“Content” means a lot of things and they are created by professionals and amateurs alike. The professionals create books, magazines, courses, movies, TV shows, music, and so on. The amateurs take photos, write Blog Posts, make music, and such. They then make this content available through channels such as emails, text-messages, social media posts, and occasionally, even phone calls. What gets distributed is not necessarily original. More often than not, it is someone else’s content that is forwarded.
I feel that there is an imbalance between the amount of content that is being created and served, and what a person can consume.
It is a recipe for creating content indigestion.
Just see FaceBook (if you are a member). For me, on any typical day, there are posts from at least a dozen friends from all over the world, each making 20-30 photos available for visual consumption. Then there are emails. I probably receive at least a hundred of them. Most are useless but, many not so and would be interesting to read. Include to this mix of content I get, text messages and group chats from people all around the world. May be hundred or more, and some with “must see” and “must read” attachments.
This is just the “amateur” side of content that I receive. if I include the professional content, the glut is staggering. There are hundreds of channels and the number of TV shows and movies you can see, is simply mind boggling. Add to these, books and courses on every subject conceivable. I am not into watching sports, but it seems there is no end to how much time you can spend watching that form of content.
Then there is the fact that my attention span for consuming content is reducing, thanks to instant gratification I have come to except from my electronic friends, such as the iPhone. The result, I cannot consume what is being offered and feel guilty if it is from a friend or family member with the “must see” of “must read” message attached to it. I have FOMO---the fear of missing out. I must be missing something important or interesting in the content that I skip.
Besides being a consumer, I am also a producer of content. Yes, I am as guilty as the others in posting pictures on FaceBook. Although, I am not much into forwarding content, I do that too sometimes. I write a monthly Blog and produce content for that. I participate in group emails and texts. As a producer of content, I feel that my stuff is not getting as much attention as it deserves. My “brilliant” Blog Posts get hardly any traffic.
From a personal standpoint I need to manage content indigestion in several ways:
· As a creator of content, I have to assume that most satisfaction I will get is in creating the content, not in getting accolades from others for what I have created. I need to let go of my ego that is tied to receiving “likes” and “faves”.
· As consumer of the content, I should not feel that I am missing out on something in the content I don’t consume, whether served by a friend/family member or a professional.
I think we are still in the beginning phase of content imbalance. We will need to take action to ensure that content indigestion does not become content constipation ;-)
Now, I hope that at least someone will read this . If not, I had fun writing it.
