Paul Chan:

Sometime during the mid-2010s, I noticed photographers, videographers, and artists of all kinds referring to what they made as “content,” as opposed to photos, videos, or art. The case was the same with writers: Blog posts, essays, and articles were lumped together and called content. The term “content creator” also appeared, which further collapsed distinctions among writers, artists, and performers. In 2023, for the first time, I heard a representative from the entertainment industry rebrand it as the “content industry.”

As I understand it today, content is a type of expression that doesn’t rely on concepts like “quality” or “meaning” to differentiate itself. The way content stands apart — which is to say its primary appeal — is that it can be created at scale. The more of it, or of its kind, the better.

Content is tailor-made for a sense of immediacy. This means content is best — is most itself — when it’s fresh, when it belongs to the here-and-now. It also doesn’t, or shouldn’t, take much, if any, time to grasp the substance of content. In other words, content is expression explicitly for the moment, created by who or what wishes to define that moment.