I hate when people use this word to describe everything they watch

Summary

‘Content’ is about taking up your available screens and free time.
The word diminishes intentional and creative work done by professionals.
Streaming services champion quantity over quality and rush to put out more titles.

As streaming services continue to thrive, filling endless carousels with shows, movies, documentaries, miniseries, specials, live events, and all kinds of other entertainment, there is a catch-all word used to describe what you’re watching: content. It has popped up as an easier way to describe what’s being enjoyed in the media, in part because it seems cumbersome to say “movies and TV shows and series and etc.,” but use of the word also represents a larger cultural battle going on in the entertainment industry with streaming services front and center.

The word, however convenient and common, has a lot of questionable implications, especially as it’s being wielded by Netflix and others. And perhaps using it, as I am often guilty of, points to a bigger problem. Here’s why I’m starting to push back against the word content.

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Content is all about filler

Scroll and search for the next in the queue

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Perhaps there was once a positive implication in the word ‘content,’ but after more than a decade of streaming service dominance, audiences are starting to understand what it really means: filler. Content is filling up every streaming service, with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and many others looking to pack their catalog with an infinite amount of entertainment, from originals to international purchases, docuseries to reality competition shows, limited series to long-running sitcoms. Disney+ and Apple TV+ are just over five years old, but they’ve both amassed a big catalog in a short time.

In that way, content is sort of an insult to the viewer. It implies each service has little regard for the viewer’s taste or intellect, and sees all the programs it puts out as ways to keep audiences busy. Of course, that’s the goal behind populating myriad, strangely-named carousels on any given app, but using the word content really emphasizes the consumption part of the consumer. Services are here to fill you up so that you can’t do anything else, like notice that after destroying the cable model, the visionaries at the top of these companies are simply recreating the cable model. Or notice that these on-demand blockbusters are little more than AI-slop.

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The word diminishes art and work

Content trivializes elaborate, creative projects

By lumping every type of thing that you watch, from live specials to your favorite K-drama, from sporting events to big action blockbusters, you end up diminishing each individual thing you put on screen. There are a wide range of genres and telecasts and productions and styles and countries making stories that, to call it all content, can’t help but be reductive.

You don’t even need to jump across streamers to realize how strange this word is. On Netflix, you can watch live wrestling, Oscar-nominated movies, salacious reality dating shows, and foreign-language limited dramatic series. I suppose they are all content, but they are very different kinds and serve very different purposes. Just because they are all found on the same platform doesn’t mean they’re all the same thing.

By piling everything together in this one category and calling it all content, you can end up ignoring the art, creativity, and passion that goes into many of these works. And you risk dehumanizing the professionals behind the scenes and in front of the camera. It’s hard to think that both Stranger Things and Temptation Island on Netflix should be under the same umbrella, or Andor and The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives under Disney’s watch. Or even Mr. and Mrs. Smith and G20 on Amazon Prime. Or any Apple movie compared to any Apple TV show beginning with the letter ‘S.’ Not all of these titles are created equally.

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Content is all about constant delivery

Titles keep on coming without delay

Content carries with it a lot of connotations, and one of those, as savvy viewers have come to discover, is that content is more about quantity than quality. It’s about getting as much out there as possible, almost as if to overwhelm you. There is always something else to watch, another title in the lineup that you have to get to. Meanwhile, your watchlist will continue to grow because every time you’re ready to knock off another title from it, there are two new ones that have just dropped that you also want to watch. And instead of going back in time to catch up on something, the instinct is to watch the new and hot title that everything else is watching.

Content ends up being about keeping you occupied. There is always something else to watch, and there is always more coming. You’re not happily satisfying, just momentarily sated, and then you get on to the next thing.

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Everything on screen is content

What does the word even mean?

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This word is even more problematic when you realize social media videos are also lumped under content. Instagram posts and TikTok videos fall under the term, as sometimes even blog posts and SEO-driven articles all across the Internet can be called content as well. Everything is content, and it’s all there to occupy your time, instead of really satisfying your time.

If everything is content, then the word ceases to have any meaning. If everything is content, then nothing is. There is a risk of just piling everything with imagery, video, or audio, or really anything that ends up on a screen, into the same singular word. There should be words to differentiate style and quality, type and genre. It just doesn’t make sense to call someone on Instagram with 500 followers a “content creator” and then turn around and call a new prestige limited series built on years of work by hundreds of people on Netflix content as well.

I am definitely guilty of too-often using the word content. It is indeed just easier and more convenient than any alternative, but in doing so, I am normalizing the reduction and dismissive nature of the word. I am going to try to stop, and I think you should too.