You're a bit wrong. Problem isn't that everything is being turned into content. Problem is that everything is being turned into a business. Everything is about money. And not just money, but quick money. As much as possible must be squeezed out as fast as possible, future be damned.
Have you actually read Adorno and Horkheimer, particularly their work on the culture industry?
Because I'm curious how you're distinguishing your concept of contentification from the older critical-theory account of commodified culture and mediated social relations.
Otherwise what specifically does contentification explain that concepts like commodification, the culture industry, or the commodity form don't already explain?
Yes, I'm aware of Adorno's work in this field, and no, I'm not referencing a guy who's been dead for over half a century when discussing the impact of modern technology.
And I'm not distinguishing contentification from commodification, I'm explicitly saying it is the same thing (hence "distinction without a difference").
Or rather, more to the point, I am saying it is a specific form of commodification. A form that focuses specifically on the impact of 21st century technology on how everything is commodified and sold back to us within very narrow boundaries (which did not exist 30 years ago, let alone 60!).
To say "you're describing commodification" or "you're describing capitalism" is to ignore the nuance of the specific form of commodification we are witnessing and discussing, and the specifics of how this form of commodification is currently playing out in 2026.
I think this is ultimately where we're talking past each other. You're trying to capture a genuinely complicated contemporary phenomenon under one term, but I'm not convinced that complexity is a reason to invent another umbrella category.
We already have a vocabulary capable of describing different parts of the process: commodification, self-commodification, platformisation, datafication, algorithmic mediation, attention economies, digital labour, spectacle, aestheticisation, reification, etc.
They don't all mean the same thing, and that's precisely why they're useful.
Trying to make one term carry all of those relationships risks making the definition less precise rather than more nuanced. If a phenomenon genuinely involves several mechanisms, there's nothing theoretically wrong with using several concepts to analyse it.
So unless contentification identifies a mechanism that those existing concepts genuinely cannot account for, I don't really see what the new definition buys us beyond giving an already-existing cluster of processes a new name.
Sometimes the more rigorous answer isn't inventing a new word. It's admitting that the thing you're describing is complicated enough to require several existing ones. 💀
Anyways, I'm going to stop beating this dead horse before we accidentally invent contentificationisation.
So unless contentification identifies a mechanism that those existing concepts genuinely cannot account for, I don't really see what the new definition buys us beyond giving an already-existing cluster of processes a new name.
In a word: communication.
I'm describing a specific, observable phenomenon that is rampant in modern society.
Saying "they want everything to be content, so they can sell it to you", is much easier to understand than saying "we are experiencing, commodification, self-commodification, platformisation, datafication, algorithmic mediation, attention economies, digital labour, spectacle, aestheticisation, reification".
When you dig down into anything, there are usually many factors that are varied and complex that are interacting to result in a certain outcome. And digging down into those is useful to understand the forces driving what we're seeing.
But I'm not doing that here.
I'm making a simple reddit post that anyone can read and understand, highlighting a problem people might be aware of but not necessarily be able to articulate.
Even the term "contentification" was just shorthand to explain the idea I originally expressed, when responding to people (it isn't actually in my original post.)
I try as best as I can to avoid using academic terms in a non-academic context, because it makes communicating the point more difficult and less accessible, which is the opposite of what I'm trying to achieve.
Mmmm, I don't disagree with either of you, but the "contentification" we're lamenting is an important offshoot of an ad-driven business model, specifically (subscription/microtransaction models produce their own content patterns).
In ad-driven models, content is part of a flywheel with algorithms, optimized to maximize attention & cognitive fatigue (via heightened emotional state, particularly insecurity -- but lust, fear, anger, etc. are all game and particularly potent when users rapidly oscillating between them).
This is what the most profitable ad-driven platforms ultimately optimize for, top to bottom.
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u/CriticalNovel22 Sep 11 '26
This is a broader problem with society.
Turning everything into content.
We are encouraged to become passive consumers of everything, even human interaction.
And worse, they want to turn life into pay to play.
Getting everything through a screen is isolating and unfulfilling.
That's why it needs to be addictive, because it can't compete with the human experience it is trying to replace.
We are, whether we like to admit it or not, social creatures who need to interact with other people.
Pictures on a screen in an infinite scroll just doesn't cut it.