[the_af]

> A citizen and a person doesn't have to be defined as what they consume, do they?

I find this is at the core of Stallman's criticism of the term "content". We speak of media "content", of "content authors", etc, as if movies, articles, books, etc were just that: content, ready to be commoditized, packaged and sold. And some of it is! But we've conditioned to think of everything as "content" to be "consumed", which is depressing.

[rdiddly]

Haven't read Stallman on it, but it's funny how vague & generic the term is, and how it requires the existence of a container. Content is simply "that which is contained." Seems to me it's a word you use when your primary interest is the container. Like you're the managing editor of a news website or the like. Metaphorically you have a mouth you need to fill with words, any words, or else people will stop paying attention. But I don't look at the world that way. I appreciate something good and call it whatever it is. The only time I use "content" is as an ironic and derisive synonym for cynical low-quality crap.

[the_af]

You should read Stallman, because what you said (container vs content) is his actual beef with it. It's looking at it from the perspective of companies who own the platform (the container) rather than from the more human perspective of artists and authors.

And we've all adopted it. Or mostly, anyway.

[johnnyanmac]

Less and less people have the option to male "art" and need to make "content" to simply survive. Art has historically been reserved for the elite privileged and it seems the world is heading back towards old norms as wealth consolidates.

In a similar breath, that may be why we don't heat much of the next generation of Stallman's and instead hear of a looming crisis in FOSS as the old guard retires. Less devs (if they are even pursuing that path down the line) will have the free time to choose FOSS as a path, unless big tech is paying for it to bend ot to their will.

[pixl97]

>But we've conditioned to think of everything as "content" to be "consumed", which is depressing.

Specialization pretty much requires it, and our adherence to capitalism demands it.

You specialize to get paid, and by getting paid you can pay others that specialize to create. And you're right, it's a depressing system, but it's no less depressing than what came before that.

[simtel20]

I have started to read "The Dawn of Everything" by David Graeber and David Wengrow and while I cannot speak to most of the book, even in the first hundred or so of (ebook) pages, it challenges that frame of reference in a way that is clarifying, in the sense of being a palate cleanser, admitting different ways of thinking about these things.

[johnnyanmac]

>but it's no less depressing than what came before that.

You can make an argument that it is more depressing when the compartmentalization of everything also isolates off community. No amount of individual riches can repair a trusted community to engage with. We're definitely getting lonlier in the process.