How to Make Content During the Apocalypse
The pandemic was a fire drill. Does the world that survived need more content?
Apocalyptic and dystopian stories have been a staple genre for centuries. From biblical floods to zombie outbreaks, environmental collapse to world-ending warfare, these stories fill people’s imaginations of what the end of the world might look like. Despite their various differences, they all share similar tropes: desperate survivors scouring the remains of a civilization that could not sustain itself.
But by all accounts, 2020 might be a more realistic view of what an apocalypse might look like. COVID-19 spread like wildfire — engulfing nursing homes, religious congregations, prisons, and communities large and small. We saw the Black Lives Matter movement, inflamed after George Floyd’s death, swiftly met by tear gas, flashbangs, and tactical helicopters over American cities for months. And if these two simultaneous fires were not enough, the earth itself literally caught on fire: 10 million acres of rain-parched forest scorched in a series of infernos that consumed homes, habitats, people, and even signs reminding us to wear a mask and social distance. Not to be outdone, 2021 has already staged an insurrection in the U.S., a cyberattack on critical oil infrastructure, and extreme widespread droughts are predicted. As we try to mend from the pandemic, one wonders whether the apocalypse is imminent. As creators, wondering is a powerful muse, but maybe we should be wondering what our guardrails and values are for making content in apocalyptic times?
One thing is for sure, content shouldn’t just respond to the world around us. Instead, content creators and publishers must realize that content influences and makes the world — and that we must shape a new one.
Meanwhile, those of us privileged enough to work in content industries found ourselves sitting at home, learning how to turn off Snap filters on Zoom, documenting our pasta making abilities, juggling childcare and home learning with a WFH schedule, AND how to live through the existential terror of a steady stream of human suffering, racism, heartbreak, and fear. Relegated to the WFH class, not quite “essential” but with jobs of some sort, we did our jobs: we made content.
Those in the production process scrambled to find workarounds to the problem of physical proximity brought on by the plague of our time. First, we filmed everything inside our own homes — from SNL to proms to Netflix specials. We installed glass partitions between on-screen talent (which we now know does nothing to prevent aerosolized particles from lingering and concentrating in a room). We learned how to produce remote livestream shows because, even though it was out of necessity, 2020 accelerated an inevitable adoption of this technology. But mostly, we waited; we waited for the apocalypse to end so that we could resume our regularly scheduled programming the way it was before.
Those of us closer to the editorial and programming process had another set of concerns to worry about: how do we create content for an audience whose lives have been completely upended? If we cannot pretend that anything is normal, what can we say (and should we)? What does a world on fire need? And can media industries even provide it, without fanning the flames?
Content has a unique potential to tell stories that inspire contemplation about the complexity of the world. But what we saw in 2020 was that people turned to their streaming services to anesthetize themselves and pass newly-solitary hours away. Netflix’s subscriber growth waxed at the onset of the pandemic and waned as vaccines started rolling out. Content and the apocalypse are dangerous bedfellows: the worse the world gets, the more appealing escaping through content becomes.
How can we go back to business-as-usual when the “usual” poses an existential threat to the planet and its inhabitants?
Here are some guardrails for making content in apocalyptic times:
1. Entertainment without ethics advances the apocalypse.
We know that ethics are a work in progress; we are never done revisiting and recalibrating our ethical commitment to our audience and the world. Our work to create and distribute content has consequences on the world — we’ve survived and lived through disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, alternate facts and fake news.
But, mindless entertainment is truly that: an invitation for audiences to become mindless or more thoughtless. At its worst, viewers unplug from their own critical reasoning because the content stokes their anxieties and fears, or it appeals to our most primal desires. At its best, content entertains as much as it inspires contemplation — regardless of the genre, audience, or format.
We can create content that is fun, entertaining, and compelling without asking viewers to divest from critical thinking. That doesn’t mean that contemplative content has to be overly serious or prescriptive — it can be silly, fantastical or thrilling too. I just finished watching Mr. Robot (for the second time) and it was worth every second of think-time. The premise of alternate realities vs. alternate personalities alone inspires contemplation — much less depicting the unintended consequences of a capitalist society. Think about the times you’ve watched something that left you curious, edified, or invested — and imagine the world if we exponentially multiplied the opportunities for everyday people to have that same experience.
2. Representation matters. Matter matters even more.
On the inaugural season of HBO Max’s reality show Full Bloom, up-and-coming florists compete to create beautiful arrangements from exotic flowers and foliage. Filmed during the pandemic and the California wildfires, it’s hard to ignore the masked crew members wearing PPE in the background of their frenetic arrangement challenges. And at the end of each episode, the show donates flowers to everyday people in familiar scenes from 2020: frontline workers at a hospital, or lower-income people of color at a housing complex, for example.
Full Bloom tries to inject beauty into an ugly world on fire, and that’s a worthy endeavor. But what purpose do floral donations serve? They may brighten the day of the lucky recipients, hand-picked by the producers, and they may create a heartwarming moment for viewers at home. But they also remind me of the critiques about corporate allyship or optical allyship: that representations of support cannot be confused for actual support. These flowers didn’t magically morph into what these people actually needed — more PPE or better working conditions, nor did they make housing or other basic needs more secure for people living on the edge.
Content creators are in a unique position to turn the dial on real life threats by persuading or educating audiences to live more sustainably, intervene in acts of violence, and engage in difficult conversations that impact their communities. But too often we stop in the realm of representation: we want to look like we are virtuous and compassionate. Let’s challenge ourselves to think about how content can become concrete change instead: what knowledge or motivations do audiences need to feel empowered to materially act?
3. Don’t make it awkward for everybody.
Living through the uprisings for Black lives and against anti-Asian violence, we can’t help but notice a steady stream of corporate statements making their positions known. Your inbox or Linkedin feed might look like mine: rental car companies, apparel brands, and even subscription meal kit services have likely felt the pressure to issue a statement condemning the violence.
NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell said that the league was “wrong” for “not listening” to the concerns of its majority Black players — on issues ranging from police brutality to traumatic brain injury on the field. What makes this apology painfully awkward to everyone watching: this apology comes without any restitution to Colin Kaepernick, who was famously burned by the league for his activism.
There must be a better way to demonstrate our solidarity — one that doesn’t trigger a disconnect between what is said and what actions are taken. For those of us who are part of a group experiencing hate, bias and violence, these statements often feel disingenuous and at its worst, devastatingly cringeworthy — the visceral fear of violence coupled so casually with superficial content. Our challenge as we work to build hopeful companies while society frays at the seam is to show our work and be honest and accountable about our impacts.
4. People reach people. People help people. People listen to people. Brands are not people.
We need some radical honesty about brands: we have spent the past century and a half mythologizing them amongst ourselves, advertisers, and audiences. Brands give identity to products and services, but they don’t confer personhood. A brand isn’t going to save us when we are in need. People will.
This is a tough call, but maybe we should retire the myth that brands and companies are world-changing entities that make the world a better place. If we ever truly believed that, we must acknowledge this story’s shortfall in light of everything we have experienced so far in the 2020's. Instead, we should think about our brands — and the content we generate under them — as agents that provide people the tools to change the world.
As the world hobbles along on wobbly ground, we’re all realizing how fragile it is. There will be another crisis. However, these crises reveal our blindspots and our old guardrails just aren’t effective. As creators and people, we need to take responsibility for the world we are shaping with our content — while we still have one.
