Fun is a necessity, not a luxury: why content fascists are missing the point

Content is a discipline full of misunderstandings, contradictions and misfires, which I’ve long believed is one of the reasons why so many of us find it so captivating and all-consuming.

However, a few days ago my love/hate relationship with the new media ‘scene’ and the cult of metrics came to something of a head.

Now, before I go any further: I’m no Luddite. I don’t want to come across like one of the grizzled old baseball scouts in Moneyball who resign in protest at the introduction of a bit of science and logic into their seemingly random discipline.

But what worries and infuriates me in equal measure is the suggestion, oft-cited by metrics-heads, that creativity and methodical process can’t and don’t co-exist, that creative people can’t be disciplined in their work or that content producers need to choose either success or enjoyment.

I’ve had a bee in my bonnet about this for a while, but a post that someone shared on that fabulous goldmine of corporate jargon and abject nonsense, LinkedIn (you know it’s true), finally tipped me over the edge.

The post in question ran with the delightfully catchy title: ‘Why You Need to Approach Blogging Like a Business (Blogging Is NOT Art)’. Point of information: I have added no capitals to this line, so you can only imagine the glee and fervour with which the author decried the idea of personal expression or reader enjoyment getting in the way of optimal post metrics.

The ensuing article went on to outline how failure in business can provide the focus one needs to ‘succeed’ in blogging, while conspicuously making no mention of the ‘art’ it dismissed in the title. It seemed to be arguing that a genuine desire to utilise blogging as a forum for idea sharing and question raising is no substitute for a chequered business past or (possibly my most detested buzzword) ‘entrepreneurial’ thinking.

While this post wielded a level of authority akin to a Donald Trump speech on climate change, its sentiment still managed to boil my blood. 

To return to a sporting analogy for a second, I can’t deny that vitally important patterns bare out across a full 38-game season that should influence tactics and strategy, but I also know that mercurial inspiration and expression can win a game in an instant.

Both work in isolation, but the teams that win trophies harness both.

Personally, my background is in linguistic and journalistic storytelling, every professional decision I have made in my career has been borne out of a desire to talk to interesting people about interesting things. But I know that for those conversations to happen, the visibility has to be there, and in 2016 that can only come with a fundamental understanding of where, when and how to post one’s content.

So of course, the idea doesn’t solve everything, but it is damn foolish to claim that the idea solves nothing.

Content produced for Google or profit margins can be seen by millions, but is often destined to be remembered by almost nobody. So, I think it would be nice if metrics-heads and storytellers could stop drawing the battle lines between one-another and put their pride to one side, because a determination to prove each other wrong is standing in the way of some magnificently optimised art.

It is ‘art’, by the way, despite what the aforementioned post that you have definitely searched for by now may tell you, and that applies to blogging, video, social, design, everything. It’s art because great content raises questions rather than answers them, makes you think rather than accept and inspires you to go away and create something yourself.

So, thinking about it, while this post may have been simultaneously idiotic, preposterous and borderline offensive, it was the spark for a 650-word piece about how loathsome it was.

Bad art is still art.