The ‘C’ Word ⇥ om.co

Om Malik — who, I think, has been on a roll lately:

“Content” is the black hole of the Internet. Incredibly well-produced videos, all sorts of songs, and articulate blog posts — they are all “content.” Are short stories “content”? I hope not, since that is one of the most soul-destroying of words, used to strip a creation of its creative effort.

You can tell a lot about a person and how they think about their work based on whether or not they use “content” to describe what they do. A photographer who says that he is creating “content” for his YouTube channel is nothing more than a marketer churning out fodder to fill the proverbial Internet airwaves with marketing noise.

I go out of my way to avoid using “content” in any of my writing. That word is only accurate in describing artistic materials that are a vehicle for other purposes, like advertising or product marketing, and which could easily be interchanged with any other material. It’s offensive to anything made with craft or earnest care.