We live in a world where anyone can be a writer. The internet’s expansive landscape is full of promise, where a nobody is transformed into a somebody through a succession of clicks. And while the elusive quality of sudden fame shares the illusion that anyone can make a living off writing, the arbitrariness of this publicity puts culture into the throws of disorder. The rise of blogs, writing platforms such as Medium, social media marketing, and digital books run the risk of deflating the art of writing of any real value, integrity, truth, or intellect. As a recurring trend in technological innovation, quality is replaced by convenience and simplicity. Writers must negotiate the role they play in an increasingly technological world and adopt moral responsibility when designing content for mass consumption. The humanities have long been criticized for lack of real-world implications and labeled a dying breed, yet I argue reading and writing are more important than ever and must be carefully applied to the digital world.

The intellectual life of a writer is undoubtedly changed by conforming to the standards of the digital space. In 1944, Theodor Adorno points out in “The Culture Industry” that “Anyone who resists can only survive by fitting in.” Adorno’s critique of mass culture through the lens of Marxist values resurges with arguably more importance in our present era of constant noise. Not only are writers having to conform to the technical standards on online writing with broken paragraphs, bigger fonts, and shorter lengths, but the ideological undertones determine how successful a piece of writing is in the space. Writing, as a highly political, moral, and personal form of art, presents challenges to disrupting mass culture when directed by a capitalist agenda. In the digital marketing space it is easy to become isolated and confined to one’s own ideological sphere, yet if intellectuals refuse to “fit in” with mass culture, there is little chance in reforming it. The paradox is not unique to this time, but it is escalated by the widened net cast by the internet. The question becomes, how does a writer maintain the civic, political, and moral responsibility of writing while co-existing with all the noise in a digital landscape? What is the role of storytelling in corporate America and how is content leveraged to make a profit?

The internet has created a space for the humanities and writers through blogs, copywriting, ad creative, and content marketing. Brands are looking for a more meaningful way to connect with consumers, utilizing “storytelling” to bridge this gap. Even organizations such as Pledgeling are helping brands connect to non-profits, based on the statistic that 64% of consumers want to buy from socially responsible companies. While it seems that brand culture is adopting a more conscious type of marketing through storytelling, there are pervading problems with how and why brands outsource content. The driving forces behind the arise of brand blogs and content is to forge capital, which often translates into using rhetorical techniques to deceive mass audiences. For example, blogging and marketing advice sites such as Copy blogger and Hubspot’s blog promote the effectiveness or appeal of a message- turning “vanilla ice cream” into “chocolate chip cookie dough.” Reading one of these posts may be helpful to an individual looking for marketing advice, but learning how to target a consumer’s desires makes the process of writing problematic. 

The monetized incentive underlining this type of education tailors the type of message portrayed. Black hat SEO is no longer effective because Google has cut down on how people rank in search, therefore white hat SEO is based on the amount of relative content produced. Therefore, the internet has become a content game: brands are aware of the fact that they need good writing, good “story telling” in order to survive. Brands that organically rank higher have more content, more keywords, and are making more money for their number of searches. This, of course, is problematic with a public unable to discern the truth behind a powerful, catchy phrase. There is a moral dilemma behind incentivizing content: in order to be educational, readable, and profitable, digital writing has forfeited its integrity.

Brands are built on content; take the company Goop for instance, a lifestyle brand that started with Gwyneth Paltrow’s weekly newsletters in 2008. People were connecting with what she had to say on health, cooking, parenting, spirituality, ect. Although primarily known as an actress, Gwyneth captured an entire audience through writing, which flourished into a content-based website. What originally started as a way to convey an important message, soon became a powerful content producing machine in the aim to… well, make money. While the company values integrity and authenticity, one cannot help but question their driving factors. The monetization of online content presents an old paradox American culture has been debating for decades: how does one maintain the individual will while making a living in modern culture? Goop, while aiming to provide valuable advice and support to readers, is nonetheless influenced by categories and topics that will be financially beneficial; this, in turn, endorses exclusion. Now selling products and opening up retail stores, Goop’s once authentic “content,” becomes interchangeable with “advertisement.”

As seen, the adoption of the humanities by the business world can often be false and misleading: brands leveraging content to distort consumer beliefs and desires to buy and keep buying. With the overwhelming amount of content out there, it is easy to take a panoramic view of the internet and conclude that writers’ intellectual lives are dying and moral fibers are disintegrating; yet, this would be a narrow and hindering perspective. For example, the online writing platform, Medium, is a well- constructed space for intellectual, artful, and political conversations. Although it is also full of amateur self-help practicum, it allows writers to be paid for their work based on audience engagement or number of “claps”. This also raises questions of authenticity, but Medium, unlike Google, seems to be able to consolidate high-thought articles and expedite the filtering process to reach quality, truthful content that isn’t promoting a brand or service. True artistry exists, but it is harder to access when brands are pushing meaningless keyword content for the sake of exposure; therefore, Medium’s filters can be helpful to the average reader. The risk of blogging platforms such as Medium is the rapid exchange of ideas for little to no absorbance. As our attention spans are shrinking, the online world of content is training our minds to focus in small intervals, jumping from article to article without focusing on an idea long enough to truly grasp a meaningful concept. It is not only altering the consumer, but writers must adapt to the transforming rules of the digital age as well.

The definition of writing, even the definition of a writer has been radically transformed by the internet. Writing is no longer so much an art as it is a production, a means of exploitation. In his updated introduction for The Lost Art of Reading: Books and Resistance in a Troubled Time, David Ulin writes, “The reason books and reading remain essential is because they are still the most effective mechanisms by which to crack open the universe.” Unfortunately, this view of reading and writing feels unfamiliar in a digital age because readers of online blogs and content sites read to gain information that will have an immediate effect; with a surge of profitable online content, the “universe” becomes the pockets of Wall Street. Some brands have hired creative talent and successfully mastered the content game, such as Colgate’soral care center or Bulletproof’s SEO driven articles. And while content marketing appears to be a more ethical solution to previous black hat SEO techniques, it does not escape the moral dilemma of capital directed information. Not all brands are as clean, truthful, and legitimate as these ones, therefore content is dangerous when filled with false promises and a reliance on an audience’s blind consumption. 

When Ulin talks about fake news, he says “we don’t need to think or be confronted; all we need to do is be affirmed” which can be applied to writing in general. He touches on the anti-intellectualism that dominates mass culture, where digital readers are flooded with marketable, mindless content affirming their beliefs and targeting their desires. Writing can be dangerous, if not detrimental when ideas are loosely applied and mindlessly articulated for the sake of gaining a reaction. For instance, “click bait” lures a consumer to a pre-sell page for a product or service and is intentionally dishonest in order to distract the consumer. By providing a distraction and confirming pre-existing beliefs, online content helps perpetuate anti-intellectualism. Writing has become, or maybe always has been, a type of display, a way for brands to capture an audience- the dilemma is only enlarged in a digital sphere. As Adorno and Hofstadter point out, anti-intellectualism and the standardization of mass culture have been dilemmas for over a century, but it is now taking shape in the form of content-driven click bait.

Writers must be wary of how they contribute to the mass consumption of content on the internet. In Astra Taylor’s The People’s Platform, she questions the “laissez-faire” approach to the internet, suggesting that it mirrors America’s capitalist system and is not as free and open as people want to believe. In fact, the internet is controlled by “info-monopolies” such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon. As Adorno points out in “The Culture Industry” that “under monopoly all mass culture is identical and the lines of its artificial framework begin to show through.” The framework of these monopolies on the internet is content: it is the ultimate way to reel people in and maintain control. While writing is a medium to engage, to increase awareness, to cultivate knowledge and critical thinking abilities, in the digital world it has become an all too easy mechanism of click bait. 

In his essay, “Why I Write” George Orwell states, “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” The two are inherently connected, inviting the consumer, the reader, to engage and analyze with different ideologies and beliefs. Digital marketing content is debasing the function of writing by leading consumers to one conclusion: they need this product. It is a single-minded approach with one purpose in mind: to sell. When the art of writing is extorted for capital, politics are inevitably invited into the equation. It is the responsibility of writers to be intentional, honest, and critical when contributing to the mass landscape of online content. In our current digital culture industry, anyone can be an artist, writer, poet… while it would appear to offer equal opportunity and promote engagement, it is detrimental to any form of progress towards a mass intellectual life.