Sex Workers, Content Writers And The Pursuit of Wonga
Wiggle it with pride, babe
God bless Disney for taking life’s realities and dipping them in sugar.
You get sold a hotel room with Julia Roberts playing a Pretty Woman with a gorgeous red mane tucked under an equally gorgeous blonde wig. You get delivered something else.
By “you” I mean my colleague, George, at the company do.
The company do was our compensation for spending the day in a PowerPoint-induced coma. They threw us a glittery party with overnight stay at a swanky London hotel with all sundries included at no charge, even the room minibar.
George went out for a vape and came in with a mysterious pretty woman draped over him. A few minutes on the dance floor and off they slithered. Nobody saw him again until breakfast the next morning when he emerged to tell us all about it.
Long story short, (long version is horrible, trust me), he’d gone upstairs with his lady and as things were getting steamy, she’d got hot and whipped off her wig.
Bald underneath.
On a scale of 1980’s Sinead O’Connor to current day Jada Pinkett Smith, she came in at Elmer Fudd. He said.
Once the padding and the “hold-it-in” gear came off, he had to ask her to confirm she was a woman.
I’ve been a bit under the weather lately
Up until a few days ago I’d happily resisted the need to consult Dr Google.
My GP has been great and got me onto the NHS conveyor belt quickly for all the various tests and things. But there’s a bit of time between now and when my appointment comes up, so I did a few searches to learn how to manage my symptoms.
And you know what?
Every time I click a good looking title, it takes its wig off and it’s always George’s lady underneath, never Julia Roberts.
All these articles are regurgitating the same words in the same super-breezy tofu-and-yoga tone of voice. How — so not — super awesome is that!
It’s like all these health and lifestyle websites buy the same crud from the same writers. People who are shit-hot on SEO and precious little else.
Maybe I’m delirious in my weakened state, but I reckon Google are letting content writers kill their front page so people click on sponsored links instead.
Writing gurus have mucked into the drinking water
My niece recently signed on to a content marketing course, paying around $2000 for some self-proclaimed blogging maestro to teach her the secret of online writing success… this marvelous thing called The Skyscraper Method.
Here is the Skyscraper method in a nutshell:
- Pick a keyword or phrase and search for it
- Skim through the top ten results (excluding the sponsored ones) and take a note of all the things they’re talking about
- Write a new article that includes all this but is much longer and stuffed with all their keywords too— but get around plagiarism by… err… well, bunging ten articles into one and changing the order of shite, I suppose
They call it Skyscraper because it ends up a big bastard. But really, it’s just scraping. Scraping words, scraping ideas, scraping the bottom of the barrel.
I told my niece to get her money back and go on a proper writing course, preferably journalism related, where they teach her to think for herself and how to do research that doesn’t stop at lazy-arseing off of Google’s Top Ten.
People go to search engines to find some good information. What Google provides these days is a street corner where everyone’s hustling the same mass-produced crap.
Content writing gurus have sucked the spirit out of writing. They’re teaching people to game the system.
And so many websites are just kerb-crawling for writers they can hustle by the hour or the word. They don’t care about the litter they’re chucking out on to the internet, they just care about nice fresh content that games the system by making out their website is so important because it’s ever-changing.
Writers like knocking words together and they have bills to pay. Why wouldn’t they do it?
But, dear content writers, when a reader like me comes knocking on your title, don’t whip off your wig and give me Elmer Fudd.
Have pride in yourself.
Be Julia Roberts.
You know what, dear websites? People aren’t looking for content. They’re looking for information and perspectives from real creative thinkers who know how to set words down.
SEO does not make a writer.
Content does not make a writer.
Original thoughts and an environment that nurtures and rewards creativity makes a writer.
Stop filling the front page of Google with crud. Do something everyone else isn’t doing. Have some pride.
If you enjoyed this, you can buy me a cup of coffee and make me smile ❤️ (cos I’ll turn it to wine)