Just when I thought that I’d never have to do one of these ever again.
It’s been over a year since our friend MG has committed an act of textual assault (or at least since I’ve noticed). I’d begun to think he’d been reformed, and that perhaps he’d turned over a few new leaves, as opposed to “leafs”. But now, in writing Fast Break: As Of Last Week, Many At Sprint Thought They Were Merging With T-Mobile, MG Siegler has begun to slip back into his old, dark ways — the man he once was coming back to haunt him, reclaiming his soul.
I’m talking, of course, about this atrocity of a first paragraph:
This morning’s bombshell news that AT&T would be buying T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion has left a lot of questions. T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? AT&T customers want to know what it means for them? Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them? T-Mobile and AT&T have started addressing those already. One thing not addressed yet: what does this mean for Sprint, the nation’s third-largest carrier?
No, MG, this morning’s news doesn’t leave a lot of questions. You do, starting with your second sentence.
“T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them?”
I’m not sure, MG, do T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them? You’re the one writing the article, not me.
“AT&T customers want to know what it means for them?”
Or, are these rhetorical questions, MG? Are you expressing shock and disbelief at the fact that AT&T customers want to know what this merger means for them?
“Would-be iPhone buyers want to know what it means for them?”
Oh, no, I get it, MG; it’s not that at all. You just don’t know how to use a question mark.
Really, MG? A question mark? I can understand a semicolon or an em dash — they’re not usually taught in second grade or anything — but a question mark? You don’t know that it’s supposed to be used on questions that you, the writer, are asking, as opposed to simple sentences that are about questions? If you’re making a statement that “T-Mobile customers want to know what it means for them,” then shouldn’t you be using a period? Why do I have to explain this to you? Is it really that difficult to understand? Do you just like using question marks? If that’s the case, there are all sorts of ways to write a sentence which calls for a question mark at the end, so why waste the opportunity on something horribly, horribly wrong?
MG quickly recovers, using a colon properly in the final sentence of the paragraph, and continuing for the rest of the article with no readability-compromising errors. But the resurgence of his former tendencies concern and frighten me, and I recommend that we keep a close eye on him. MG is our friend, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that I hate seeing him like this.
This is Not Content; This is a Blog Post
This is not content; this is a blog post.
You are not consuming this blog post. It is not being depleted by you so that it will never be available to anyone ever again. Instead, perhaps you are reading it on a large computer screen. Perhaps you’re reading it on a laptop, large or small, sitting on a desk or in your lap. Perhaps you’re reading it on the screen of a tablet computer, or on the small screen of a cellphone. Perhaps it’s been printed out onto paper, maybe a plain letter sheet, or onto the glossy pages of a magazine, and you’re reading it off that. Perhaps you’re reading it aloud to a group of people, or perhaps you’re in that group of people, having it read aloud to you. But whatever you’re doing as these words enter your brain, you’re most certainly not consuming any content.
There is no such thing as content. There is no content industry full of content creators who create consumable content for content consumers. Instead, there is a diverse field of people, young and old, amateur and professional, communicating and manifesting ideas and information using a wide variety of methods and techniques. The end products of these efforts may be in the form of text, imagery, sound, or interactive experience, but none can be categorized as a generic, consumable commodity known as “content.”
If you are an artist, you are not a content creator. Perhaps you’re a painter, a musician, a filmmaker, a novelist, a comedian, a dramatist, a playwright, a game designer, a sculptor, a photographer, an animator, a puppeteer, a poet, or perhaps you’re a combination of all these things and more, but you do not create content. You make art.
If you are a journalist, you are not a content creator. You may report your stories through written words, through spoken words, through pictures, through video footage, through motion graphics, or a fusion of all these media, but you do not create content. You do journalism.
If you are an entertainer, you are not a content creator. You may entertain by telling a story, by doing a dance, by making people laugh, or by recording your conversations with fascinating people, but whether you broadcast this entertaining act with pictures, sound, or anything else, you do not create content. You do entertainment.
If you are an educator, you are not a content creator. You may write informative articles for an encyclopedia, deliver an enlightening speech to an eager audience, or create a presentation with charts and graphics, but however it is that you communicate your knowledge, you do not create content. You teach lessons.
All of these things are expressions of human thought, and yet rather than respecting their nuances, their diversity, and their individual importance, we marginalize them with our language, relegating all of what makes us unique as human beings to the generic, soulless, meaningless, newspeak descriptor of “content,” and their authors to a status of “content creators”. Yet, we do not refer to architects, carpenters, industrial designers, and the forces of nature themselves as “object creators”, and rarely, if ever, do we collectively refer to the results of their efforts as “objects”.
If you are a maker of things, a disseminator of knowledge, or anyone who contributes to the collective intellectual output of human beings, do not accept the notion that your work is less significant than a house, a chair, a piece of electronic equipment, or a rock. Do not allow yourself to be labeled as a mere “content creator.” Have more dignity than that.
To the extent possible under law, Zacqary Adam Green has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to This is Not Content; This is a Blog Post.
This work is published from: United States.