On December 15th 2013, Google software developer Tim Bray published a piece entitled "Content Free", which basically stated that if you referred to your work as "content production", odds are you wouldn't last long as a creator.

His argument, a simple one at that, is that no-one — from Hollywood high-rollers to sketchy artists in their basements — actually refers to his own work as content : "they’re movies and flicks, novels and epics and mysteries and bodice–rippers and procedurals and memoirs and hatchet jobs […], songs and symphonies and anthems and albums and jams". 

Bray's point is largely supported in the numerous comments made on his post (the author boasts some 30K+ followers on Twitter), from individual creators thanking him for unpacking this "current marketing buzzword […] used by knaves and fools to describe stuff" (sic)… to other commentators linking to writer Jeffrey Zeldman's complementary rant, "This is a website", in which Zeldman complains about the effects of the zeitgeist on the words used to describe the art of content production — which he'd rather call "independent writing and publishing". 

The irony is not lost on us. While Zeldman and his 300,000 Twitter followers may want to make us believe in a romanticized view of the world that's made of feathers and papyrus, these individuals have been thriving on 400-word pseudo-essays, making a living out of half-formed thoughts and rants for more than a decade. To call this form of spontaneous outbursts anything but content is a denial of its very nature, of its nauseating abundance and of the system of technological ways and means in which it is embedded. The pretentious posture adopted by these (otherwise talented) writers in their position papers should not be taken at face value, but rather welcomed with a fair dose of cynicism; their posts doing little more than to contribute to the system they are pretending to denounce. 

"To call this form of spontaneous

outbursts anything but content is

a denial of its very nature"

Developer and media hacker Dave Winer's rebuttal — "Content is here to stay" — invokes the duality of language in order to make the point that an article may be both "a blog post", satisfying his buddies' romantic view of themselves as 18th century French penseurs awaiting their espressos in Montmartre, and content, a word that their Google-frenzied readers may be more familiar with in their daily lives as they surf from one such pebble of nonsense to another. Force is to admit that, in taking the time to explore this self-important blabber, one will likely conclude that the latter is probably a more accurate description. To content or not to content? I'm pretty sure Shakespeare didn't give a shit. 

Image: Michelle Furlong