I will grant you that "consume" is awkward. I often say "I read -- well -- I listened to [The Sandlot]" and "consume" is too awkward to use colloquially as "I consumed [The Sandlot]".

That said... Unless you've got an overtly superior alternative, time to move on and join the fray. It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.

> It's simply a concise way to say "read / watched / listened" when context of which media doesn't matter.

It's barely tolerable when used in that sense, but typically it's not used in that sense. The problem is the widespread abuse of the term. When I first started hearing it used, it was weird but didn't irritate me because it was usually used in the sense you're saying here. But then it started being used all over the place, even when speaking of a single sort of media.

I'm not saying this is right, but it has become a bit of a "red flag" word to me these days, indicating to me that the the piece where it's being used is not of great quality.

You're letting something irritate you that's not wrong.

It's like getting mad when someone says "I had noodles for lunch" when you know perfectly well they had /spaghetti/, and if they'd said /spaghetti/ you could get irate because they actually had /ragu/ spaghetti (meat in the spaghetti sauce).

Using the abstract word it still "fine" if that's the level the speaker wants to give.

I don't think that analogy captures my problem with those words. My problem, really, is that they devalue what they refer to. "Consumer" devalues people, and "content" devalues creative effort.

Saying "noodles" doesn't devalue spaghetti.

"Consuming content" is term used by VCs, because when evaluating startups they are mainly concerned about dry, dehumanized, KPI type metrics, like:

1) attracting XXX eyeballs/consumers per quarter

2) producing YYY amount of content for consumption

3) monetizing consumers for $ZZ/mo

I think it would devalue the ragu Bolognese spaghetti from the context of the chef! "They called my beautiful creation 'noodles!' My life is a sham! quickly commits seppuku" :-)

"I learned from"?

I like to imagine some group of pedants sitting in a cliche smoky room ruminating on this, going through all these permutations and arguing why each word wasn't good enough (e.g. "you needn't have learned!") until they finally ended up with the eureka of 'consume' which was then hackneyed by business folk and thus led to irritating our buddy JohnFen here.

Don't worry about me. I'm fine. All that happens is that I think less of the work that talks that way. My reaction is of little impact to anyone in the end.

I mention it here, though, because the number of people who find that language problematic seems to be on the rise, and that may inform how authors write.

I find debating about words to be fun! Thanks for the debate. :-)

I have a visceral reaction when I see people referred to as consumers. It's rude and distasteful beyond belief on par with calling them biomass waste producers, useful drones, useless eaters, or some sort of contagion. How about, in most cases, you know, CUSTOMERS? Or in this case listeners.

I understand but don't agree.

'customer' implies commerce happened, 'listener' implies listening happened. 'consumer' is a higher abstraction than either of those.

It's the most abstract word someone could think of to say "X internalized Y".

e.g. "X took Y and added it to itself... let's not get distracted with how. the important thing is, X took Y and internalized it."

I guess we could, uh, go with "internalizer". I'd be down with that.

> 'consumer' is a higher abstraction than either of those

In the old days, we called those people the "audience".

What your audience hopefully does with your work is "learn" or "be entertained".

Perhaps beneficiary but that may be a bridge too far

But you don't consume content, that's meaningless. When you consume something, it is used up and disappears entirely.

Your context is backwards. The context is me not the thing.

You're thinking "Book + Me = Book + Me" but in the context of me it's...

  Me + Food = Me with more nutrients.
  Me + Book = Me with more knowledge.

In that context, post-consumption, the state of the book becomes irrelevant (destroyed or not, it doesn't matter, I still got what I wanted from it). I absorbed the knowledge (or nutrients). Brought it into my body and made it part of me.

Not that it matters much, but under your interpretation, the better wording would be "ingesting". And interestingly, that word doesn't have the same problem as "consuming", which is that content peddlers devalue the reader by implying they are consuming their merchandise.

I like ingest!

That said, I believe OP is offended at being referred to in an impersonal way. As such, I don't believe there's much to be done for him beyond "don't refer to people by their actions", which is impractical.

"I ingested [The Sandlot]" or "We had 50,000 ingesters of [The Sandlot] this week!"

are, to my mind, faaaaaairly equivalent to

"I consumed [The Sandlot]" or "We had 50,000 consumers of [The Sandlot] this week!"

Not terribly compelling but... "ingest" has a gut association whilst "consume" has a head connotation... so... there's that.

However, there is a fun distinction between the two. "Consuming" a book, to me, just implies you read it. "Digesting" and "ingesting" have implications of /rumination/.

I agree, but for a different reason. I think the really unfair advantage comes when you start producing content for other roles. That's when you'll find out if you really know what you are talking about!

I agree with you in principle, but just like with emojis in business environment, I have accepted it is here to stay. There is too much variation in what is offered and content captures it all. It does not make it any less annoying, but I understand why it caught on.

Agreed, it’s like describing an eating meal as “ingesting calories”. It’s an impoverished viewpoint.

when discussing diet and exercise with your dietician/trainer - you will calculate calories intake and expenditure, instead of describing what you had for dinner.

The goal of consuming content is not to enjoy listening to other people, enjoy reading, or enjoy writing/talking.

The goal of consuming content is to absorb and internalize information, and broaden knowledge base.

To me, the usage of the term "consume content" is perfectly fine

That is not a distinction I've ever seen anyone make before, and I'm not sure I follow the logic of it.

I also have a natural aversion to this phrase for some reason. "Content" to me evokes endless clickbait, YouTube video review spam, listicles, submarine articles, etc. When I see someone comment on something along the lines of "this is great content"-what I really hear is "this is recognisable as high-effort / professionally produced in a marketing context", it says nothing to the substance of the thing, what novel ideas it contributes, and so on. I also recognise that this is a very reductive way of looking at the world so I don't take it too seriously.

"Read/Watch/Listen" are what you think you are doing. "Consume" is what the people who want to make money from you think (Entrepreneurs, Media executives, bloggers etc).

That's why "consume" is a red-flag word along with "content". They're both dehumanizing, and look to be intended to reduce people to economic units.

Their use signals to me that I'm being exposed to a particular type of source that disrespects their audience and tends to produce substandard work.

I agree with this assessment. Thats why I always turn off all recommendations and only read/watch/listen to things I have been exposed offline

I came here triggered by this, to say exactly this. Pleasantly surprised I'm not the only one.