Or, Why “Content” Makes My Skin Crawl
There’s a kind of quiet shock that happens when you stumble, mid-scroll, onto something real. You’ve been swimming through sludge for so long that your eyes have adjusted to the brown water — and then suddenly, there it is: a hand-carved boat, gliding on purpose. Maybe it’s a man in a kitchen pulling a centuries-old recipe out of obscurity, or a group of New Zealanders acting out absurd RPG sketches with theatrical sincerity. It doesn’t even matter what the thing is; what matters is that it’s made. Not algorithmically stitched together, not recycled through a “try not to laugh” filter, but crafted by people who care.
That jolt — that reminder that creation still exists — is why I keep watching Tasting History or Viva La Dirt League. They’re proof that the internet, even in its current grotesque shape, can still hold people who make things for the sake of making. People who bring something into being rather than extracting value from someone else’s labor.
Because here’s the thing: I don’t hate YouTube. I don’t hate online creators. What I hate — what I rage against — is the infestation of “content creators,” the digital landlords of other people’s work, those perpetual reactors, commentators, and clout sponges who have turned the act of being seen into a business model.
The Great Flattening
Somewhere along the way, “creator” became the catch-all word for anyone who can open an app. You post a clip of your breakfast? You’re a creator. You screen-record someone else’s viral video and tilt your head in the corner? Creator. You churn out AI-generated junk on a monetized feed? Creator. The word has lost its teeth.
Platforms did this on purpose, of course. Calling everyone a “creator” flattens the terrain — makes it easier to sell the illusion that we’re all part of the same “community.” It’s the gig economy rebranded as a personality cult. But the truth is, there’s a canyon of difference between creating content and creating something.
Creation requires risk. It’s saying: here’s a piece of my mind, my time, my skill, my weird obsession with 15th-century food or RPG character tropes — please handle it gently. “Content,” on the other hand, is engineered for engagement, not meaning. It’s a byproduct of algorithmic digestion: the same meal chewed and spat out again by different mouths until it’s lost all taste.
The Extractive Empire
Reaction culture is the purest symptom of this sickness. It’s not just lazy; it’s colonial. It’s a system where the emotional labor, research, and artistry of one person becomes raw material for someone else’s monetized reaction face.
Entire empires are built this way — millions of subscribers watching someone watch someone else’s work. The reactors call it “commentary,” but what it really is, nine times out of ten, is a business of appropriation. They don’t create; they curate, and then call it creativity.
It’s the digital equivalent of a landlord bragging about how many apartments they “own,” when all they did was buy up space someone else built. The reaction streamer owns nothing but a face and a feed. Yet somehow, they’ve become the model for the modern “creator economy.”
The Makers Still Making
And yet — amid all that noise — there are still the makers. The ones who treat YouTube, podcasts, or digital art like a craft rather than a content mill.
Max Miller’s Tasting History isn’t just cooking videos; it’s a one-person museum of edible stories. He’s not chasing virality — he’s resurrecting forgotten dishes, researching historical context, making the act of eating feel like time travel. That’s creation.
Viva La Dirt League isn’t just sketch comedy; it’s a collaborative world built from scratch, blending humor with genuine storytelling and meta-commentary on gaming culture. That’s creation.
These people remind me that platforms aren’t inherently dead zones. They can still hold artisans if you dig deep enough — people whose work would thrive even if YouTube vanished tomorrow, because what they’re making exists beyond the algorithm.
The Algorithm Rewards Cowardice
What frustrates me most about influencer culture isn’t the vapidity — it’s the cowardice. Reaction content is safe. It requires no opinion stronger than a smirk, no stance firmer than “that’s crazy, bro.” Actual creation? That’s terrifying. You risk silence, rejection, misunderstanding. You risk making something that matters and watching it drown in the feed.
But creation is also the only thing that leaves a mark. Content dissolves into the stream; creation leaves a current.
Reclaiming the Word
Maybe we should stop calling them “content creators” altogether. They’re not creators — they’re distributors. Aggregators. Mirrors angled at other people’s light.
The real creators are still out there, working too slowly for the algorithm to notice, pouring time into craft instead of metrics. They’re the people running tiny channels with homemade sets and hand-written scripts, or the ones who turn a lifetime of obsession into a niche series that only ten thousand people ever see — but those ten thousand feel it.
That’s the kind of creation I care about. The kind that doesn’t need permission. The kind that exists because someone couldn’t not make it.
The Workshop, Not the Feed
I think what I’m really trying to say is this: I don’t want to live in a world of “feeds.” I want to live in a world of workshops. A world where people make instead of react, build instead of brand.
You can feel the difference immediately — between someone who’s producing to fill a slot in an upload schedule and someone who’s building something that might outlast them.
The former leaves you numb. The latter leaves you changed.
And maybe that’s the quiet rebellion now: to refuse the churn, to take the slower road, to make things that matter even if they vanish into the noise. To say, as the algorithm howls for more “content,” no — I’m creating.
Because in a time where everything is engineered to be forgotten, making something real is the most radical act left.