I am surrounded by content.
There is always something to listen to, something to watch, something to buy, to read, to learn, news to be shocked by, posts to share, even a juicy comment thread can have my attention for way too long. It’s great, honestly. I enjoy consuming most of it and I do my best to control what content comes my way, though I haven’t figured out how to avoid targeted advertisement without simply staying offline. You know? The ones that seem to be generated by a random word you rarely use during the only conversation you had that day with someone you hadn’t seen for a while? I shan’t digress. You can find content that you actually want in seconds. Cat videos. Awesome. With 4.54 billion users globally, the internet is the current dominant channel of content consumption and is likely to continue as such for some time, I’m sure you would agree.
But I’m not here to tell you how good this age of information is or to do an analysis of digital market trends (insert graph here). I’m here to let you know that being surrounded by content has its caveats, its pressures, and its engulfing qualities that affects your very being. With that said, allow me to be clear before we continue. You are a person. A person that consumes content. You are not a ‘consumer’. The latter is just an overused and dehumanizing buzzword within the purview of the business world. Do not confuse yourself as a person with how the marketing industry sees and speaks of you.
I write these words to you as I come to terms with my own transition from a consuming person to a creating person. From consumer to content creator. Though, I am both now. There is a lot of social pressure for us to produce content. We live in an unprecedented age where basically everyone can produce content. It’s easy to start a blog, to upload a video or share a picture on Instagram. When you upload a picture of that amazing looking salad you had for lunch, you produce content for others to be the consumers of. Everywhere you look someone is producing content.
What does that say about the seemingly very few that do not produce any content at all? How does it feel to be just a consumer alone? To only consume. To not speak, only listen. To not be heard. Even if you were to create content, how could your voice possibly be heard among the vast ocean of daily content? How could you possibly say anything more relevant, enlightening or entertaining than what is already being said a thousand times over? Your hand is forced. You must produce! If you are not producing then you are just a consumer. A lazy, zombie-like consumer of other people’s hard work. This is how the current creator/consumer climate makes me feel. See Melanie Lambiar’s two part blog post discussing Asia’s “lazy economy” where she has four categories for lazy consumers: the ‘Aspiring Environmentalist’; the ‘Sleeping Beauty Queen’; the ‘Reluctant Cook’; and the ‘Fast & Furious’.
The collective sphere of human knowledge, content and entertainment is constantly evolving to earn relevance as society reaches the edges of multiple ages, epochs, eras or what ever you want to call them. I say multiple because there are always different discourses within various fields all competing to show their relevance in the current era they find themselves in. The Talon geneticist, Dr. Moira O’Deorain from Overwatch puts it succinctly:
Dr Moira O’Deorain
As content consumers we create that superiority. Every time we consume content, we cast a vote to the kinds of content that we want and creators, if they want to remain relevant, have a mandate to fulfill the content desires of consumers. That is why I have great respect for anyone that creates truly from their own heart. Content which speaks genuinely about what that person wants to communicate to the world, rather than content made to sooth the ears and eyes of as many consumers as possible at once. Ironically, today consumers seek this kind of content and feel passionately about it when they find that niche that is not part of ‘the mainstream’. The irony is there because niches are desirable, that is until they become so popular that they lose their uniqueness. Niches are desirable, desirable things become popular, popular things lose their desirability. In essence, a niche has to do with the concept of individuality, casting a distinctive content vote among the masses. It is well known in the marketing industry that the word ‘new’ gets a positive response from people. One marketing company rates it as twelve out of their list of thirty “magic marketing words”. Interestingly enough, they also rate “secret” as eighteen. This relates to the niche we talked about previously. A secret is appealing because of its exclusivity, just as a content niche is exclusive. It is VIP, invite only, that song you discovered before anyone else, don’t tell so and so about it they won’t get it; exclusive.
This cycle of always voting for the newest and next big thing repeats and the consumer market … sorry, I mean people and their interests are always dynamically changing. The content you produce should be something you want to create, something you wish to communicate to the world from your heart and passion. Not because you want a million followers, to be lost in the oceans of mass content but because you want to know that you truly expressed yourself, intimately and exclusively.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/
Game Studies GG 