One can hardly argue that there is a shortage of materials on the topic of decreasing digital content consumption. It appears to be a tried and tested way to bestselling authorship, career building, and general thought-leadership circle-jerking.
Much less is said, however, about content production. Even more so, you will be pressed to hear someone saying we need more content. After all, what would that madness be? Why would we need more content? We are already drowning in the endless stream of stuff pushed out there; if there is a conversation about limiting all the junk we generate.
There is a real shortage of genuine material floating around. Not quality content, this is entirely different. Quality you can find everywhere you look - the fancy cameras, silky-smooth audio from a 500$ mic, the polished transitions, cool graphics, edited photos, catchy captions - it is all there and ready to rumble for your attention. But the overwhelming amount of this stuff doesn't feel real. It does not feel like watching your friend or your teacher or your boss speak and behave. You will be hard-pressed to find anyone who is like that for real.
And here lies a painful paradox - most of the good content doesn't feel genuine. If you are getting started, you will make shit content, and shit content doesn't get rewarded by cyber Jesus. The only incentive that can keep you moving to produce less-shitty content is the love of the game, something that today with increasing odds might get you labeled as a weirdo. After all, why are you doing something if you are not reaping any tangible benefit from it? This doesn't fly. With time, you can progress your content-making abilities, but at some point, you come across a crossroads - if you want to take it to the next level - you need to make content your livelihood. But if you want to sustain yourself out from it, then you have to play the game which at this point most are well aware of - appeal to the common denominator, be predictable, be stomachache, be sponsor-friendly, safe, and not-real. For reality sucks sometimes but no one can be bothered to watch/read about you having a bad day/month/year and no sponsor has the patience for you to lose your cool or steer off the path.
I have profound admiration for the difficulty of being a professional content creator. If I or you, or 99% of people working random jobs, have a bad stretch, we might get fired, yelled at, and maybe face a bit of good old humiliation. But rarely would that be our last life in the game, walking on thin ice, praying not to get canceled or even worse, fall into obscurity. Or maybe I am weird and making it out a bigger deal than it actually is.
But the reality, at least for me is that some of the brightest and realest people I know are the ones that I will most rarely see sharing their thoughts and creations in the open. Even when they do, it would have required a great push from them to do so. Often the end result will be a very tuned-down version of the marvels that brew in their heads. So why might that be? Because my friends are a bunch of weirdos? Yes, and please tune in next week when we solve another mystery of the universe.
So how do we try to crack this nut? We all generate our little shitty content (like the article in front of you) that can get out a laugh, smile, or a thought. To attempt this, we need to tackle some insidious limiting beliefs (fuck, I don't want to sound like some Tony Robbins bozo but this is the most accurate description I was able to come up with). And potentially replace them with empowering beliefs (ok, you can call the cringe police but I will be gone by the time they arrive).
Belief 1
1. Posting on Social Media is Pretentious and for Posers.
Usually, I have heard this expressed in subtle and indirect ways but you could pretty much boil it down to "Live in the moment bro, you don't need to post everything on Instagram". Or the small talk you make at some boring party, "Yeah, limiting social media is good, all this stuff is fake, people are presenting an unrealistically perfect version of their lives which makes you depressed". Ok, fine, not much that can said against this. But, you know, you/me/we can lead the charge and share good stuff- post things that are not glamorous, post edgy material if you want to be an edge lord (but try to keep things civil, maybe), OR, you know, just post the shallow and pretentious stuff that everyone is posting. If you had a bad day, go ahead and post your fancy salad/run on strava/selfie in an artistic cafe with a cappuccino in a mug with a cheeky inscription. Hell, it's better than smoking crack or beating your kid or even ... Besides, if, for every 4 salads, you share 1 good thing, I will take this odds, nowadays, this beats the market return my comfortable margin.
Belief 2
2. There is nothing new to say, go and find the most obscure topic and you find 500 content creators pumping stuff about it.
True as well. Even now I picture myself as a tiny speck in the ever-spreading digital malady. You need to send to this awkward email to your boss that you have been putting off for 1 week, you need to vacuum the house because your wife told you 3 times today already. What do you do? You jump on the bed and scroll for 5 minutes that were never going to be 5 because the pain doesn't go away this fast. You scroll, at first with some semblance of attention, but increasing in foolishness. You stumble onto my little post, your poor reptile brain, feeling a spark of dopamine due to the uncertainty, there is like a 5% chance this wall of text can be interesting. You click and you read but the words fall into a parallel dimension, forgotten as they leave your inner voice's mouth. I have become part of the cancer, the concentration camp guard who was just following orders, nothing else, a willing participant in the genocide of awareness. Or even worse, with that fried brain of yours, you look at the title, look at who posted it, and say to yourself, "I had too long of a day to read this dude's ramblings". I have been swept left, cast into the void of digital waste. Of all the meaningless stuff, the thing I poured my heart and soul into got discarded like the dating profile of a guy under 6ft tall.
There is enough content and suffering out there and you don't want to be part of that. Perfectly fair, if you don't have anything nice to say, you may sit out and this will be an honorable decision. The thing is, you have something genuine and nice to say if you make the necessary space for it to come out because that's how people tend to be. It is proper hard work indeed and life is often too hard for this stuff, we get depressed, overwhelmed, sad and betrayed, and struggling to stay above the water. Therefore, it is understandable if you cannot be bothered, but rest assured that if you put your ear to the ground and stay silent for a while, it will start coming to you.
Belief 3
3. People on the internet are savage and will rip me apart/I am afraid that what I am putting out there is kinda lame and I will get thrashed for it
We are getting into the scary stuff. Boy have I seen some ruthless comment sections. I will sooner count the grains of sand on Earth before the number of things that humans are capable of being upset about. In fact, if this obscure piece of text were to reach a sample audience of random 100 digital citizens, 30 will think I am a prick and at least 10 will express a desire for me to get hurt. That's how it works, we are a bunch of mean kids reliving our traumas and utilizing the face-saving nature of the internet. Que in all the research how people are more brutal online, say things they didn't mean, etc, etc.
But a bit of unnecessarily tough love is something that can be conducive to our growth. The merciless slant of a faceless stranger sometimes can do more good than all of your buddies telling you your startup idea rocks or your mom telling you you are a great artist. The practice of putting yourself out there, being vulnerable to people who do not deserve your vulnerability is something that can both make you stronger but also offer you feedback that you would not be able to get otherwise. Sharing content online is in fact one of the most painless and harmless ways to practice this because you can press two buttons and the putrid stream will cease to be. Remember, we chose not to be the professional content people? You can bail if things get too hot, no need for David Goggins crap and suffering through reading people telling you to jump off a bridge because your life does not depend on this stuff.
Belief 4
4. Nobody cares
And that's the beauty of it. This will come in another post because I like the story way more than I should and many readers I have already lost. Just picture me on a tropical beach screaming "Nobody cares" and laughing like a lunatic.
Whether you do something good or something bad, people will remember for 30 seconds and then move on with their lives. The indifference of people close and distant can deter you from sharing because nobody likes people not caring about their stuff. But at the same time, this is also one of the most liberating thoughts at our disposal. You can throw your stone in the well, shout against the mountains, and post your sloppy reel - somebody will think you are cringe and they will swipe toward the next thing. Your content and its impression are as impermanent as you, a faint fart in the ever-blowing wind of the universe.
Remember, you are doing it as much for you as for anyone else. It is your creation that you want to put out there, not to influence or impress or deliver from misery, you do it for the love of the game. I recently spent 30 minutes crafting a concerned message to the race directors of a trail running race that I found intriguing but had some serious gaps in its organization. I provided sound advice, did my best to be constructive and non-confrontational, and reviewed for typos and style. Sent them a page of good points in a private message so I don't put them on blast on their own page. I was a bit antsy that they will call me an asshole and try to get into some argument. The day passed, and they had seen the message, but did not reply and did not reply the next days either. I felt a strange relief from the futility of my exercise - they just did not care. But I did it for myself, as Walter White would say at the end of the series, and so are you. So go ahead and drop a stone of the well because nobody will give a damn.
Belief 5
5. But they actually do
In the past years, I developed a peculiar bitterness towards people due to their lack of desire to change. I had made some humble but significant improvements in my life and was very eager to spread the word, share the good, and let others copy my homework.
People didn't care though, they seemed interested, happy for me, but disinterested in trying out stuff, even though they were suffering according to their own testimony. "People just don't want to change", I lamented, frustrated I didn't become some guru overnight. I was annoyed and after a few more attempts, withdrew to myself and carried on following the best path, without trying to drag people along.
As any zen story would indicate, this is exactly when people started to follow suit. The less I tried to influence people, the more they happened to follow an example. I would learn about the silliest and most random things but they would stick more than the big stuff I was previously trying to push. It is much the same with content - the more you try to be an influencer, the more cringey you will be, and the more you share things for the love of the game, the more will people tune in to your station. Even if you only convince your burned-out friend to do the crazy hike you did or reveal the secrets of frozen burritos to your colleague, that's still two tiny things in the universe that happened in a better way, and who would not want that?
Let's wrap up
Boy, that's a whole wall of text right there. I hope you had a break to send that email to your boss and vacuum that gnarly carpet of yours. But I felt like there was no other way, this is the first thing I am putting out after jerking off for way too long. The next one will be more manageable, pinky promise.
If you somehow managed to get here or scrolled to the bottom for TLDR - post that draft that has been rotting for months. To all the thought criminals, word slingers, and historians de futuro, sharing is caring. Send over the 10-page blog post about how Lebron is the actual GOAT with evidence from quantum physics. I may tell you it sucks, but I will care.