The End of Content

And why non-fiction will be replaced once again by good stories

Content has ten more years before it will disappear to whence it came — the charcoal thorax of all the voices given expression by the internet.

There is a staunch reason why fiction makes us wiser than factual texts and psychology — it embalms our emotions, teaches us empathy, and centralizes us as the agents of our fates.

Research has time and again shown us that facts such as studies, character improvement, news, and most how-tos, stick for a short while, and then they exit through the other ear.

Humans love to feel productive and useful and one of the ways to quickly feel this way is to read about productivity and utility. It is essentially a high-jacking of the evolutionarily crucial trait to be of acute use to the tribe.

But fact searching, such as self-help or material deemed “content”, have taken on a masturbatory dimension. Instead of making us actually useful, they are just making us feel useful, through the dopaminergic pathways which are fast-acting and leave us craving for more.

Facts have favored humanity in the realm of thinking, often mechanistic and evidence-based, and the disfavor of rampant search for certainty. Stories, on the other hand, have always left people with awe. Aspark with a desire to create our own stories, we have traditionally set out on paths of creation and purpose. Naturally, there are ways to make of facts stories, and this is what many scientists do, and how they are inspired.

Nowadays, the internet has given everyone a platform. Everyone is screeching from their pads about… well, what?

Self-help, and content. The latter, especially, is a fascinating phenomenon.

Content began as a determinant of something that is worth divulging to the public sphere. Essentially, content is a scoop — something that is sure to trigger the interest of an audience.

Do you know another thing that is sure to trigger the interest of an audience?

Porn.

Porn means meritless display.

It means the thrusting of organs in and out of stations of pleasure. What serves as a function — intimacy and procreation — is turned into a placating sideshow. Only, it is the main show today.

With the acceleration of bandwidth and data, the content will however implode on itself. Already today are we see that most of us are centrifugal about our writing or Instagramming, meaning we express before we impress. The centripetal actions of taking in, being inspired, contemplating, and pausing are actions of impression. Wherever i impression is engaged, it is often for the sake of gathering more targets for expression, or centrifugal action. Such a system must inevitably collapse. Content is in itself contentless. Stories are not.

The expressing over impressing isn’t strange nor should anyone be blamed. After all, the data overload of today is hellacious, and the input must be vented. Soon, however, it will be back to realistic fiction.

What is the point of fiction, if it isn’t real?

The point of fiction is that it distills not truth but the feelings about it. Then it churns it into readily worded texts which transmit those feelings to the private, pictureless domains of individual life. No fiction can ever be duplicated in two minds — non-fiction, however, is much more likely to be conformist in this sense.

Fiction teaches us that life is to be lived through instinct and adventure. Adventure is what happens when clutching for certainty is abandoned. Non-fiction such as self-help, psychology, news, and crypto stories are the exact opposite because they make us clutch to certainty, and toughen against what we are supposed to soften before.

Life mustn’t be lived through the head, and these times are excellent testimony to this fact.