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Please, help me, my brain is so so broken What do I say?? It's convenient to fold "listen, watch, read" and 'enjoy' sometimes just doesn't feel like the right word!

What term do you suggest for referring to multiple types of media at once? "Content" is the only catch-all that comes to mind, and I don't feel like it's anywhere near as negative as "consume." I'm definitely open to alternatives, though.

You literally just typed the word "media"

media works for the different formats that art comes in there is still another word needed for the stuff that comes in different formats

When I go to a museum and look at something, I am not "consuming" the art. The art remains. When I see a performance onstage, I am not "consuming" the performance. The performance remains in the memory and script. "Content" is a nothing word. It describes unknown shit inside a box.

The "content" of a book is in the form of ideas translated into symbols that have meaning. I do not consume the content of the book. The content remains, unless I destroy the book, and even then the content remains in myself as a being who was changed by the symbols and meaning in the book.

This also goes for non-creative things such as tools, homes, vehicles, services. I do not "consume" the screwdriver I use to fix the knob on my silverware drawer. I do not "consume" the services of a taxi driver. These are not finite resources that are destroyed or transformed in their use.

what about derogatorily for meaningless slop made for the masses to shit money at you, like "marvel movies are pure fucking *content*"

People may not think it's a big deal but language shapes culture and culture shapes language. We are quite literally being trained to view everything as consumable, particularly our own lives and identities so we are giving up rights, freedoms, & privacy to sell every aspect of ourselves

And happily so at that. On newer generations it feels as if the right to privacy, or privacy itself, doesn't matter anymore. But maybe that careless stance may, in light of the current state of media and society, start to change. Hopefully so.

I think it's hard to imagine through privacy if you've never experienced it. And these companies work really hard at constantly surveilling us but keeping it away from our conscious attention exactly what it MEANS. We know they are doing it but the scope and scale is so large it's hard to focus

And we view other people in terms of what they can provide us to consume. It is fundamentally empty and makes all of us miserable but so many people don't even realize they are doing it. I'm particularly pissed cuz it's intentionally geared at impressionable young people