[sgarland]

This resonates with me. I’ve always found the term annoying, because it felt like it was distilling artistic expression down to its most abstract form: content. If all you’re producing is abstract “content,” why should I participate? What makes it special?

[ryandrake]

I feel the same way. I want to watch movies and listen to music and read books! I don't want to "consume content." That phrase feels like it reduces my role to just be a generic pac-man gobbling up whatever bland grays dots of vague content are "created" and set down in front of me. That's not what it should be.

[pastel8739]

I’m pretty sure that is exactly what your role is to the companies in the content business

[golly_ned]

I see that abstraction as the purpose of the word when viewing it from a 'business' context: when assessing businesses of the same kind, the actual thing that's being produced matters a lot less.

I'd suppose that blog writers and video producers have a lot of the same kinds of business problems: how people can discover [the thing they create] and spread awareness of it or make money off it.

In order to be able to discuss this category of business, it's useful for writers and video producers to be able to relate to each other by abstracting out the thing that actually makes them distinct and particular.

I see it less as devaluing that special thing and more as a lens to put on or take off when certain audiences are interested in the 'non-special' aspects of running businesses based on that special thing.

[inigyou]

It's bad that this even works in a business context. A business that treats itself as producing undifferentiated slop to fill the slop-trough of TV attention time should lose out to every business that produces Stranger Things, or produces Avengers, or produces any other specific thing because that business actually knows and cares what it's making.

But it does not.

[paulcole]

To be fair, the people who are producing capital-a Art are mostly producing crap as well.

Whatever you call it, I participate to find out if it’s crap or not.

[ClikeX]

People seem to be content with content.