It's simply the further debasement of the language: "content" and "consume", "fleece" meaning a piece of plastic (and "lamb" being used for both lamb and mutton), "elite" meaning "better", "gift" as a verb, excessive and gratuitous use of intensifiers (the physical manifestation is standing ovations after any public performance) the content-free of useful words like "freedom" and "patriot" and so on.
Languages constantly change and that's delightful. But there is a class of changes that are deliberate manipulation for commercial or propaganda purposes. Often the idea is to hollow out the word and insert a new meaning into the husk, so listenera (at least initially) get the associations of the old meaning while it is transformed into a new one.
I hate this because it is deceptive, and I also hate it when no handy way remains to specify the original meaning ("plastic fleece" would be silly and redundant these days; you can't usefully say "real fleece" any more, so what term do you use?)
"Consuming" a book would mean destroying it ("consumed by fire"). Economists use this for the action of people who buy rivalrous goods or services -- a logical and obvious metaphor. But the use of "content" and "consumption" were deliberate coining: "content" expells any differentiation of what it refers to, applying an equivalence to user-generated work, commercial speech, advertising, propaganda, whatever; "consume" reinforces a corporate producer -> passive consumer mentality that again strips away the agency of the person actually looking at the screen.
Just part of the incessant effort to turn the Internet into "a remote control with a buy button".
Languages constantly change and that's delightful. But there is a class of changes that are deliberate manipulation for commercial or propaganda purposes. Often the idea is to hollow out the word and insert a new meaning into the husk, so listenera (at least initially) get the associations of the old meaning while it is transformed into a new one.
I hate this because it is deceptive, and I also hate it when no handy way remains to specify the original meaning ("plastic fleece" would be silly and redundant these days; you can't usefully say "real fleece" any more, so what term do you use?)
"Consuming" a book would mean destroying it ("consumed by fire"). Economists use this for the action of people who buy rivalrous goods or services -- a logical and obvious metaphor. But the use of "content" and "consumption" were deliberate coining: "content" expells any differentiation of what it refers to, applying an equivalence to user-generated work, commercial speech, advertising, propaganda, whatever; "consume" reinforces a corporate producer -> passive consumer mentality that again strips away the agency of the person actually looking at the screen.
Just part of the incessant effort to turn the Internet into "a remote control with a buy button".