Disclaimer: Before I get into this I want to make it clear that this is only my experience, I don’t speak for everyone that works in a “social media management” or “content writer” position. I’m just one meaningless guy sharing his experiences on a meaningless website.
At first I didn’t really want to write this, but I’ve noticed the phrase “content” has really started to take off in various industries. From filmmaking to marketing; these days you can’t buy a fucking mickey of maple syrup for your waffles without having to deal with “content” in some way or form. Content is the new all-encompassing term for “everything.”
It has become a great way for employers to say “we want shit” without really defining what it is they want. Martin Scorsese, one of my heroes, recently discussed the word as it relates to the death of cinema. At an event for TCM, he commented: “It can all be summed up in the word that’s being used now: content. All movie images are lumped together. You’ve got a picture, you’ve got a TV episode, a new trailer, you’ve got a how-to video on a coffee-maker, you’ve got a Super Bowl commercial, you’ve got Lawrence of Arabia, it’s all the same. They can also turn a picture off and go straight to the next piece of content. If there’s no sense of value tied to a given movie, of course, it can be sampled in bits and pieces and just forgotten.” What Scorsese is getting at is a very real danger; using the word “content” so freely makes the work that falls under that umbrella completely fucking devoid of any meaning whatsoever.
You may have heard the job title: Content Writer. Or: Social Media Manager. Or both. Essentially, you’re in charge of doing the same shit you would be doing for yourself in your free time, but on a much more serious scale, and for a company. As social media-savvy guys like Gary Vaynerchuk like to say, “Every company has to think of themselves as a media company.”
In the 21st century, that’s just true. Whether you like it or not, that’s just how things have ended up. I personally think it’s both a good and awful thing. Good because this new landscape allows you to find information about a company within seconds. And bad because....it just feels dumb. People are reading more than ever before, but none of it seems to be particularly enlightening material. It’s generally lazy copy that features some variation of a meme that was popular months ago. And something feels very weird about EVERY company needing a social media presence. I’m 26, but I remember a time when my favourite brand of tea or chips used to just have the “Nutritional Value” at the back. Now they’ve gotta tell you their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. It’s exhausting. Does there really need to be a Twitter page for every single new movie that comes out? Who is that really for? I’m a little old fashioned, and I personally think a lot of social media use is just straight up unnecessary. But fuck all that, like I said: we’re not arriving at a new landscape, we’re already here.
So back to my point. What the fuck does a “Content Writer” do? The problem with this job title is the fact that, because all this stuff is still so recent, a lot of companies don’t know what the fuck they want. All they know is they need “Content,” and they need it fast.
Of course a person running a business wants “followers,” and they want that to translate to more customers. But when it comes to the specific job title of a “Content Writer/Social Media Manager,” from my experience these motherfuckers have no clue what they want. That’s why the job title is so vague. “Content” writer. What the fuck does that even mean? That could mean I shit in a transparent cup, take a photo of it, and post it to your followers. BOOM! “Content!” Even though I admire people like Gary Vaynerchuk, and their entrepreneurial approach to engaging people in a fun way, the idea of giving what people create the monolithic moniker of “Content” is fucking ludicrous to me. What is the metric for a Content Writer other than followers and customers?
Now, before I continue I want to stress again this is only my experience. Before some of you start to send me your negative e-mails, remember: this is JUST MY EXPERIENCE.
Here we go: last year I worked for a foreign exchange company. I ran all their social media accounts, and wrote their daily newsletters. I know absolutely nothing about the financial world, so I was basically grasping at straws out my asshole in an attempt to come up with, “good content,” (their words). It was a 4 month contract with the potential for an extension if they “liked my work,” despite the fact that they did not ever really articulate what it was they wanted from me exactly. They literally just gave me a laptop and said, “You know about social media, right?” I wish I was exaggerating there, but I’m not. I had my suspicions these guys had no clue what the fuck they were doing, but I kept quiet. The money wasn’t life changing, but decent. I had vet bills to pay for my cat. And my car takes premium gas. Plus I wanted to take a vacation, and get an Yves Saint Laurent suit. So I had to eat shit for awhile.
I realized very quickly I fucking hated working as a “Content Writer” for this company. The guys running the place were heavyset, stressed out brothers always in a foul mood. It was like working for two Tony Sopranos; they’d just give out angry orders like, “Do some work,” without telling me what to do at all. At one point I remember one of the brothers mentioning he had a doctor’s appointment because he had a problem with his heart....this is moments after berating one of his staff members for not earning enough money that day.
I also got the feeling that these guys had no clue what a company’s social media presence should look like, or what a “Content Writer” should do. It seemed to me they were talking one day and one brother said to the other, “Hey, all these companies nowadays seem to have this thing called a Content Writer. I don’t know what the fuck that is, but we should get one too.” When I suggested the company should have an Instagram page they had no clue what that was and deemed it unnecessary.
This is a brief (silly) side note: the place was also nowhere near anyplace cool to eat, so I was stranded in an awfully toxic building for lunch as well. I would literally eat my lunch in the bathroom stall of the building just so I wouldn’t have to interact with anyone there; some real high school shit. That’s actually how I spent the lunch of my 25th birthday: in the bathroom stall eating a cold fucking sandwich, worrying about what kind of fucking “content” I’d come up with for the day, while some guy in the stall next to me took the shit of his life and somehow simultaneously arranged plans for his daughter’s wedding loudly on his cell phone. A year later, I was driving around one day and I actually saw that guy in traffic (hard to miss someone with an idiotic vanity plate) and immediately got a Vietnam flashback, “Oh, there’s that guy that took a shit while talking on the phone I had to listen to on my 25th birthday!”
I hated fucking working there, and didn’t really care for the constant coarse language I’d hear everyday in the office. The beginning of The Wolf of Wall Street comments on the language you often hear in financial workplace settings, and that’s absolutely accurate. Every other word was a fuck this or fuck that. I know if you’ve read this far you might be thinking, “Aren’t you a hypocrite? You swear throughout this fucking shitty article.” That is true and you’re not wrong, but it gets really grating having to hear upper management swear every day. It’s like hearing your grandmother swear or say something racist. She can do whatever she wants at that age...but....it’s still uncomfortable. There needs to be some kind of fucking decorum in an office, you know? I remember hearing one of the bosses swear at some guy for getting something wrong and having the thought, “Jesus Christ, is this my life now? Is this what it has come to? Do I really need money that badly? I should quit.” A short time later, the same guy that got yelled at in front of an entire floor of people offered to go on a coffee run for the dude that yelled at him. I had the thought, “There’s no way he isn’t doing something repugnant to that drink.”
These guys were obsessed with how much money they made on a particular day, and how much they made last week, etc. There I was sitting there, not really caring. I mean, money is obviously important in life, but it’s not everything to me. I’d certainly rather be homeless than have to set foot in that fucking office again. Once in awhile we’d have meetings about vague expectations they had, but other than that there was very little back and forth between us. I only ever heard feedback about anything when something went really wrong.
Like the time I wrote the phrase, “in other words,” more than once in the same newsletter. There were no editors other than me, and after a couple months of working there I started to feel burnt out writing the same repetitive spiritually bereft horseshit day after day. I made a mistake, and the management there acted like I committed some grave offense. When I spoke up about the fact that what I was writing could use a separate pair of eyes they were shocked.
That was one of the last things I could take at the job seriously. I was expected to sit in meetings and nod seriously at things in my heart of hearts I didn’t really give a shit about. One of the other final things I couldn’t take was the time I “wrote an article too early.” I was told that, in the financial world, I had to wait until the day was over before writing about it. But one day I wrote an article a couple hours too early, sent it in, and was told I had to redo it entirely. When I got home I changed a couple sentences, resent the same article, and nobody fucking noticed.
I had the realization: everyone here is full of shit. I decided to quit that week, but it didn’t matter. My 4 month contract was up and I was told they made the decision to end it there. “We like your work, but we don’t really know what you should be doing,” was one of the final things I was told (verbatim). If I really liked the job, in another scenario I would’ve spoken up and tried to change their minds. But it was for the best. We parted ways on amicable terms; after they told me to fuck off I packed up for Germany and Poland, started teaching, and taking my freelance writing a bit more seriously.
Content Writing/Social Media Management, to me, is the same thing as a Hallmark greeting card person calling themselves a “Writer.” You are technically writing, but you’re not creating In Search of Lost Time or Crime and Punishment; it’s just donkeywork. You are a writer in the same way an extra in a movie is technically an “actor.”
Other jobs I have had creating content are much different, and a lot more enjoyable. Many companies have their shit together and don’t really require you to even leave the confines of your home. Any publication worth their salt will make use of technology to the fullest, and everything will be mostly done through e-mail, and a content management system like WordPress or something similar. This is a very telling example about the state of “Content” production work: I have worked for people in my own country, and it has been a terrible experience, and I have worked with publications in China and have had a much better time (even with the time difference, we still managed to produce great work). It all comes down to management and how well they articulate what it is they are looking for.
So that’s it. A “Content Writing” gig can either be a truly artistically fulfilling rich experience with a great office that has an air hockey table, a Golden Retriever, and wonderful people...or it can be a robotic hellish 1984 world where you’re stripped of your personality and have to write the same types of things everyday. It depends on what type of “content” the employers are looking for and if they can communicate that clearly.
