Consuming Content

The two really offensive C words

D’you know what, I don’t consider myself a consumer. And, wait, I also don’t consider myself a ‘content creator.’

Crazy, I know, career ending statement, definitely, but both those words make my skin crawl.

I know I eat, I wear clothes, I drive cars, I catch trains, I buy books, but I don’t ‘consume’ those things. I live a life, I have experiences, I share my time with others, I love people, none of those activities require any form of consumption so anyone who calls me a consumer is heading for a fat lip.

Okay, I would never resort to violence, that is a theoretical fat lip obviously. All the things I’ve mentioned are generally a two way experiences, I might watch a film, a theatrical production or a TV show, but my experience isn’t a bland act of consumption. I am engaged in the process, indeed as a member of an audience I am part of the process.

The vile term consumer has always bugged me, but there was some corporate drone-loser-pillock on the radio this morning yabbering on about ‘the consumer’ and it riled me enough to scrawl this.

I admit, I recently used the term ‘B to C in a conversation. I still feel icky 3 weeks later. (business to consumer) eeeeeuuuuuw

Why, why do these unthinking wankers use such terrible, reductive terms? The consumer is, I assume, meant to mean us, everyone outside the corporate baord room. It’s also the preceeding ‘the.

The consumer. It’s like the popular term used in the 1970’s which was meant to encompass everyone who ever bought food.

The housewife.

Seriously, that was used as commonly as the consumer for decades. Thankfully enough women got into marketing to kick that unspeakably dumb, sexist term into the mire. The housewife. Really, it was constantly used in every report about inflation, the price of eggs, anything to do with food shopping.

Only the most ignorant, loser prick man with longer hair, longer collars and a fat knotted brightly coloured tie could come up with that as an acceptable marketing term.

So as consumers I suppose we just stumble about like zombie drones consuming things.

A consumer from the mid 19th century

Why can’t we use a term like ‘people?’

Instead of ‘we know the consumer is worried about the current cost of living crisis.’

What about, ‘we know people are worried about the current cost of living crisis.’

Consumer is such an offensive term for all of us, it’s derisory, the people who use it do so to protect themselves from the impact their product, service or con job, or probably all three.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s the even more offensive term that has arisen alongside the technological developments of streaming video.

Content.

What the living frick does that mean? Content. It’s the same repugnant mindset that came up with the tosser’s term consumer, someone makes content, you have to then sit down and consume that content, but really it’s just the stuff that goes between the commercials to make you buy more consumables.

A proper corporate content producer stock image.

Effing Geoffrey Chaucer was a content producer, Tolstoy, content, Willy Wagga-Dagga (Australian for Shakespeare) was an effing content producer. Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge, just more dull old content.

No, shut up, that’s all it is. It’s not a play, a poem, an opera, a book, a story, a documentary. It’s not allowing us to share our experiences, our stories, it’s not trying to understand why we’re here and what we are supposed to do with our lives.

No no. It’s all just content. The grey sludge that needs to run between adverts. Vile, unforgivable takeover of our language and through that, our thinking. We need to fight back, hard, long and passionate. We are people, not effing consumers, we are citizens, not effing customers. We ;ike to watch stories, we don’t consume them and shit them out.

So the next time you are in a meeting or a discussion of any kind, and anyone uses the words consumer or content, can you advise them that they sound like really weak tossers and no one likes them.

Thanks

Toodle pip