Ulterior Motives

A few lessons in content marketing, and the cost of selling.

This essay - what is it in service of? What is it in aid of? Surely no one would just do this. If you tell a joke or make an observation, it should eventually pay off in a pitch for the hot new snake oil, or at least make you look good.

All this candor and wit and searching self revelation - surely, it’s all a way to create rapport, to show they you and me, we’re not so different, as we travel arm in arm toward the dreaded call to action. Or else why do it?

Sponsored content

I started No Homework with mixed motives. I had things to get off my chest. Some felt urgent, others I wanted to explore out loud. But I also had things to sell, like a new novel about Santa Claus, a book that I’d edited about the persistent influence of Ice Age culture, and an oracle for your phone.

Plus, they said there was money to be made here on Substack. Who said it? Mostly the people on Substack who were telling me what I wanted to hear.

The pretense

In content marketing, the pretense is that we’re just chatting, just two old pals. You’ll never believe what happened when I indulged in that thing we have in common! The common fear we share actually has a very simple solution, and luckily, I have just the slideshow to prove it.

So much of what I read nowadays is a conversation as a pretense for a pitch for a show or software package, or just how smart somebody wants you to think they are. But what if that’s backwards? What if the pitch is actually the pretense?

Maybe we’re both so far gone that I have to pretend to sell something just to engage in conversation. Maybe amid the thrashing winds of commerce and ambition, a sales pitch is the only sane way I have left to reach out and say a simple hello.

Professional content

I worked for a few years at a content agency. We had a pinball machine and a podcast studio and a barista on staff. I wrote articles, infographics, video scripts, social posts, newsletter blurbs and so on to charmingly advance the commercial priorities of a series of major American corporations. I made good money, made some friends, and didn’t feel the riding crop on my hide quite so distinctly for those five years.

The content game consisted of offering the audience some information and advice in an amiable, approachable tone voice, and close it out with a quick, welcoming note from the company that had provided the kind and helpful words, and who also, not so coincidentally, could assist you in making use of your newfound expertise and confidence.

It wasn’t dishonest. But there was something slippery about it. I couldn’t imagine ever personally, voluntarily reading the pieces I wrote. The companies paid a lot to produce the pieces. But no one I knew ever read or watched or saw them. While they were all vetted by the experts our clients provided, then fact-checked and proofread, I couldn’t imagine trusting the pieces I wrote.

Fake hanging out

Tone is big when you’re making content. Be authoritative, but approachable, and cheerful, almost chirpy. It helps to squeeze on a smile while you type.

Content is a way for a sprawling commercial concern, calling itself a brand, to offer the impression of spending quality time with a customer.

Who exactly is wasting whose time?

That’s the question I always ran into, and always had to brush aside when it came to content.

Abuse is inherent

The two sins of content marketing are wasting someone’s time and abusing their attention. The first is an economic sin, akin to theft. This is especially pronounced given our employers’ custom of attaching a dollar value to our few hours on earth.

The second is more interesting. And there’s something to be learned when we ask what it is to abuse someone’s attention. Going by feel, certain morals emerge. And they shine a light on what attention actually is, and what it’s possibly for.

After almost seven months of No Homework, I can say that every sales pitch is also a test of the seller. At least it is for me. Maybe that’s why our clients had to keep the attention-abuse part of their jobs at arm’s length, with an agency. If I’m giving them too much credit, then that seems a decent way to be wrong.

Comes to shove

On a personal note, I was recently confronted with the possibility of having to suspend publishing these essays. The reasons were private and professional. Money was the thing. It wasn’t a fun time, or a pleasant quandary.

If push had come to shove, I almost wanted to say fine, and close up shop. I’ve made very little money on this venture, maybe two weeks of daycare. And with each new essay, I seem to wear out the patience of another half dozen people, who unsubscribe.

As a father, I labor under financial pressures that bleed into more profound responsibilities. It can feel almost noble to acquiesce to philistine demands and just take the fucking money, with however many strings attached.

The experience required me to ask, once more, what I could stand to give up. I asked myself why I’m writing these essays. And I asked why it’s so important that I publish them. And an answer emerged somewhere in that quiet, personal tumult. The important thing about these essays, I discovered, is not promoting my books or other projects. It’s in thinking out loud - and hopefully well - in public.

If you read this, you probably read a lot. And today, especially on the screen, the mode of discourse is urgent to the point that it can feel like it’s a moral failure to stop and think. It can seem like there is no thinking and choosing at all to life. It can seem like free will, if it ever existed, left town a while back. Certain people seem to think so. And others seem to offer fresh supporting evidence every day.

Thinking in public

It’s a big, sad world. People give up on it every day. People give up on themselves every day. A wise man said there’s nothing new under the sun a very long time ago. He had to say it, because it didn't feel that way. And it still doesn’t feel that way.

So for now, I’ll continue to think out loud and in public. Of all the humiliations hurtling down the track, that one is at least sort of honest.