Content vs. Art: Who Will Win?

Welcome to 2025 plus notes on my newest project

Happy New Year!

I just wrapped up the busiest year I've ever had since launching my marketing agency almost four years ago during COVID. I also did some traveling, and when I returned, I finished cutting 40,000 words from my novel. And you know what? It was easy, and satisfying, and my book is the better for it. It’s now being re-read by an agent, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

While I've enjoyed writing book reviews over the past few years, and there will surely be more reviews to come, they were written as a sort of way for me to write — the dreaded word — content without selling my soul. But while I was not selling my soul, I was pouring my soul (and time) into those reviews, churlishly leaving nothing ("O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop/to help me after?”) for me to pursue some non-fiction projects that I've long looked forward to.

As a marketer, content to me has long been the means used to interest an audience in what you're selling — not the product itself.

But about seven years ago, along with everyone else it seems, I found myself starting to use the C-word to describe writing or visual compositions of all types. Packaging everything under the same label now seems like a utilitarian pact with the devil; while, like the digital age itself, it offered irresistible convenience, there was just one small cost: reducing all forms of human creation to mere commodities in the relentless machine of late capitalist consumption.

In the previous era, while content could have varying degrees of quality, such quality served only as a signifier for the value of the ultimate product being sold. And art? Art was always something else entirely.

But now, content and art, while once as distinct as 1s and 0s in binary code, are emerging in the twenty-first century about as interchangeable as binary digits become when viewed at the larger scale demanded by digitalization.

Indistinguishable, not just in terms of their perceived value by consumers, but in their aesthetic quality (actual and perceived). … This is what keeps me up at night.

I originally started The Dreaded Word as a way to send out "content" that is up to my own personal standards, while also examining the cultural landscape in the age of content. At last there was a great confluence of my seemingly disparate selves, content marketer by day and unrepentant art snob always.

And so, I would like to introduce you to my original vision for The Dreaded Word Substack, as an outlet not just for criticism but also for essays from my forthcoming collection, The Dreaded Word: [Insert Trendily Long Subtitle Here], aimed at exploring the tension between content and art.

Of course, I’m still waking up at the buttcrack of dawn to work on my newest novel, something much shorter than the last (I will never write a long novel again!). Because if I didn't work on Art every day, I would — not to sound dramatic — rather be dead.

Next time, I’ll be sharing my first essay, and over the next many (many) months, I’ll be publishing more from my forthcoming collection right here. I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts along the way, as this is a work in progress, and your feedback will, I’m sure, help me shape it into something better.

XO,

Jesse