For some time I have been uneasy about my relationship with “content.” Even more than my relationship with it, I have been curious about my perception of it. What is content today? What actually is the thing people ask me to subscribe for more of? “If you like our content hit the like button and subscribe…” If like me you have consumed a significant amount of content online (YouTube is the thorn in my side, in case you were wondering) you have begun to wonder about this substance we continue to injest. My thought at present is that there is a conceit to the content economy online, in that much of the content we consume doesn’t contain much of anything at all. A simple irony. Or perhaps a clever con.
When I began wondering about the frequent use of this word in the online world I noticed that I was quite drawn to anything called content. Why was that? What was it about something called content that made me think it was worth my time? As you know, content has been around longer than YouTube has, and I suspected my affinity for it had a history. Think of the places we have known content before. My mind first goes to that glorious institution: the contents page. Or depending on the age of the book: the contents pages. The older the book the more likely the contents page reads like the first chapter of a modern book. What a magic there is to an elaborated contents of a good book. And what is the content being referred to here? It is what is inside the book. The book contains that which is deliniated in the contents. The implication, nay, the promise (with a rolled r): this book has something inside it. How intriguing.
What about the contents of a jar? Jam. Peanut butter. Vegemite. Pickles, which I almost despise but I fear I am in the minority. Do they still put cookies in jars somewhere in the world? Have you ever seen a jar of marbles? The promise again: the jar contains something. Perhaps more, the jar is full of something. How delightful. I should like to empty the contents of one of these jars onto a slice of toast or a small plate by my cup of tea au plus tôt. Few things are as sweet as the sound of the first opening of a new jar of jam. Pop! The contents awaits.
Or perhaps the contents of a locked box waiting for Jason Bourne. This box also contains things, but critical things. Secret things. There is usually a gun, cash, passports. Maybe a key to another locked box!? The contents of this box are carefully described to Jason (or Tom Cruise) in the event that he should need them (which he will) and he proceeds prompty to acertain them. It’s exciting. We could go on. The contents of an envelope, the contents of a draw, the contents of a locked draw… The meaning is clear. There is something inside. Something you may enjoy, or need, or recover, or receive. There is a container of some sort and there is a subsance within. Something of significance. The question is, does any of the content we consume online today resemble any of these older contents?
Too often there is almost nothing contained in the containers promising content today. But we return again and again to the jars because content is written on the outside. Do we realise in many instances we are licking the bottom of an empty jar? That we are jamming our hand into a jar that contains no jam?
I remember listening to one content creator (what a thought) and discovered to my alarm that for 10-15 minutes he gave the impression of speaking about something, but said almost nothing in many different ways. I remember a time when information was being spoken about as deceptive. ‘We think we are learning but we are only being inundated with information.’ Is content better than information? Content seems to be a very minimal amount of information presented as entertainment and framed as education. But too many times it is just an empty jar.
I have no doubt that this is in part why my thinking is fragmented. This is why my concerntration is not a strong as it should be. This is why, if I am not careful, I am shallow, and thumbnail-dimensioned in my thinking. I have bought into the content conceit. I think that I am being connected to inumerable wellsprings of knoweldge and insight about all manner of topics under the sun. But in reality I am being fed trivialities and entertained into a stupour from which I now long to awake.
My resolve is not to despise content creators. For that God has given me pickles. My resolve is to disbelieve the label “content” in most cases and to spend time on older forms of content that deliver what they promise. There should be something inside the jar. It should be full of something. Something that will delight me, something that I need. With that sort of content, and with that only, will I be content.