I stopped calling myself a ‘content creator’ a year ago. It was the best decision I ever made for my sanity, my craft, and my relationship with the people I write for.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you: the moment you call what you make ‘content’, you’ve already lost the soul of it. The moment you call what you make ‘content’, you’ve already lost the soul of it. You’re no longer a writer, a filmmaker, or an artist. You’re a factory worker on an endless assembly line, pumping out units to be consumed and forgotten.
I used to burn out every three months. I’d stare at my analytics dashboard, watching the numbers go up and down, feeling like a hamster on a wheel. The more I produced, the emptier I felt. And then I realized: the problem wasn’t my output. It was the language I was using to describe it.
One reader commented on my original post: ‘For me, the term users sometimes sounds similar to traffic. I prefer customers – that you serve with your product.’ That’s exactly right — but even ‘customer’ is a trap. You can’t serve a customer if you’re still thinking of them as a unit of consumption. You can’t scale a relationship. You can only scale a product.
Another reader pushed back: ‘I feel that all the terms mentioned are useful in specific contexts. Web traffic brings visitors to your resource. If they read your blog, they become readers. If they use your products, they become users. When someone buys something from you, they become a customer.’ That’s true — but only if you’re honest about which context you’re operating in. The problem is that the ‘content’ mindset has colonized every context. We treat everything as a traffic-generating asset, even the things we build for love.
Let me be blunt: neutrality is death. I’m picking a side. I’m picking the side of writing over content, of readers over users, of craft over commodity. And I’m inviting you to do the same.
Here’s the twist: changing the words alone isn’t enough. If you swap ‘content’ for ‘writing’ but still measure success by page views and ad revenue, you’re just putting lipstick on a pig. The real transformation happens when you ask: what would I create if nobody was watching? If the metric was connection, not consumption? If the goal was a conversation, not a conversion?
I’ve been writing for a year without the ‘content’ label. My audience is smaller. My income is less predictable. But I wake up excited to write, not dreading the next deadline. I read my comments and feel seen, not used. I produce less, but what I produce matters more.
So stop calling yourself a content creator. Call yourself a writer, a maker, a storyteller, a teacher. Call yourself anything that reminds you that what you do is human, not industrial. The web doesn’t need more content. It needs more of you.
FAQ
Q: What's the harm in using the word 'content'? It's just a term.
A: The word 'content' reduces everything to a commodity, interchangeable and disposable. It changes how you create, how you value your work, and how you treat your audience. Calling your writing 'content' is the first step toward treating it like fast food.
Q: What's the practical implication for someone who makes a living creating online?
A: Stop using the word 'content' to describe what you do. Start using 'writing', 'video', 'podcast', 'art'. It's a small shift that forces you to think about quality, intention, and relationship with your audience instead of volume and metrics.
Q: Isn't this just semantic nitpicking? What's the contrarian take?
A: Words shape reality. The language industries use to describe their work determines the systems they build. If you think changing 'users' to 'customers' or 'content' to 'writing' is just a rebrand, you're missing the point. The real problem is the business model that treats attention as a raw material. But renaming is a start — it forces you to ask: am I creating something I'm proud of, or just filling a slot in a feed?