Does Anyone Cringe at the Word "Content" or Am I Just Fashion Forward

The cringe of the word "content", the 10 year rule, and making extra jobs for ourselves

We changed the word “Influencer” to the word “Content Creator” and nothing changed but everything got worse. I rarely met someone who isn’t aspiring to or is (in some way) a content creator. I’m a content creator. My sister was broke once and wanted to buy something and talked to me about making content (she did not, I think she just found a job lol). I’ve talked to half my friends about doing content creation, but it’s never the title they truly are (fashion stylist, cake decorator, real estate agent, etc) because there is a formula to getting known and that formula is short-form content on social media.

Making content, or content in general, is pretty much the only way to get your work out there. Either you’re making LinkedIn poetry every fucking day to further your corporate ladder climb, an Instagram reel that is 3 seconds long with a list of your favorite places to eat in your city in hopes of getting your written reviews noticed for publications. Yes, everyone cringes at LinkedIn poetry, but does everyone cringe at content like me? Like you really moved your camera around your house that many times to make a video about putting on an outfit? You bought all that equipment just to tell people on camera you sell houses? You spent an hour editing a video so that it would be really flashy and capture someone’s attention about your trip to the mountains? We spend so much time making content that I am so bored with watching!!! We are stressed and exhausted because we have to make content about everythingggggg askldfjkalsd

We have created this world that created extra jobs for professionals. A once Project Manager now must create and maintain a strong LinkedIn presence in order to stand out from other job applicants because they need to find something that pays more, or escape a horrible work environment. Because often, you’re not going to beat out the LinkedIn influencer when you’re competing against hundreds of applicants. A writer must have a strong following to be able to promote their own work outside of just a having a publicist, an illustrator must do the same, and only strong platform memoirs will sell. Musicians, bakers, personal trainers, everyone is tied to this idea.

It’s not enough to have good ratings or publications or education or experience, you must have the following and you must be good at editing and in front of the camera. You must have a story along with your craft. And it better be fucking good for the world to stop mid-scroll to listen. And you need to sound smart, relatable, commanding, and humble all at the same time. You should probably be a straight man, or blonde and thin and “nice” for a woman - and politics can be surface level democrat (maybe).

Content, or creating content, used to be a sort of “catch all” for anything you did online - it still is, unfortunately. I will be creating content about all the DIYs I do in my home, I will be creating content about the painting I am creating, I will be making content about staging your home before the sell blah blah blah. I personally create content around things I write here - that is my main content. Probably more than half of my Tiktok following has never read a piece I have written, or even knows I am referring to a piece I wrote because the video is held down at 2x speed. Even when you make content about your work, it’s still deemed as content, separating you further from your title over and over again.

We used to think the internet would bring us together in this really cool way. That would we make really meaningful connections with people everywhere, share out interests and hobbies, and feel more connected. I used to think that. I thought that before 2016 when the term “Influencer” was coined. That’s about the time I quit my fashion blog and quit being an influencer. I went to graduate school because I didn’t even want to be online.

In the end of 2024 I started writing again. I never write scripts or anything like that for my Tiktok’s, and I missed it. I wrote online before in the 2010s, and I miss sharing it. I missed the connection, the kind you only get when you read writing with very few pictures of something and you imagine their voice. The connections I felt with other bloggers was more than I feel with Tiktok mutuals who share their life story and what they had for breakfast this morning. It’s a feeling you only get when you spend more than 30 seconds-2 minutes with someone. And I’m saying all of this knowing my true stand behind this isn’t even rooted in connection, it’s rooted in us removing ourselves further from what we create and what we are experts in. No one is an expert, everyone is a content creator first.

Reading (and listening to audiobooks) is so important for many reasons, but a very powerful one is it enhances our creativity and empathy for one another. Creativity does not come from a reel, it is displayed for you in the reel leaving nothing to the imagination. Empathy, generally, can come for a few moments within a Tiktok - but then it’s time to keep scrolling and find the next thing that will stop your finger from moving up. This post isn’t just about writing though - instead of in-person meetings to chose the right expert, we view their content first and check their stats and judge not off CV, but on delivery.

But we all have to keep producing content or we can’t do our jobs. Instead of spending more time doing your trained craft, you log hours on Canva making graphics to share or editing videos to try to draw someone’s attention. You are also censored heavily on very social media platform (Tiktok’s censorship is wild, I need to talk about that more omg), so you need to tone down or edit what you want to say. You need to learn how to speak directly into the camera. And you should probably yell or strongly command into the camera more, the algorithm likes that apparently.

Before I wrap this up I want to talk about the 10 year rule - it typically goes with fashion shifts, but we can use it through this lens here. As I mentioned above, the word influencer was coined in 2016. When a word is coined it means the general public has a pretty good understand of the term by then, also it’s something to be taken more seriously than in prior years before. With the rise of Tiktok and COVID, the influencer industry boomed even more. The idea of creating content is just standard for many, if not all, professions. Quality information is hard to find because everyone is forced to make content at a rapid pace. Algorithms control the narrative of which “expert” is now trending. It’s frustrating and it’s all connected, ok let’s talk about it!

We’ve had 10 years of the influencer, by now according to Laver’s Law of Fashion it’s “hideous”. I cite on my series on "Early Internet It Girls" Hannah Beth and Audrey Kitching as being the first ever influencers. This would have been dated around the late 2000s, when they were very popular. 10 years before the time of the "trend" looks are considered "indecent". Both famous Myspacers were in a niche community, no one understood (or even them really) what they were doing and what the outcome would be. Even when I was influencing starting in the very early 2010’s, it would move to the term “shameless”, but then closer to the coined term it moves to “daring”. I mentioned this here before, but honestly until after I was almost done blogging, no one took this idea seriously and didn’t understand how I made money by being online. I can’t imagine what perceptions Hanna and Audrey had in the late 2000s.

When something is common, it is no longer perceived as “cool” or “inspiring” and it’s just kind of… there and present and also “hideous” aka cringe. If we look at that theory, the idea of the influencer who brought us into the content creation society we will live in should be becoming more mainstream-ly (lol) out.

I’m writing this knowing content isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, I’m sure I’ll be making a Tiktok tomorrow about something. But we can talk about it different, and sometimes that is the first step in the direction of more meaningful and more connection. We can critique it, slowly make moves away from it, and center our conversations more directly to say “instead of content creator, I’d like to be addressed as a Project Manager” which honestly make help us shape this world into something a little different. Know that, like fashion trends, everything moves in and out of cultural hype and interest. More people are blogging, more people are leaving social media, more people want to be disconnected from their phones. We will get back to experts being experts and spending more time on our craft than trying to go viral every week. Or so I hope.