I’ve been sitting on this question for a month or so, wondering if it even deserves airtime. But then Taylor dropped her most content-y album ever, and suddenly it felt extra relevant.
Anyone who’s ever posted one too many times knows the line I’m talking about. It’s a blurry one. We give grace inconsistently — especially if we like the person or the brand. If the content’s good enough, we forgive excess. But the balance is delicate. One minute I’m laughing at a clever Taylor meme on Instagram and feeling genuinely impressed; the next, I’m irrationally mad scrolling through thirty near-identical posts from everyone else.
We used to tolerate (and even encourage) nonstop posting. But I saw one brand, SEPTA, jump into the Taylor discourse last week and the comments weren’t super great. Even though this is just one of many instances of the content machine going too far, maybe it’s a sign that we’ve finally hit a wall. Is there such a thing as too much content?
Back in the 2010s, the golden question of the design world used to be: “How might we…?” You couldn’t open a slide deck or sit through a brainstorm without hearing it. It was the question that launched a thousand startups (shiny, helpful, human-centered startups!). “How might we make travel more local?” Airbnb. “How might we make food delivery more efficient?” DoorDash. “How might we democratize art?” Spotify. Netflix. Amazon.
Of course, we know how that era ended. The How Might We’s gave us these “disruptors,” but it also gave us clogged streets, hollowed-out housing markets, shuttered industries, insufferable working conditions, subscription hell, and a general sense that we might have innovated ourselves to death.
Now, the new big question floating around creative circles is: At what cost? It’s such a great question because it cuts right through the hype and asks: is this thing even worth making?
While I was doing some editorial thinking for myself this summer, I found myself stuck in the “at what cost” loop: I spend hours writing this newsletter, and you spend time reading it (which still blows my mind). That’s a lot of time, collectively. And every other small brand I know is doing the same thing: they’ve got a newsletter, a website, an active Instagram or TikTok, maybe even a podcast. All of it feels necessary at the individual level, but zoom out, and the result is that one measly person is now keeping tabs on hundreds of things — brands, accounts, newsletters. At some point, won’t we all just need to tap out?
So…at what cost are we making all this content? Where is the line?
What do you think?
Some wide-ranging ways that you could unpack it:
- Are we overthinking it? Or is the content world fine as it is?
- Should we stop? Keep going? What happens either way?
- Do you already try to curb your content? How and why?
- If you posted less — fewer updates, fewer emails, fewer “musts” — what would you lose? What might you be glad to lose?
- Have you seen any brands or creators who’ve pulled back in an interesting way without vanishing completely?
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