Literally 2 Cents About Content!: Recent Episodes
Alex and Liz
Literally 2 Cents About Content! is a podcast about content mills and the broader concept of labeling all creative work "content." Why do we call everything anyone produces "content"? How does this "content" frame affect us as content consumers? And what types of conditions do content creators labor under?
Check out Liz's website at https://lizmakesstuff.com and Alex's newsletter at
toosolid.substack.com
As we approach the 30th anniversary of its release, Alex and Liz look back quasi-fondly at the Nintendo 64, including:
- Its historical place, as the first Nintendo console to debut during Japan's Lost Decades and after the Cold War.
- Why it was so difficult to develop for, even for seasoned software shops.
- How it was in retrospect a failed attempt at what the Nintendo Switch ultimately achieved: a technical breakthrough that ran on old-fashioned ROM carts
Alex and Liz discuss only some of the works of linguist, philosopher, and academic David Golumbia, including:
- The Cultural Logic of Computation (2009)
- The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (2016)
- Cyberlibertarianism: The Right-Wing Politics of Digital Technology (2024)
Technology and Silicon Valley are often associated with left-leaning politics. Still, various causes (SOPA/PIPA discourse, internet publication and copyright discourse, digital innovation) have roots in libertarian or conservative and reactionary narratives. Golumbia’s work shows that it’s difficult (read: impossible) to divorce reactionary values from Silicon Valley and its staunchest supporters.
Reading list:
- The Great White Robot God
- A declaration of the independence of cyberspace
- The Language of Science and the Science of Language: Chomsky's Cartesianism
Alex and Liz talk about the Glassdoor reviews of their old employer, touch upon the depravity of working for an SEO content mill, and compare monopoly and monopsony.
- The classic Popula article about working at this very content mill.
- What is monopsony?
- Liz's site
- Alex's blog
Alex and Liz take a look at Kate Manne's 2024 book, Unshrinking: How to face fatphobia. Along the way, they examine some of the key assumptions that drive widespread fatphobia in contemporary society, what the point of weight loss is supposed to be, the history of hazardous weight-loss treatments, and how Manne's book intersects with other publications by Ragen Chastain, Abigail C. Saguy, Paul Campos, and Paul Ernsberger.
- Ragen Chastain on weight loss as a prescription
- Chastain on how weight-loss studies are often deliberately misleading
- Abigail C. Saguy's book.
- Paul Campos' book and blog.
- 1989 debate over whether "obesity" is hazardous, with Paul Ernsberger taking the "negative" side.
- Ernsberger's earlier catalog of hazardous "obesity" treatments.
Liz and Alex talk about streaming, why its business model is so lousy compared to cable, the social aspects of watching TV vs the isolation of streaming, how sports holds linear TV together, and why it feels more sustainable to support individual creators than to pay for a bundle.
- Liz's website
- Alex's blog
- How the Criterion Channel works
- The failed promise of binge TV
- The life and death of Hollywood
Liz and Alex lay into their most despised words from the content mill industry, from "dynamic content" and "content management system" to "optimize" and "authentic." Also covered: video game DLC (that's "downloadable content," remember!), store brand sodas, and the 1990s web.
- Liz's site
- Alex's blog
- The “and yet you participate in society” cartoon
- Mastodon post on “data”
- Rob Horning blog
Alex and Liz dig their claws into "AI," this time focusing on some recent hype-y conferences Liz attended in Chicago and Las Vegas. We also look at cyberlibertarianism, the difficulties that LLMs have with ambiguity (and why making them better at this could paradoxically make them worse overall), the costs associated with producing cutting-edge work, and the embedded biases of AI.
Alex's blog
Liz's site
We don't need generative AI
At least the robber barons built things
Is a neural network like a pocket calculator? “AI” and epistemic injustice
Chatbot revolution?
Alex and Liz talk about what really makes digital content different from physical and analog equivalents, and what distinctive ideological concepts—"everything's binary, monopolies are good, technology itself is the agent, users should be treated with hostility"— are uniquely embodied by it.
And even though everything digital seems ethereal and immaterial, it requires tremendous amounts of real resources—water, electricity, space—behind the scenes. We also dive into Leo Marx's famous "Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept" essay, discuss Martin Scorsese's dislike of Marvel (and what it says about "content"), how the Hollywood strikes were spurred by the content-ization of movies and TV, and spew some weird facts about vinyl records.
- Scorsese pieces: NYT (2019), GQ (2023)
- My old "content"pieces: A spin on Marx's piece and the 5 core assumptions of "content" as a term.
- Emma Thompson thinks "content" is a rude term.
Alex and Liz talk about the hottest topic out there—"AI," or "artificial intelligence" (quotes because we're a little skeptical of it being in any way "intelligent"), with a look at some recent essays that explore whether "AI" is agent or tool, its problematic uses in higher education, why Silicon Valley is so intent on building things ("AI" or otherwise) that they'd read about or seen in sci-fi (while also of course acting as if books, films, and other artistic endeavors are worthless, just like the rest of the humanities), and how Jonny Quest predicted the Apple Watch in 1964.
Alex's recent blog post on "the economy."
Liz's website.
Check out Liz's book at Barnes & Noble.
Rob Horning's essay, Pro tools.
The Emily Bender profile in New York magazine.
The empty brain.
Alex and Liz talk about their time at the content mill, how it was all about ghost writing, what techniques they honed by doing that (such as learning how to easily add 100-200 superfluous words to any article's intro), and how that overall experience influenced their personal writing. Liz talks about self-publishing her book and Alex talks about the histories and features of various blogging platforms.
Alex's blog about social media post-2016.
Liz's website.
Buy Liz's book!
Alex and Liz talk about Mastodon, the open social network that uses a federated design that works somewhat similarly to email. We also explain ActivityPub, the W3C-sanctioned protocol that underpins Mastodon and other services such as Pixelfed. Ever wondered what an "API" is? Curious about what Facebook was like in 2004? We've got you covered on these questions and others!
Alex’s site: content-lab.agency
Liz’s site: lizmakesstuff.com
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Alex and Liz talk about Jenny Odell's "How to Do Nothing," this time focusing on how information overload and context collapse make it difficult to do what you want to do. We also make a brief detour into "This is Water" (and its roots in "Infinite Jest"), discuss the toxicity of fandom, and how even works widely seen as "great" in a moment (your Booth Tarkingtons of the world, essentially) quickly fade from popular memory.
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Alex and Liz look at "How to do Nothing" by Jenny Odell, talk about Twitter, TikTok, and Mastodon and their respective effects on our mental health, and even spin out a hot take on David Foster Wallace's legendary 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College.
Liz’s blog: Lizmakesstuff.com
Adam Kotsko’s stunning blog post, “The Moral Cost of Capitalism”: https://itself.blog/2023/02/28/the-moral-cost-of-capitalism/
David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” commencement speech: https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/
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Liz and Alex dive deep into Mark Fisher's seminal 2009 surprise best seller, "Capitalist Realism." Topics explored include how society individualizes mental illness, why there's this widespread conception of "gritty" content as somehow "realer" than non-gritty equivalents, and how our ironic distance from capitalism allows us to participate in it—even when we know it's bad.
Liz’s website: lizmakesstuff.com
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Alex and Liz talk about the coping strategies they witnessed from their managers at the content mill. Interested in doing the work of your direct reports for them? Want to work with clients who don't respond to emails for months? Wondering if you can get away with some games of StarCraft in between client calls? We give you the SEO content mill manager job spec covering all of that. We also touch upon how every "health" client at a content mill just wants you to write about their One Weird Trick That Definitely Doesn't Work.
Shay Stewart Bouley’s tweet about how SEO is rigged: https://twitter.com/blackgirlinmain/status/1574783973737242626
Liz’s website: lizmakesstuff.com
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Liz’s website: lizmakesstuff.com
Left Anchor: https://www.leftanchor.com
Strunk and White’s Macho Grammar Club: https://www.thedailybeast.com/strunk-and-whites-macho-grammar-club
Neil Patel, who doesn’t read: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ny-times-bestselling-author-torn-145614266.html
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Alex and Liz talk about the one topic you can never ever write about at content mills. Also included are two on-air readings of archetypal content mill content, except we break that taboo and write about He Who Shall Not Be Named.
Liz’s website: lizmakesstuff.com
Alex’s “Here’s what “content” from a content mill looks like” post: https://toosolid.substack.com/p/heres-what-content-from-a-content
The legendary “knife alien” tweet: twitter.com/athleisure_monk/status/738618427909111808
Background on “The Fish Files”: http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/fish-files-the/
Popula article (again): https://popula.com/2019/01/28/how-to-suck-at-business-without-really-trying/
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Alex and Liz talk about algorithms and how they select and serve content, with an extended riff on an academic paper about bureaucracy (don't worry! we make it easy to understand). Also, if you've ever wondered what recursion is, we've got you covered with a simple definition and some basic examples.
Liz’s website: lizmakesstuff.com
Essay “The concept of algorithm as an interpretative key of modern rationality” (view-only; no PDF download without premium sub): https://www.academia.edu/6470892/The_concept_of_algorithm_as_an_interpretative_key_of_modern_rationality
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Alex and Liz talk about IMDb What to Watch, a new app for trying to find that one pearl in the sea of "endless streaming content," through gamification. Will it work? We’re skeptical. And wasn't consuming content supposed to be fun at some point? The thing is: When there's too much to watch, everyone falls back on their preexisting favorites, or gets trapped in a loop of algorithmic selection and decision anxiety. We also examine how tricky it is to find exactly what you're looking for via Google Search, due to similar issues, namely the dominance of opaque algorithms and the excessive amount of online garbage, er, content, that is constantly being churned out by content mills every day.
Made with Forecast: overcast.fm/forecast
Liz’s site: https://lizmakesstuff.com
IMDb What to Watch: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/5/23059025/amazon-imdb-app-games-fire-tv-exclusive
Episode 002b, with a more in-depth look at algorithms, is coming next week!
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Welcome to Literally 2 Cents About Content!, the podcast about what it’s like to write thousands of words per day for literally two cents per word! In our first episode, Alex tells Elizabeth all about the origins of the content industry, what the word and concept of “content” really means, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the role of the (in)famous Microsoft founder in presaging (and creating!) the industry itself. We have so much content planned for this podcast, and we hope you enjoy our first foray into our literal two cents about content!
Made with Forecast: overcast.fm/forecast
Liz’s site: https://lizmakesstuff.com
Jeff Jarvis on too much content: twitter.com/jeffjarvis/status/1525785035424546816
Bill Gates on “content is king”: https://medium.com/@HeathEvans/content-is-king-essay-by-bill-gates-1996-df74552f80d9
The internet as space vs. the internet as medium: http://screengrab.blog/2015/01/31/space-quest-6-and-the-internet-as-space-vs-medium/
AOL-Time Warner hearings transcript: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-106shrg78185/html/CHRG-106shrg78185.htm
“A toiler on a content farm”: https://popula.com/2019/01/28/how-to-suck-at-business-without-really-trying/
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