When I first joined social media, it didn’t look like what it does today. To create a Facebook account, I had to lie and say I was born in 1980-something. I was still in school, and we used to write inside jokes and birthday greetings on each other’s ‘walls.’ We used to update our ‘status’ to music lyrics that reflected how we felt – a sad song for when something’s wrong, a love song in hopes of catching our crush’s attention, a happy song for happy occasions. The only ‘oversharing’ people did during that time was in the form of blog posts – and yet, it didn’t feel like oversharing at all. Just a person behind a screen, sharing some emotions, maybe some routine.
Today, we’re bombarded with ‘morning routines,’ ‘what I eat in a day,’ ‘gym hacks,’ and other such content. One can no longer go to a restaurant to enjoy a meal. No. They must film themselves eating it and approving it for the general public. One can no longer go to the park without showing the ‘diversity’ of people in it, or the theatre without offering a shallow ‘opinion’ on the movie, or a party without filming every single track the DJ plays. Even during turbulent times, we still know what people are up to, we know where they were and are forced to see reaction videos of what it was like for them. There are new rules to how society should behave, and if you don’t adhere to these rules, you are labeled and deemed ‘irrelevant’ in the digital sphere.
We consume so much information about people we don’t know, and we don’t even know if that information is real – their favorite hobbies, meeting their families, spending a day with them, getting ready with them, waiting for the pregnancy test result or the doctors appointment result with them, all of it. With them. But who are they?
“Content creators.” And what does that mean? People who utilize social media for online growth, who build trust with their audiences, who garner brand partnerships and become ambassadors, who are the new wave influencers. We used to create “art,” “stories,” “music,” “ Now it’s just “Content, “liquid filler for an algorithm.
Everywhere you look, there’s a girl swearing by this cream or that for acne, a man promising you abs with this routine or that, someone giving information on this topic or that, even if they are not certified to do so… That’s content creation nowadays. It’s taste tests and gossip sessions in parked cars. Brand collaborations and unsolicited advice. Political commentary by people who never even continued their education.
It’s a lot of things.
While some people utilize their online presence for the greater good – such as dieticians who give nutrition advice, medical practitioners who warn against or raise awareness about certain issues and experts who truly use social media platforms to educate, the content that actually ‘works’ is the one that’s the least useful. The feuds, the criticism, the ‘drama.’ The hooks, the challenges, the reviews.
But what if I don’t want to be a content creator? Is it so horrible to go to a restaurant and eat instead of taking videos and pictures? To do an activity and not film it throughout? To scroll social media in peace and without sharing my thoughts with the world? To have an opinion on war and genocide and famine and displacement without plastering it across the platforms I am on? Maybe even to have the occasional tendency to take a video or a photo, but only for archival purposes. Perhaps the most radical thing we can do in 2026 is to have an experience that no one else ever sees.
While an influencer is someone whose value lies in their relationship with their followers, a content creator evolved from being a small-scale ambassador for brands to a high-quality media production hub. It’s now not only that, but ‘content creator’ is a job title. What the job entails is still unclear, at least to me, but it’s something you get paid for – not just in partnerships and exposure, but has somehow turned into a nine-to-five, in-office position.
This shift to a professional career happened when people began diversifying their income across multiple platforms. By 2019, it was officially recognized as a billion-dollar industry. Brands and agencies alike are now recruiting someone to do it all – photography, videography, social media management, all for the price of one.
Is it a good thing? A bad thing? A normal thing? It doesn’t matter. These are mere observations about the evolution of the digital landscape. People can have whatever jobs they want, and I will still not want to be a content creator. Except, it’s not that I don’t want to be, it’s that I only wish I had half their courage – then maybe I would have been. But then I think, if the world is a stage and every moment is a product, then the only way to remain human is to keep something for ourselves.
