The normalization of using "content" as a catchall term for anything that's publishable online is not only profoundly lazy, it's also pernicious language that embodies a specific market logic the views culture in terms of productivity, where everything is just grist for the mill.

While "content" is a useful shorthand for designers & digital publishers, its popular usage is a triumph for the ad/PR industries that have long tried to erase distinctions between their output and all the creative traditions and artistic practices that are central to our lives.

The seemingly benign term "content" suggests that such distinctions either don't or shouldn't matter, and that even calling attention to such differences is an act of digital naivete or some inability simply understand 'how things work' nowadays.

It's language that reflects the internalized logic of internet influencing - that perfected act of gleefully obliterating the lines between doing stuff and selling shit, via monetizable media bursts, that the admen of yesteryear could've only fantasized about.

So unless everyone's down with communicating like a 13-yr old with a Taco Bell side hustle on IG, maybe it's worth talking about things like writing, photography, visual art, and music as if they, and the people who make them, actually matter. It's not all just "content."

*Please forgive the typos in the thread. I can't spell today.