alt Hacker NewsI actually really like the term content creator, because it removes the artificial boundaries that come with being a writer, photographer, filmmaker, etc. and just lets you make stuff. The medium doesn't matter if you're a content creator, to a large extent.
The alternative is "art" but that comes with a lot of other baggage that often sounds unintentionally pretentious, especially if you aren't actually creating paintings/sculptures/traditional/contemporary studio art. The word creative used to serve a similar purpose, but nowadays I think it sounds both blasé and pretentious.
Yes, content does come with an expectation that you're creating things for an commercial audience; however, I think content is tied to media, and not merely any sort of created object. And so by extension you are participating in the global media sphere by making content, and not just painting for your own enjoyment.
It’s also worth pointing out that while Michelangelo did think of himself as an artist and a sculptor and painter, those professions were basically tradesmen at the time. The concept of high art, in the purely non-economic way we think of today, didn’t come for centuries after his life.
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If you are making meaningful things then you shouldn't be afraid to sound pretentious.
Everyone's so terrified that they might stand out.
"Content" is giving in to the idea that what you make only has value because it can fill some hole between ads in somebody else's CMS. What it is doesn't matter, it's just content. Meh.
> The alternative is "art"
Maybe. Or alternative could be to use the words you used in your first sentence: writer, photographer, filmmaker.
If you talk about your work using deflationary words like content then that could affect how you think about it and present it. Do yourself a favor and use grand words because I bet it's important to you.
I'm with you. I would prefer to be known as a "content creator" rather than a "woodworker" or "game developer" or "illustrator" or "writer" or "musician". Especially because all of that work tends to overlap all of the time. It feels so limiting to be described by a singular part of what I do. And I'm neurotic enough to want a 'comprehensive' word, rather than to slash myself to death in a description.
I don't particularly like the term "content creator". It feels too blunt and sterile to be particularly useful. But it does seem to be generally useful in how wide-reachingly descriptive it is.
for me the distinction is that pre-"content" you created a website so you have a place to host your art; with "content" you produce art to have something to put on your website.
I agree. It's a generic word since it has a generic meaning.
I know there's a big bias against 'business speak' among engineers. But a lot of the time, it's just a matter of abstracting in a domain engineers typically don't work in. It's useful to describe from the 'business' point-of-view since terms like this can be used to analyze the similarities across these similar 'content creation' type businesses.
I'm trying to think of a similar case where to an outsider, the 'tech speak' jargon a software engineer would use seems useless to an outsider. Maybe things like 'framework', or 'deployment', or 'library', or web application instead of web site.
As an artist (former, really[0]), I can confirm that the medium really, really matters. It can inform the creation, as much as the creator.
There are top-shelf authors that insist on writing everything in cursive, in legal pads (God help the poor schlubs that have to transcribe it, though). They insist that they can’t be creative, otherwise. There are musicians (like Rhiannon Giddens), that always perform barefoot.
Most of the Great Masters could work in many mediums, and they chose specific media, to do specific works, because they knew that the medium would “push back,” and inform the work.
Michelangelo was quoted as saying something like he “saw the statue in the stone,” and that was why selecting the rock was as important as any other part of the process.
Many folks take great pains, to do their work in specific contexts, as that affects their creativity.
Creativity isn’t something that is easy to commoditize.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40917886