Tweets, Updates, and Memes, oh my

I have curated content for newsletters for many years now, and I am seeing a trend. There is a lack of content being generated. This is not a ‘get off my lawn’ rant. This is a full-on ‘you should float down this stream of consciousness with me’ idea. 

Earlier today I was playing a game, the topic was ‘things you read’, I think ‘newspaper’ - the newspaper was not an option. We don’t really read newspapers anymore. Everything is fed to us via updates and updates to updates. Later on, I am researching items to curate for a client, when all I find on my topics are press releases. I don’t dislike press releases, they serve a purpose. But for the life of me, I could not find good original content.

 We are microblogging (tweets) instead of writing articles. We have preferred Instagram to Facebook. Can’t think of content - throw a quote on a graphic, post it and call it good (I am so guilty of this one) How may ‘articles’ have you read that is nothing more than the round-up of a tweet thread or Facebook comments? Way too many ‘writers’ are posting pictures of a tweet, describing the content of the tweet and calling it content.

 Where are the new and original ideas? Where are the thoughts and quality analysis with actual research to back it up? Are we too afraid of offending someone that we no longer create something interesting and thought-provoking? (oh screw that and get off my lawn)

 I’ve seen a lot about simplifying our lives a lot recently, not a new idea (Thoreau anyone?). But I think we are going to see a backlash to all of the drips and drabs of information and have had thrown at us in the last 5 years or so. We are going to see a trend towards Marie Kondo-ing that crap and grabbing what brings us joy and sinking our teeth into it.

 This is not a generational thing. Not a Mellinials have no attention span thing. We will all binge-watch a good TV series. Super successful YouTuber Shane Dawson has stopped making frequent 15-minute videos and replaced them with long-form hour-long interview videos which he releases every few months and they get millions of views.

 It’s time to slow down, embrace your organic, artisanal thoughts and ideas and present them to the world as quality content.