"content is a commodity that fills social media feeds so we can be sold as a collection of preferences [...] attention but not understanding, engagement but not exploration"
Every time I hear "content creator" I perceive it as Styrofoam. Filler used to convey a product.
A good chunk of the use of the word "creator" is the lack of a word to capture the work of someone who uses multiple platforms to distribute their work. Someone can be simply a YouTuber, but if they also do Twitch streams, they have no choice but to be a "content creator". If they're primarily one or another, they can call themselves a YouTuber or a Twitch streamer, but not if they do both. If you add Substack, Twitter, podcasting, and TikTok into the mix (often with significant cross-posting), you really don't have a word except for "creator". And what captures all the things you're creating - "media" or "content" or something equally nebulous.
No doubt a lot of it is filler. But a lot of it isn't. I spent last night learning a bunch of cooking techniques on YouTube. Quite valuable for me!
I've heard content creators either say explicitly in videos, or in text under videos, things along the line of "Sorry I made a mistake here but I need to get this video out". Imagine reading an essay where the author tried to pull something like that.
YouTube penalizes video creators who don't post regularly. So it's hard for them to take breaks. If a video takes a week to make, how will you have enough of a backlog built up to take a two week vacation?
"content is a commodity that fills social media feeds so we can be sold as a collection of preferences [...] attention but not understanding, engagement but not exploration"
Every time I hear "content creator" I perceive it as Styrofoam. Filler used to convey a product.