WHEN DID THE word ‘content’ become normalised as a catch-all for creative work? Was it in the 2000s, when ‘user-generated content’ was expediently deployed to fill websites without the need to pay writers and artists? Was it in the 2010s, when the blog and social media heyday spawned influential ‘content makers’ working for free? Was it in 2023, when the ABC restructured its entire operation into just two divisions, ‘News’ and ‘Content’, suggesting a strategic distinction between expert journalism and interchangeable filler? Was it in 2008, when Jeffrey Zeldman coined the term ‘content-first design’ to frame the structure of digital experiences? Or was it way back in 1996, when Bill Gates infamously wrote that ‘content is king’ in a Microsoft blog post anticipating a future where writers and artists would be well respected and well remunerated?

In 2025, we’re very much not living that reality. For starters, the average creative incomes of Australian writers and artists have either fallen or remained static at below the poverty line since David Throsby and his team first started their longitudinal research on artists’ working patterns back in the 1980s. Today, the rapid rise of AI-generated images and text is undermining rights and destroying livelihoods – this trend has already been the focus of multiple Senate inquiries. ‘Content’ has now become the accepted term for all creative endeavour across all communications platforms. We’re long used to hearing of ‘content creation’, ‘content providers’, ‘content tools’, ‘content marketing’ and even ‘content strategy’. Yet every time these words are uttered, creative expertise is rendered all the more invisible and creators stripped of all their worth. What’s worse is that ‘content’ – the interchangeable matter that fills a given form – has now become a pervasive mindset that devalues creativity, diminishes artists and displaces culture.