A Brief Musing About Content and Life

Here is a passing thought I had the other day: informational content, whether it be writing, videos or spoken word, has a tendency towards the exaggeration of human life. Perhaps my experiences in life have molded me in a different way, but I’ve always felt a rather large disconnect between forms of content and actual life.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy media - in fact, I really enjoy reading, watching and listening to content. But at the end of the day, I need to remember that moving through life is can be vastly different that what is portrayed in media, at least from a first-person perspective. Perhaps that means that my own perspective is unique; if the perspective that I’ve gained from my experiences is different from the content creator’s perspective, would that explain the disconnect that I feel?

To further the discussion, why do we consume content? My superficial answer without looking deeper is this: we seek to broaden our experience, validate ourselves and find the answers to those difficult questions that life brings up to us.Why else would people enjoy the heartwarming productions that Disney churns out, yet dive into dystopian novels like The Road?

Content is that - a concrete exaggeration of life. Content is meant to exaggerate the otherwise fairly mundane aspects of life. Granted, there may be historical events that dramatically stand like a bright light in a dark field, but the vast majority of day-to-day life is mundane. It’s mundane but also gently glazed with the human existence: emotions, cultural expectations, memories and life.

This is exactly why I enjoy creating content, regardless of what it is. In the process of creating something, I impart a little of that essence of life that I feel should go into it. I enjoy photography because it allows me to take a snap-shot of the scene at the time. I enjoy programming because it allows me to work with the functional - the “how can I make my life and other’s lives better by creating something”.

I’m not sure exactly where I meant to go with this post - it’s a little different in format than my normal posts. I’ll leave with this final, concluding statement: content is the essence of human life, concentrated and refined to create a sometimes beautiful and sometimes ugly, exaggurated representation of normally mundane everyday life.