Are you overwhelmed by the amount of content we are bombarded with every day? By the growing number of platforms? By AI? By the endless noise competing for our attention?
Me too.
We are living through a content epidemic: an extraordinary abundance of things to watch, read, like, share, and forget—much of it created simply because the platforms demand that something new must always come next.
I remember the days when instagram first starting gaining traction. At the time, it was a platform mainly used by photographers to showcase their skills. It wasn't for everyday use by average joes. Then it blew up! Everyone got an instagram account and everyone started posting clicks from their daily lives. It became the new facebook as facebook became over cluttered with ads and trash content, Instagram became the cool classy platform for artists and the likes. I started posting too...nothing special...just ordinary pictures of my daily life.
With time, instagram began to change as well with the emergence of "the influencers" trend. A new term coined for instagram famous characters who apparently influence people with their platform but I am not sure if it's the correct type of influence. Influencers didn't influence us on right or wrong, justice, or anything of substantial value that really mattered in the real world. Instead, influencers were mostly used as a marketing tool by brands who wanted access to their followers to push their own sales agendas. We became consumers of things and not consumers of thought.
While I am not discounting the level of effort that goes into content creation and the hard work that these influencers have to put in to build their following, this trend wave started leaving the artists behind. The real artists who were using their instagram as platform for expression, not as a marketing tool, got left out by all the noise. Content was created all day every day as a way for influencers to make money from brands and vice versa.
Instagram became saturated with these so called influencers. The younger generation started becoming obsessed with becoming an influencer and I even heard one of my MBA professors say " If you don't have at least 10k following on instagram, you are really a nobody". This comment struck me. Why does that even matter? Since when did a follower count determine whether someone is worth listening to?
The content epidemic didn't stop at instagram. Soon we had tiktok, snapchat, X, threads, facebook, substack, onlyfans, and probably some more I don't even know about. It was a race to create as much as possible and as fast as possible. Everyone was trying to beat the algorithms. They perfectly timed their posts, researched hashtags, and sat hopeful that maybe one of their posts would go viral. Then came AI...
And content has literally blew up in our faces to the point of exhaustion. I dont know about you just we watch and scroll what seems like Kilometers. Content has become repetitive. Everyone copies everyone. AI generates at the speed of light. I personally can't keep up.
This isn't real life. We are not supposed to be glued to a screen. We are supposed to go out into the world and explore. Learn thing, failure, get up and try again. High quality educational content is lost amongst the noise of trash and only the meaningless posts go viral.
The thing that makes me cringe most of all is the glorified LinkedIn posts. Everyone is writing letters upon letters about leadership, resilience, and their glorified experiences—as if every ordinary workday contains some profound lesson for humanity. Most of it doesn’t really mean anything to anyone else. BARF.
Having said all that, there is nothing wrong with social media or posting things. I wish people could do it more tastefully and just the right amount that gives me enough of you but not an overload. Now let's look at the above graph. Both Facebook and Instagram have average of 3 billion monthly users. That's absolutely insane. That makes me realize just how much power these platforms have, more than country governments. It's encroyable.
So how can we combat the content epidemic? I guess you can't teach people taste and everyone out there wants as much exposure for themselves as possible but I really don't think that is the correct strategy. The world is lacking some mystery and authenticity and taste.
I would like to see more meaningful content and I would like to see influencers use their platforms to make a more positive impact in the world instead of just being marketing tools. That's really the jist.
I don’t want the internet to become silent. I don’t want people to stop creating, sharing, or expressing themselves. I simply want us to become more deliberate about what we put into the world—and what we allow into our minds.
Not every experience needs to become content. Not every thought needs to become a post. Not every person needs to become a brand.
Perhaps the cure for the content epidemic is not more content about the problem. Perhaps it is restraint: creating less, saying something real, and leaving enough mystery for life to be lived rather than constantly documented.
#BOSS
