I struggle with our culture’s value of content creation.  I see some positives to it. There are referrals and recommendations. There’s entertainment and a sense of connection. But I also wonder how much time we are spending, trust we are yielding, and both the filtering and unfiltering we are allowing. 

There are built in filters with algorithms, funneling some of the content we see. But we are a bit unfiltered when it comes to how well we are critically thinking about the content we are consuming. Even on the creation side of content, influencers are to some degree funneled into tracks of types, branding, and target influence. People change. Products change. Popularity changes. The simple concepts of supply and demand affect the change.

I’m not going to completely shut it out. It’s okay if you do, but there are some things you can learn from being adjacent to what’s happening. You can become familiar enough to connect with others in ways you wouldn’t usually relate. You don’t have to immerse yourself. Adjacent can be enough to keep perspective while having some context to discuss. You can’t know it all; there is always more to learn. You have to make some choices, as time is limited. We aren’t the same but we find some common knowledge.

Content creation isn’t new, but the amount and reach is unprecedented. I recently mentioned Who’s On First, the famous Abbott and Costello comedy skit, to two people several decades younger than me. They had no idea what I was talking about. I showed them part of the skit, and they thought I was losing my mind. That same night, one of them heard someone else refer to the same skit and was amazed I wasn’t the only one who knew about it. All of us miss references people make because we can’t know everything. But we can ask questions. We can be inquisitive.

The level of created content invites inquisitiveness, but it doesn’t cultivate self-control. Absorbing through scrolling takes precedence over critical thinking. And the diminishing critical thinking impacts every area of our lives. If we valued scrutiny more, we could still enjoy content creation. But we’d turn on some filters that would serve us better than the scroll.