Creation over consumption
I kept a media consumption diary for a week. I thought it would be an easy task, turns out I was wrong. Before the week was up, I had already made peace with not succeeding in my own assignment.
What I noticed was this: I read, listen, watch, skim, eyeball, overhear, take in so much content, all of the time.
The barrage of content is constant and omnipresent. Without a conscious thought, I open Substack during my lunch break and start reading whichever post pops up first. A notification from a news outlet hits my screen and I glance at it automatically, as if I was Pavlov’s dog. On the bus I listen to a playlist so incoherent that I keep picking up the phone just to arrange some more songs in the queue. I get home after a long day and immerse myself in the ceaseless drama of Love Island. And that’s the condensed version.
Imagine how much time I would have on my hands if none of those sources of neverending entertainment hadn’t been at my very fingertips.
Since I was a preteen, I’ve been actively online. One thing about being actively online, you’re constantly fed information about anything and everything. Another thing about being actively online, it takes over your time and your thoughts.
The energy we expend on consumption could very easily be redirected into production itself. Think back to childhood and making home videos over binge watching Netflix. Those were the days, you would all watch the same children’s shows and then use them as inspiration for your outdoor games. Media was just a snack in the healthy diet of everyday entertainment. The meals consisting of something more substantial, the doing instead of hearing about what is done.
We discussed this with Petra in first podcast episode, the aptly titled Introduction. Media consumption will never leave the buffet all together-and we hope to become a part of the selection, as is obvious-yet we want to try out the other option, the creating.
That is the idea behind the podcast and the blog. Consuming the content that we’re interested in, repurposing it to crafting something of our own. Taking a page out of our childhood selves’ book and creating a fusion of input and output, braiding the two together.
The topics are ones that we find current. The story is in what we make of the topics. The process is a labor of love.
Hopefully this platform of ours will find its audience, but in the meantime, we will keep creating just for our own sakes.