Hello, Dear Reader,
Are you workin' hard or hardly workin'?
Hopefully, you're doing well. But if not, as they say, "it is what it is."
It's far too easy to come up with content these days, which nearly literally says nothing. If anything, the substance is lacking. This is maximized with the use of AI, which repeats the poor writing skills of the average email user and duplicates them in seconds. It's time we do our part to cull the fodder.
Hear my plea. Normalize not saying things when saying is as good as not saying.
If you listen or read closely, you can see that 89.46% of the things people say have little to no substance, don't serve a purpose, and don't add value to anyone who reads, watches, or listens to them.*
(Except to fill an open spot in a newsfeed.)
That's why we call it "content". Because it's the most generic word we could come up with to describe information for which a specific, specialized, interesting, or insightful word does not apply. Sometimes, even the words in a sentence don't actually complete a coherent thought, if you want to get technical, but we post them anyway. It sounds great to refer to something as a paradigm shift, but if there was no paradigm to begin with, is it really shifting?
Resonate. Engagement. Synergy. Disruption. Scale. Agile. Authentic. These are all words that are abused, like salt, oils, and emulsifiers in a Twinkie. Seems like a good snack, but it gets you nowhere.
How about "Founded on a passion for creativity," or "We don't just think outside the box — we reimagine it entirely," or "We believe in impact"<— these are either meaningless or a lie. It's the ultra-processed foods of copy. Those things that have novelty, subtance and add value to an audience are much harder to come by, but are much better for us all.
That's why I think most of the time, when you are thinking about posting something, the best possible thing you could do is not post it at all. You may convey the same message anyway.
The internet is already sufficiently nourished with empty calorie content. We need something more meaty.
