work," is easier than finding a new thing to describe
who the people who make it are.
I'm just going to keep thinking about it for a second.
And if I come up with something more, I'm going to cut it in.
It'll be like a eureka moment.
What do you think, Morgan?
Do you have any answers?
MORGAN: Adult entertainer.
Adult entertainer?
[laughs] I think that might mean something else.
And for the record, QIUZ, I--
it's very, very nice, and I find it very flattering
when people refer to me as a "public intellectual."
But I would never call myself that in a million years.
Eric Schumacher points out that the connotations for content
might actually be worse than we made them out to be.
He talks a little bit about the thing that we mentioned
in the episode, which is its provenance as being part
of the phrase "user-generated content."
But then he gets into this idea that from there, it
went on to be mostly associated with content farms, which
are really more than anything about SEO and generating
clicks.
And so that really, at base--
if you follow the genealogy back in popular usage,
"content" connotes nothing more than really being
an empty vehicle for clicks.
And I think this is something that we sort of tried
to get at with this idea that "content" indicates
that our interaction with something
is kind of crassly commercial.
And, you know, I think that in a lot of popular usage right now,
people don't meaningfully channel
this sense of this word.
But I do agree that, at least in base usage,
this is-- this was a huge factor in the growth in usage
and popularity of this word.
FMBH on the subreddit makes a really great and perceptive
point when they talk about how the dividing line
between content and not might actually just be financial.
And that if we pay directly for an individual thing,
it is not content, but if we pay for,
let's say access, to a vast ocean of things--
in other words, the internet-- those things are content.
And we are not paying individually for them.
And I think that this is--
I think on the whole, I can understand this dividing line.
And I think that it's really subtle and really interesting.
Because I pay.
I'm a patron of a bunch of things on Patreon.
You know, we have patrons.
And I think that if you are paying directly
for those products via Patreon, you
might still think of those things as content.
And I think about subscribing to Twitch streamers.
That in a way, you know, I guess I'm not
purchasing a stream as a thing that I will watch.
I am supporting a creator.
And assuming that whatever they continue to do,
they will use my money in an interesting way
to continue doing their work.
But I still-- I would still think that those streams
would fall under the content umbrella.
But I do understand.
I think it's interesting to think, you know, on the whole,
about the purchase of a particular piece of material
culture, a media object, removing
that thing from the overarching designation "content."
And I think, sort of relatedly, Errant Signal-- and also,
assuming this is Chris Franklin, hi Chris--
talks about how things might be content on the internet
because they are contents for an infrastructural type,
like a piece of infrastructure, a piece of technology that
has to shuttle things from point A to point B, from server 1
to server 5,926.
And that, you know, those connections
are going to exist regardless, and that the individual pieces
of media can be whatever.
They just have to move between those points.
And so from a programmatic perspective,
the things that we call "content" on the internet
are literally contents for technological communication.
And yeah.
I think this is--
we actually had a section about this in the video that
got cut for time.
And I think that this is the sort of counterpoint,
or an additional point after the idea
that we talked about, with things being
in or part of popular culture.
That, in another way, is a different kind of content,
or a conduit, rather.
That there is contents within, but we think about it
very differently from the internet
as a system with contents.
The internet is unique in comparison
to a lot of other conduits for media in, I mean,
countless ways.
But one of the big ones, at least for this conversation,
being that its form and its content
are married in a way that is different.
You know, like an individual book is an individual book.
An individual film is an individual film.
The internet is any and all things
that have been digitized.
And so it gives rise to the contentification of all things.
But then you know it still sort of
doesn't get at this point of--
even if you're watching "Alien" on Netflix
do you think about that as content?
Some people do, some people don't.
DWKindig shares a personal story, and I think,
makes a really insightful point about what
you could view as the positive aspects of something being
content and therefore maybe a little bit more disposable
than other pieces of media not normally called content.
And they talk about how the sort of ephemerality of content
and its flattened nature when it sits
alongside other pieces of content
maybe allows it to have a lesser sort of impact,
or to be less great a landmark in the life of the creator
than if these people were producing albums
or movies or books or essays.
And that when you are in the process of discovering
yourself, figuring out who you are on the internet,
making things, publishing those things that's maybe not so bad
that you create those things, move away from them,
and that they do have this sort of ephemerality to them,
and they are not as--
I don't know.
"Impactful" is not the right word,
but they least have a different nature.
And I think that that is--
there is a lot of truth to that.
I think that it's complicated and will
shift between different content creators, media mavens,
whatever you want to call them, but that it at least
feels like that is a way to understand how
these sorts of things get made.
And maybe, as is always helpful, a way to understand
the people who are making them.