When Content Dies, All We’ll Have is Our Personal Narratives

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ame of everyone we sent this to),</p></blockquote><blockquote id="bb63"><p>I saw your story, (insert title that you obsessed about that they will want to “adjust”), and I really liked it. We’d like to run a version of it, or just the whole thing that you already wrote somewhere else, in our publication.</p></blockquote><blockquote id="1ffe"><p>We get (insert fake numbers) views per day and can help grow your writing career. We can’t pay you and we don’t want to “hire” you to write something new, we just want something you’ve already published and we want to publish it again, exactly the same, in our online magazine which gets less views than Medium. Sound good?</p></blockquote><p id="d98d">Actually, no. It doesn’t sound good. At least not to me. I don’t want to multi-spray my same words all over the Internet in the hope that one piece of the whole goes viral. I just want to get back to writing. And I want to be wanted for my writing. So if they like our work so much, why aren’t they asking us to write something new?</p><p id="13a4">Because so many of those sites have no new content. It’s all grabbed and pieced together like a wordy Frankenstein on a screen that looks eerily similar to the same screen we already published those same words on.</p><p id="b931">That’s why content is finite. Especially when no one is even trying anymore. They are hiring people at their websites to look on other websites to find stories to put on their websites from other websites. Literary cannibalism.</p><figure id="392e"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/0*ip35oh9MzgwVwweg"><figcaption>Photo by <a href="https://unsplash.com/@steve_j?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral">Steve Johnson</a> on <a href="https://unsplash.com?utm_source=medium&utm_medium=referral">Unsplash</a></figcaption></figure><h1 id="15a1">When Content Dies</h1><p id="a4dc">There will be no eulogy because content will not be missed. We will have read it all over and over again and the last thing we will want at the funeral is another regurgitated version of the same story that’s been ringing in our ears for years.</p><p id="451e">The only thing we’ll have left is our personal narratives. And the only thing that will survive the content fire will be the same. Us. Our stories. They are irreplaceable. We are irreplaceable. But not when all we do is headline analyze and b

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ite into the lowest hanging fruit available just to get two more followers to add to our collection which will be worth about as much as my daughter’s old collection of Littlest Pet Shop pets.</p><p id="a74d">When content dies, will we regain our ability to read for pleasure online? Or will we sit, despondent and hampered, because we are missing the stories about how to make our life better, even when we were never going to take the steps to do it anyway?</p><p id="5a3a">Personally, I look forward to the day that content dies. All it’s done is taken our eyes and brains away from what’s right in front of us. Life. We don’t need another primer on <a href="https://www.trustgreene.com/blog/2019/4/11/im-perfect-and-this-is-my-morning-routine">morning routines</a>. We need to step back into our lives again. Because that’s where our personal narratives are. And soon, that’s all there will be left to talk about.</p><p id="67ed">If you liked this, you might like this as well:</p><div id="7c7c" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/the-content-of-content-7efb7367f04d"> <div> <div> <h2>The Content of Content</h2> <div><h3>The Death of Original Thought</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*KUhtTOfrR-D-zmEL)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div><p id="9982">P.S. Whenever I write one of these pieces, I am always inspired by <a href="undefined">Kitty Hannah Eden</a> and her unwavering support of real writing and journalism as a way back to a better society. Read one of her stories below and you will find our commonalities:</p><div id="9bc9" class="link-block"> <a href="https://readmedium.com/what-matters-to-us-5f3f942db405"> <div> <div> <h2>What Matters to us?</h2> <div><h3>A plea for intellectually engaged writing</h3></div> <div><p>medium.com</p></div> </div> <div> <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/1*XKVTijTVmkcFq4fVM3d4tw.jpeg)"></div> </div> </div> </a> </div></article></body>

On the Hellscape of Duplicitous Storylines

You hear it all the time, content is king. But is it? Or is that just another pile of vomitous clickbait being sprayed all over an audience of Gallagher fans who are excited, but also mildly perturbed that they sat in the front row? Are we all sitting in the front row of this content stream just sipping it like Country Time Lemonade on a warm summer day?

Content is perceived to be everlasting, but the truth is — it’s not. Content is finite. Stories are everlasting. And when content dies, all we’ll have is our personal narratives. The real question is, as a writer, will you have any yarn to spin when content passes away? Or will your mind have deadened to the point of abject failure by the insane need to be seen and heard by using headline analyzers to determine how strong your words are?

Almost everything we read that isn’t a personal narrative, current affairs op-ed, or fiction, we’ve read before. Almost every story on Medium that is formatted listimatically has been written before. Over and over into the void of our hopeful eyes, hoping to get that one lifehack that takes us from zero to hero, without doing any actual work.

Does it ever bother you? This hellscape of duplicitous storylines. The neverending feed of all things you have read before, but with a new twist. And that twist being a reference from another author. Our words are eating each other and spitting them back out into a properly formatted listicle or long-form think piece on someone else’s long-form think piece. We are literary cannibals.

How many times have you opened a story on Medium just to say to yourself, “I’ve read this before. Thirteeen times.” And what about how digital publishing works these days for websites? Have you ever gotten one of these emails or private notes?

Hey (insert name of everyone we sent this to),

I saw your story, (insert title that you obsessed about that they will want to “adjust”), and I really liked it. We’d like to run a version of it, or just the whole thing that you already wrote somewhere else, in our publication.

We get (insert fake numbers) views per day and can help grow your writing career. We can’t pay you and we don’t want to “hire” you to write something new, we just want something you’ve already published and we want to publish it again, exactly the same, in our online magazine which gets less views than Medium. Sound good?

Actually, no. It doesn’t sound good. At least not to me. I don’t want to multi-spray my same words all over the Internet in the hope that one piece of the whole goes viral. I just want to get back to writing. And I want to be wanted for my writing. So if they like our work so much, why aren’t they asking us to write something new?

Because so many of those sites have no new content. It’s all grabbed and pieced together like a wordy Frankenstein on a screen that looks eerily similar to the same screen we already published those same words on.

That’s why content is finite. Especially when no one is even trying anymore. They are hiring people at their websites to look on other websites to find stories to put on their websites from other websites. Literary cannibalism.

When Content Dies

There will be no eulogy because content will not be missed. We will have read it all over and over again and the last thing we will want at the funeral is another regurgitated version of the same story that’s been ringing in our ears for years.

The only thing we’ll have left is our personal narratives. And the only thing that will survive the content fire will be the same. Us. Our stories. They are irreplaceable. We are irreplaceable. But not when all we do is headline analyze and bite into the lowest hanging fruit available just to get two more followers to add to our collection which will be worth about as much as my daughter’s old collection of Littlest Pet Shop pets.

When content dies, will we regain our ability to read for pleasure online? Or will we sit, despondent and hampered, because we are missing the stories about how to make our life better, even when we were never going to take the steps to do it anyway?

Personally, I look forward to the day that content dies. All it’s done is taken our eyes and brains away from what’s right in front of us. Life. We don’t need another primer on morning routines. We need to step back into our lives again. Because that’s where our personal narratives are. And soon, that’s all there will be left to talk about.

If you liked this, you might like this as well:

P.S. Whenever I write one of these pieces, I am always inspired by Kitty Hannah Eden and her unwavering support of real writing and journalism as a way back to a better society. Read one of her stories below and you will find our commonalities: