When Content Is No Longer Scarce, What Is?
Recorded in Chinese
When content is easy to produce, what remains scarce? Thinking through changing ways of sharing information brings me to interpretation, judgment, and shared understanding—and the personal perspective in my writing.
00:01 Recently, on Xiaohongshu,
00:03 I came across a post.
00:06 It said that some companies
00:08 no longer have product roles,
00:11 only engineering and algorithm roles.
00:15 Then I saw people in the comments say
00:18 that even user operations roles
00:20 or content-related roles are gone now.
00:24 Or rather, user operations
00:26 and content-related roles
00:29 can already be replaced by AI.
00:33 Although I do not really agree
00:36 that AI can replace content roles,
00:39 I still wonder:
00:41 in an age when content is
00:44 so easy to produce,
00:46 what makes a content role
00:49 scarce or valuable?
00:52 I have long been interested in
00:55 how information circulates.
00:58 I think about different periods in history.
01:01 At the very beginning,
01:04 information may have spread
01:08 by word of mouth.
01:11 Later, people could
01:15 rush letters across the country on horseback,
01:18 or send them by carrier pigeon,
01:19 using those methods
01:21 to spread information.
01:22 Later still came
01:25 the age of fax and telegraph.
01:29 And after that came things like email
01:33 and instant messaging.
01:37 Looking across this whole progression,
01:40 I feel that
01:44 as technology keeps advancing,
01:48 information spreads faster and faster
01:51 with fewer and fewer limits.
01:54 Now, in the age of AI,
01:55 with AI available,
01:56 we no longer have to do what we did
01:59 in the traditional internet era:
02:00 search keywords on Google
02:03 and retrieve information.
02:06 Now we only need to ask an AI
02:09 what relevant information exists,
02:11 and it will bring that content back to us.
02:13 As long as the AI does not hallucinate,
02:15 the information generally
02:18 has an original source,
02:19 and we can get it extremely quickly.
02:24 So returning to my original question:
02:30 if information moves and spreads so quickly,
02:35 and content is extremely easy to produce,
02:38 then today,
02:41 where does the scarcity
02:42 of a content role or position
02:44 actually come from?
02:46 I tried
02:48 using the same approach of reviewing history
02:51 that I just used.
02:54 I made some notes.
02:56 Going back to the age of oral transmission,
03:00 when information passed by word of mouth,
03:02 what was scarce then,
03:07 whether information or content,
03:08 was memory.
03:12 The more someone remembered,
03:13 the more they could
03:16 pass on,
03:18 or say out loud.
03:21 Next came the age of letters
03:24 and printing,
03:25 when messages might travel by carrier pigeon.
03:27 People who could write letters
03:31 could convey content.
03:32 At that time,
03:34 what was scarce was people who could write,
03:37 people who were literate.
03:39 Someone who could not write
03:41 might go to a courier station and find
03:44 a scholar who could write for them.
03:47 Those people were what was scarce then.
03:51 Moving forward,
03:53 we reached the age of
03:55 telegraph and fax,
03:57 corresponding to radio and television.
04:01 At that time,
04:02 people who could appear on television
04:04 had a certain voice and influence.
04:06 That was what made them scarce.
04:10 Compared with the speed of written text,
04:12 information on television
04:16 or radio
04:18 could spread much faster,
04:19 whether it was information or content.
04:21 Then came the internet era.
04:24 In the internet era,
04:29 as we all know,
04:30 attention became the thing to capture.
04:33 Whoever could hold users' attention
04:36 could claim a share of the market.
04:40 Now we have reached the age of AI.
04:45 What is scarce now?
04:50 What comes to mind is this:
04:53 for example,
04:56 we may all receive the same information,
04:59 but different people,
05:00 different institutions,
05:02 and different organizations
05:03 interpret that same information differently.
05:07 I think that interpretation,
05:09 or explanation,
05:10 or the ability to create
05:15 a kind of shared understanding online,
05:19 represents how they
05:21 view that event.
05:23 What role do they think it plays
05:24 in our current era?
05:26 What effect will it have?
05:27 What place will it hold?
05:28 How will it affect the future?
05:31 That so-called explanation,
05:35 interpretation,
05:36 or shared understanding
05:38 is where the scarcity lies.
05:41 I actually think
05:44 that if someone can make
05:48 that shared understanding spread,
05:52 or get even a small group to follow them,
05:56 then that also shows that they have
06:00 an ability to select,
06:02 an ability to judge,
06:04 and the so-called...
06:06 we are back to a word
06:08 we often hype up: taste.
06:11 Their taste definitely exists.
06:13 Otherwise they could not produce
06:16 an interpretation that makes people think,
06:18 wow, that is interesting.
06:23 So...
06:26 returning to content,
06:30 if a content creator
06:33 can
06:35 play some kind of intermediary role,
06:38 or a translator's role,
06:41 and guide people to bring out these ideas
06:44 and interpretations,
06:46 so more people can see
06:48 how this person understands an event,
06:50 a person,
06:51 or a phenomenon,
06:55 and what their interpretation is,
06:57 with that interpretation looking ahead,
07:01 then this role is extremely important
07:03 and needs to exist.
07:06 Mm.
07:07 Today...
07:10 I guess it was today.
07:11 I listened to a podcast episode.
07:14 It was the latest episode of High Energy.
07:20 I saw someone in the comments ask
07:22 whether the episode had been made by AI.
07:26 When I saw that comment,
07:28 I had not listened to the episode yet.
07:31 The comment caught my attention,
07:34 so I listened to the podcast.
07:37 I am 100% sure it was recorded by real people.
07:42 But why did it make people wonder,
07:44 was this recorded by AI?
07:47 Because the host and guest sounded very mechanical.
07:53 Their exchange felt very...
07:56 not like real people,
07:57 not alive.
07:59 And then,
08:00 at the same time,
08:01 I listened to another podcast,
08:03 A Gentle Cut,
08:08 the episode about the "AI feel."
08:16 On that episode, the host
08:19 raised a question.
08:20 She said that sometimes when she writes,
08:24 she notices that her writing
08:26 does not contain the word "I."
08:29 What she meant was,
08:31 if something I write
08:33 does not contain "I,"
08:34 my point of view,
08:35 my perspective,
08:36 my insights,
08:38 or my own awareness,
08:39 then how is it different from content
08:42 written by official media?
08:45 When I heard her say that,
08:49 I felt something move in me.
08:51 It was because
08:54 last night,
08:58 I had been struggling with something:
09:00 I realized my writing
09:01 contains far too much "I."
09:05 That "I" feels so strong that I wonder
09:09 whether my writing carries an enormous ego.
09:11 It is like what I said in my last video.
09:14 I feel that the ego in my writing is very heavy.
09:18 So I started reflecting on it:
09:21 why is there so much "I" in what I write?
09:26 After thinking it over, I reached
09:32 what I might call a conclusion:
09:35 with certain things,
09:36 that is genuinely what I think.
09:38 And I think my thoughts
09:40 are worth recording.
09:42 Some of my judgments may hold true
09:46 in certain contexts.
09:48 So if my writing
09:51 contains a great deal of "I,"
09:52 perhaps that is reasonable too.
09:54 Otherwise, how is it
09:55 different from what someone else writes?
09:59 Although sometimes these thoughts
10:03 are basically a way to comfort myself,
10:06 I still struggle with why...
10:10 There is a kind of person I really like.
10:13 These people
10:15 feel like water to me.
10:19 Talking with them feels like a spring breeze.
10:24 You feel that this person...
10:27 they...
10:29 How should I put it?
10:30 They are very gentle,
10:32 very much like water.
10:34 I really, really want to become that kind of person.
10:38 But compared with that,
10:41 I am clearly not that kind of person.
10:45 My ego is already so strong
10:50 that I have nothing to do with water anymore.
10:55 This returns to what I said last time:
10:57 I need to live in harmony with my other parts.
11:03 I also keep looking for
11:04 why I feel this way
11:07 about my own writing.
11:08 And I wonder
11:12 whether this feeling about myself is harshness,
11:18 or
11:21 something real.
11:24 Returning to content,
11:26 I still think
11:29 that if someone makes content
11:32 that makes other people wonder,
11:36 when they see or hear it,
11:38 was this written by AI?
11:39 Or if it does not carry that person's flavor
11:44 or personality,
11:47 then to me, that written content
11:51 is not really good enough.
11:52 Before,
11:56 I have also seen some content
11:59 and always felt that
12:01 if it were made in a certain way,
12:03 it would come across better.
12:06 But
12:08 that is only my view.
12:10 It also shows, from another angle,
12:13 that this is how I think about content.
12:17 But all of it truly
12:20 exists only in my head.
12:22 So I still need a way,
12:24 or need to find a way, to present
12:27 the kind of content I truly want to make
12:32 so other people can see it.
12:33 Maybe there are still
12:35 other forms of content in this world.
12:37 It is just...
12:40 Take the "AI feel," for example.
12:43 I have always strongly disliked
12:47 seeing, on Xiaohongshu,
12:49 writing with a very strong AI feel.
12:55 I no longer even know how to complain about it.
13:03 At this point in the video,
13:05 I no longer know what I said earlier.
13:08 But I will treat it as a record of my growth,
13:12 or of my thinking at this stage.
13:14 I did not have any outline for this video.
13:18 I just said whatever came to mind,
13:21 along with some notes I made.
13:29 I will keep learning.