The Instigation Dispatch: 9.4.25- We're All Content Creators Now (FREE)

The job market is trash and your credentials and experience aren't enough to break through in a world where the line between professional ability and the presentation of a persona is disappearing.

Everybody’s a Content Creator Now

A few days ago, my 13 year-old daughter caught me in one of those dad moments where you’re half venting, half teaching. I was talking about a project that had fallen through for my consultancy, laying out the frustrations of scope creep, bad timing, and budgets that dissolve into thin air. She listened politely, the way kids do when they know they’re about to be drafted into a lesson on “how the real world works.” Then she smirked and said:

“Dad, maybe you should just be an influencer.”

Of course, I brushed it off. Ridiculous. I’m not about to stand in a grocery store aisle reviewing cereal flavors for TikTok. I’m not about to prank my friends like I’m still in undergrad. I’m not setting up a ring light to deliver hot takes about pop culture while sipping coffee from a branded mug. I’m not one of those people.

Or so I thought.

Because the next day, I had a conversation with a friend offering critiques of my website and LinkedIn. And somewhere between “maybe you should post more often” and “you need to brand yourself more clearly,” it hit me: in today’s labor market, a solid résumé, decades of experience, and glowing references don’t mean what they used to. In the attention economy, your skills are secondary to your packaging.

You’re not a strategist or a marketer or a project manager anymore. You’re a content creator who happens to do strategy, marketing, or project management.

The Attention Economy Ate the Job Market

It’s no secret the job market is broken. Too many postings are fake, ghost jobs meant to signal “growth” rather than hire real people. Too many applications disappear into black holes guarded by AI résumé scanners. And too many companies treat talent like an easily replaceable line item.

So what’s left? The hustle. The hook. The ability to stand out.

Which, in 2025, means creating content.

LinkedIn has turned into a motivational speaking convention. Xitter (or whatever we’re calling it this week) rewards the spiciest take, not the sharpest insight. TikTok is a masterclass in packaging: your expertise doesn’t matter unless it can fit into 90 seconds of jump cuts and captions. Even Substack—where you’re reading this right now—isn’t about writing so much as it is about attention management.

The irony isn’t lost on me. I roll my eyes at “thought leaders” posting carousel slides of clichés on LinkedIn, yet here I am, putting out essays into the digital void hoping someone notices.

The Gig Economy Came for Corporate America

The gig economy was supposed to be about flexibility. Do a shift when you want. Pick up a ride if you’ve got time. Drop off food between classes. For Lyft drivers and DoorDash couriers, it was at least clear what the transaction was: you deliver the service, you get paid, you get rated. Stars and tips are the currency.

But somewhere along the way, the logic of the gig economy slipped into Corporate America. Suddenly, the same professional careers that once came with security, benefits, and a sense of trajectory have started to feel like a string of freelance stints with a W-2 attached.

Now? We’re all “fractional.”

Fractional consultants. Fractional strategists. Fractional marketers. We’re piecing together careers from project to project, lead to lead, reference to reference—trying to make the rent, pay the mortgage, or justify the health insurance premium.

This isn’t what we signed up for.

We went to school and studied complex theories, frameworks, and ideas. We believed that mastery of difficult subjects would make us professionally salient. But these days, my understanding of macroeconomic theory or my knowledge of American cultural movements isn’t enough to get me in the room. Unless I can package those insights into a catchy post, a viral clip, or a digestible “framework,” they may as well not exist.

The hard truth: the professional has become the product.

Just like gig workers are evaluated by stars, tips, and delivery times, white-collar professionals are now judged by engagement metrics. How many followers. How many shares. How “on brand” the packaging is. The résumé has been replaced by the reel. The reference letter by the retweet.

And this shift isn’t just cosmetic—it’s existential. Because while a driver knows their shift ends when they park the car, for us, the shift never ends. We don’t clock out of being content. We are the content.

That’s the quiet cruelty of this new system: the gig economy told us to sell our labor piecemeal. The attention economy told us to sell ourselves wholesale.

From Skills to Storytelling

The professional equation has changed. It used to look like this:

Skills + Experience + References = Opportunity.

Now it looks more like:

Skills + Content + Attention = Opportunity.

And notice where “experience” ended up.

It’s not that people suddenly stopped caring about whether you can do the job. It’s that nobody sees your skills unless you’ve packaged them into digestible content first. People don’t read résumés anymore; they read feeds. They don’t ask for references; they ask for your podcast link.

The portfolio isn’t a PDF anymore… it’s a lifestyle stream.

And the people who once prided themselves on quiet professionalism—on being the person who gets the job done without fanfare—are now forced to develop a brand. A brand voice. A posting cadence. A signature style. You can’t just be good. You have to be good at marketing being good.

The Reluctant Influencer

There’s a certain humiliation in realizing that the thing you thought made you “above” the influencer economy is actually the very thing pulling you into it.

I used to joke about influencers like they were a different species. They lived in the land of ring lights and affiliate codes, while I lived in the land of decks and deliverables. But slowly, that line eroded. Now, a consultant without a content footprint looks…well, irrelevant.

And it’s not just consultants. The lawyer, the teacher, the fitness trainer, the nonprofit director—they’re all on Instagram and TikTok. Not because they want to be, but because they have to be. Because the audience comes before the opportunity.

The gig economy told us to sell our labor piecemeal. The attention economy told us to sell ourselves wholesale.

When Packaging Outweighs Product

Here’s the dark side: when the market values attention above all else, packaging starts to outweigh product.

We see it every day. Someone with thin experience but excellent presentation racks up likes and follows, while people with deep expertise struggle to get visibility. Thought leaders become brands. Brands become personalities. And personalities become jobs.

This is why we have endless “leadership coaches” who’ve never actually led anything. Why “AI experts” emerge from nowhere after downloading ChatGPT once. Why so many “creators” recycle the same motivational slogans and call it wisdom.

The market rewards whoever shouts the loudest, not whoever knows the most.

And yet, the more I rail against it, the more I realize: it works.

The Trap of Relevance

At a time when whole industries are contracting, when layoffs are monthly rituals, and when trust in institutions has crumbled, relevance has become currency.

If you can make yourself seen, you might get the gig. You might get the client. You might get the opportunity. That’s why people who once dismissed “content” now churn it out reluctantly. It’s less about passion and more about survival.

The cruel irony? Even the people making fun of influencers are content creators now. That friend who posts about sourdough bread experiments on Instagram? Content creator. The uncle who live-tweets Bears games with running commentary? Content creator. Your cousin posting Zillow listings of dream homes she can’t afford? Content creator.

And me, writing this Dispatch for you to read? Yeah. Content creator.

The Psychological Toll

But let’s not pretend this shift comes without cost.

When your relevance depends on your ability to constantly generate, package, and perform, burnout is inevitable. We’re not just working jobs anymore—we’re working on ourselves as jobs.

Every post becomes a product. Every thought becomes marketable. Every moment of silence becomes a liability. And if you dare to step back from the feed, you risk disappearing altogether.

It’s exhausting. And it’s not sustainable.

What Do We Do With This?

Here’s where I land: we can’t roll back the clock. The professional world isn’t going to suddenly abandon the attention economy and go back to résumés in manila folders. The toothpaste is out of the tube.

But maybe we can redefine what “content creation” means.

It doesn’t have to mean chasing virality. It doesn’t have to mean selling out. It doesn’t have to mean turning your life into clickbait.

What if content was just an extension of your craft? What if the packaging matched the product? What if we stopped trying to game the algorithm and started using content as a way to genuinely communicate what we do and why it matters?

Maybe the challenge isn’t to become an influencer. Maybe it’s to become authentic in public.

Full Circle

So when my daughter told me to become an influencer, I laughed her off. But maybe she wasn’t wrong. Maybe what she saw—better than I wanted to admit—is that being “an influencer” isn’t a choice anymore. It’s the baseline. The world already made me one.

The only question left is what kind.

Because if we’re all content creators now, then the job isn’t to resist it—it’s to make sure the content actually reflects who we are, not just who the algorithm wants us to be.

And if I have to keep making noise in order to get noticed, then fine. But I’ll make my noise in my own voice.

Even if it’s just another Dispatch floating in the current of the attention economy.