{"id":6643,"date":"2016-07-22T07:39:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-22T12:39:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=6643"},"modified":"2016-07-22T07:39:15","modified_gmt":"2016-07-22T12:39:15","slug":"the-c-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2016\/07\/22\/the-c-word\/","title":{"rendered":"The C-Word"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6646\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/content.jpg\" alt=\"Guy at a computer\" width=\"800\" height=\"516\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/content.jpg 800w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/content-300x194.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/content-768x495.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/>A friend posted this on Twitter a couple days ago:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Advice for a better life: Never trust someone who calls vacation &#8220;vacay&#8221; or calls art &#8220;content&#8221;. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ProTip?src=hash\">#ProTip<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/ArtLife?src=hash\">#ArtLife<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 John Picacio (@JohnPicacio) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JohnPicacio\/status\/755733735882960897\">July 20, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been wanting to write this entry for awhile, so if you like it &#8212; thank John. If you hate it, well&#8230;like I said, I planned to write it for some time &#8212; so blame me.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The C-Word<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I can&#8217;t remember when I sat back and thought, &#8220;It&#8217;s insulting to the work I create to call it content.&#8221; (Probably about the time I faded away from a lot of social media meetups and conferences that all seemed like eating regurgitated fast food.)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been guilty of it in the past &#8212; calling things content &#8212; but I think the feel of <em>The Juggling Writer<\/em> changed when I gave what I do, here, more credit than being typical &#8220;10 Things&#8230;&#8221; lists and trying to &#8220;build a brand.&#8221; (Not the B-Word, too!)<\/p>\n<p>A short story is a short story, and a blog entry is a blog entry &#8212; or sometimes even what I&#8217;d call an article or essay.<\/p>\n<p>Content, though, is bait&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Content is chum&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6645\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/chum.jpg\" alt=\"Chum scene from Jaws: Your art when you call it content (&quot;Hope I catch some views with this crap!&quot;)\" width=\"800\" height=\"337\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/chum.jpg 800w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/chum-300x126.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/chum-768x324.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why it Matters (At Least to Me)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I get those who call their body of work online &#8220;Web content.&#8221; The thing is, so often that work is composed of things not created necessarily for the Web. Hell, sometimes people make things because &#8212; <em>get this<\/em> &#8212; it makes them happy.<\/p>\n<p>If <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nolumberjacks.com\">Not About Lumberjacks<\/a> never attracts a large following, I won&#8217;t care. (If it never develops even a vaguely mediocre following, I won&#8217;t care.) Same thing with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.meningorillasuits.com\">Men in Gorilla Suits<\/a> and even this blog. I put <a href=\"http:\/\/nolumberjacks.com\/the-other-side\/\">over 30 hours into this story<\/a>, and as much as I <a href=\"http:\/\/nolumberjacks.com\/standstill\/\">love the way this story turned out<\/a>, only 30 people have listened to it at the time of writing this. (Granted, some of that has to do with a Facebook break and not sharing it there, but even then, that&#8217;s maybe 15-20 more downloads.<\/p>\n<p><em>Men in Gorilla Suits<\/em> gets 300-600 downloads a month; <em>Not About Lumberjacks<\/em> gets about 125 unique downloads a month. If I viewed those shows as content, I&#8217;d have long ago stopped. As Web content, those numbers are not enough to monetize or do any of those things people into &#8220;content&#8221; dream about.<\/p>\n<p>In a time when so many people are doing the same thing online, I think it matters to do something you actually love and care about. Not because you saw someone driving a nice car say, &#8220;I got this with my content!&#8221; but because it&#8217;s the thing you&#8217;d do if no one listened, looked, or read.<\/p>\n<p>Because it&#8217;s the thing that makes you happy no matter what!<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The Content Problem<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been told I should ask my audience what I want and give it to them in order to increase my numbers of views and listens.<\/p>\n<p>A surefire way to produce &#8220;mediocre content,&#8221; is to ask the largest group what they want&#8230;and then give it to them.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a reason Applebee&#8217;s restaurants dot the American landscape: when you create for the masses, what they want is often the equivalent of a packaged meal cooked by someone else, served to them in a restaurant that feels familiar no matter where they are.<\/p>\n<p>If Applebee&#8217;s were art, it would be &#8220;content.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And hey, sometimes we all want to gorge ourselves on familiar things&#8230;even watch and listen to familiar things.<\/p>\n<p>But the art that&#8217;s lasted through the ages endures not because the artist tweeted about the same piece 15 times a day in the hope of getting page views or downloads. (In fact, I just removed a friend from a list on Twitter because I&#8217;ve grown tired of seeing the same three tweets [and nothing else] for the past week several times a day.) Actual art lasts because great care and love is put into it. (If you&#8217;re more concerned with your headline containing the right keywords, you&#8217;re probably not creating something worth my time.)<\/p>\n<p>The problem with &#8220;content&#8221; made for the sake of content is it all feels the same. Just like Applebee&#8217;s, there&#8217;s always another just down the road. I don&#8217;t know anyone who praises Applebee&#8217;s as a culinary delight&#8230;and I can&#8217;t think of something written or recorded online with the goal of &#8220;monetization&#8221; and views\/listens that&#8217;s not tasted like everything else before it.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_6651\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-6651\" style=\"width: 800px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6651\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/Fast-Food-4.jpg\" alt=\"Smooshed fast food sandwich\" width=\"800\" height=\"521\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/Fast-Food-4.jpg 800w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/Fast-Food-4-300x195.jpg 300w, http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-content\/upLoads\/Fast-Food-4-768x500.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-6651\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mmmm&#8230;Content Sammich!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A friend posted this on Twitter a couple days ago: Advice for a better life: Never trust someone who calls vacation &#8220;vacay&#8221; or calls art &#8220;content&#8221;. #ProTip #ArtLife \u2014 John Picacio (@JohnPicacio) July 20, 2016 I&#8217;ve been wanting to write this entry for awhile, so if you like it &#8212; thank John. If you hate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6643"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6654,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643\/revisions\/6654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}