This question is rhetorical. Most people will probably associate “content creator” with “Youtuber”. Sounds rather innocuous, right? Youtubers make videos, which is “content”, after all.
Defining a “content creator”
But if you search for a few resources about what a content creator is, it isn’t just limited to making videos. Let’s use some fairly “trustworthy” sources as an example.
Give these a read if you’re interested. I’ll summarize the main points below. The gist is:
- A content creator makes some kind of “stuff” that is publicly accessible
- Examples of “stuff” are:
- Videos
- Blogs
- Graphics and images
- Tiktoks (I guess this isn’t video)
- Podcasts
- e-books
The full list of stuff that counts as “content” is longer than what I’ve summarized. So basically, a “content creator” is just someone who make something and has it available for others to see, most often through digital mediums.
Ok, is there anything wrong with this? I personally think so.
So am I a content creator?
I guess? Technically yes, I write blog posts and publicly make them accessible. It’s not monetized, but blog posts are still “stuff” in a digital medium. So I would be a “content creator” according to the definition above.
But I’m not; I don’t identify as one. I’d prefer the word “blogger”, even though I wouldn’t call myself that either. Is a digital artist drawing on Pixiv a “content creator”? Technically yes. But there’s already a better word to describe what they do: artist.
Would I call the works of a musician or video producer “content”?
No, I call them music and video.
I think calling their creation “content” is disrespectful and overgeneralizes the actual work.
Same with e-book authors, even social media managers.
There are already dedicated words to each of these jobs,
and you can generalize by using the format
* producer, where * is the type of work that is produced.
“Content creator” is too general
This term was probably made to generalize “digital media” into a single term. I’m almost certain there was no condescending meaning implied. Maybe in the worst case, the term was created by a metric-obsessed executive that considered creation as a number and just called it “content” instead of “stuff”.
But while “content creator” might have started as a neutral way to refer to digital media generally, I don’t think it’s being used properly. To call a Youtube video “content” hides the fact that a lot of hours were spent on brainstorming, scripting, recording, and editing. There’s no ill intent with calling the video “content”, but it doesn’t do justice.
It’s like calling everyone who makes money by some form of labour a “worker”. Come on, there’s a better way to distinguish a surgeon, miner, theoretical physicist, and a child labourer. Don’t let your creation be generalized as “content”. There’s already a better word to call it by.