19 Feb 2025

I am not a content creator

Filed under: life | art | music

While I was washing up last night, I realised something:

I am not a content creator.

It’s something I used to put in my intro text on the homepage of this site. But I took it down as it felt disingenuous. I don’t make videos or anything like that and while you don’t have to be a YouTuber or Instagram celeb to be a content creator, I just didn’t feel like it fit my personality. But tonight’s epiphany solidified why I made the right decision and it’s semantics.

When I hear the word content, I think of a faceless product with no defining characteristics that is made purely for forgettable consumption. It doesn’t matter what it is or who it’s for as long as it is absorbed and engagement is exchanged. It’s grey, it’s tasteless, and it fills a void that it also creates. Sounds dystopian, doesn’t it? A bit Matrix-y. Over the top? Harsh? Perhaps. But that’s not an insult to all creatives or people who call themselves content creators. I watch a lot of people who class themselves as that and I enjoy their work. But I can tell the difference between someone who puts their heart and soul into their creations and someone like Mr.Beast who churns shit out for shit’s sake.

And that’s why I say I’m not a content creator. No matter who engages with my work, whether it’s new music, my blogs, social media posts, newsletter updates, or this website, I know I’ve given it my all and I’ve tried to tell a story based on my life experiences. It might seem like I churn out music because I release new albums every other month but I just work that fast and I craft things quickly and in a way that makes me feel good and expresses my feelings at the time. I blog the same way. I post the same way. I build this site the same wa— actually, I take a little longer with that but you get the idea. I can’t deny these viral videos take effort and planning because I know they do. But that process seems soulless to me because it’s constantly chasing something under the guise of “innovation” when it’s really just about being first. There are no winners in this game. No one is truly better than anyone else. The numbers might mean something to them but we’re all getting the same thing and it’s all about who sees what more than the other.

So to the people who make “good content”, I say no—you don’t make content at all. Name your creations and be content with what you’ve done. As I will of what I’ve done.

💐

Addendum: Christian Heilmann wrote an article called ‘Nobody should be a “content creator”’ and I echo his sentiments about not wanting to be a content creator and what that entails.