The Content Rush

From a service-based economy to a content-based one?

I just watched Juno. The comedic coming-of-age and carrying-to-term story of a 16-year-old girl with a razor wit focuses around two driving forces: the touching story of Juno's trials, and one-liners. You might have to think about it as a teenage Garden State for the YouTube generation. By that I mean I'm using way too many buzzwords. Let's break it down, y'all:

This film is amazing. In essence, a string of well-crafted jokes sitting in the bed of an interesting plot. Its influences are obvious (the awkwardness-comedy of Wes Anderson and Jared Hess, 90's high-school dramas like TV's Freaks and Geeks, a little bit of School of Rock, and fast, verbally-driven comedy that reaches back into ancient times, but has also produced such shining moments as The Thin Man, the works of Groucho Marx, and M*A*S*H). Yes, we love the characters, and a million reviews have touched Juno with the Midas's finger of "real characters", but I'm talking about the jokes. There are lots of them, and some scenes seem to be made for the lines that are going to come out of them. In other words, besides characters, Juno sells us Content.

Content is a proto-buzzword on the Web 2.0 now, meaning: stuff you watch or listen to. Homestar Runner puts out content every week (I know the meme has passed, and it's all about the webcomics now, but H*R was magic for me, and still is), iTunes sells content at a buck a pop, and YouTube funds everything by giving free user-made (or, more often, ripped) content and selling ubiquitous (unless you have the firefox plugin) advertising. More and more, content is something that isn't produced by people with prerequisites--Diablo Cody, writer of Juno, was not trained in screenwriting, and the Chapmans weren't even familiar with Flash when they first drew their terrific athlete.

What does this mean? You can create content. I can create content. If either one of us is lucky, our content, whether it be art, comic strips, music, punditry, commentary, video, screenplay, instruction, education, fiction, or Other, will sell in some way, perhaps to a producer/director, to advertising, merchandising, donations, or on an online store.

What does this mean? A gold rush. The net is in the process of being inundated with new people trying to sell new stuff in new ways. Unfortunately, the majority of internet content is, well, crap. Comic strips without punchlines, terrible home videos, faulty information bases, and links deadened by the thud of the dollar.

Solutions. Stop producing crap and advertising it as gold. If you go through archives of webcomics, you'll find that the first year or so of them are poorly done. So, as you're beginning, don't try to oversell. There's a refining process that needs to happen first. Stop trying to "go big or go home". Maybe you are going to only have a small audience. Do you want to keep producing? I think the answer is yes. If your production of this media costs you less in time than the peanuts you're making in advertising, keep going. Maybe you'll make it big. Maybe you'll just have an enjoyable hobby that gets you a couple extra bucks. Stop copying jokes, visuals, etc. The joy of content is that it's fresh. Really new stuff is the best selling, and contributes to the community. If you're going to make a cultural reference, record a cover, or reveal your influences, do it in a tasteful and interesting way. Don't waste our precious little attention span bandwidth on something we've already seen and heard. That said, the situation or circumstance surrounding new content is only marginally important, and most people won't mind if you reuse a setting if you have something new to say in it.

I'm such a freaking expert about content 'cause I've produced so much of it! (This is sarcastic!) Note, this is an observation, a suggestion for everyone's benefit. Disregard it at the risk of proving me wrong.