📟 Content Fails Unless It Creates Value

Please stop lighting your marketing budget on fire <333

Apr 16, 2025

TikTok is spiraling.
Do people even watch YouTube Shorts?
Why is everyone posting carousels on Instagram?
And is it socially acceptable to use X?

The fact of the matter is this: in the attention economy, every second counts. Where you post, what you’re posting, and why you're posting it fucking matters.

We are drowning in content.
As of January 2025, there are over 328 million terabytes of data on the internet. It would take more than 25,000 years to consume everything uploaded in a single year. Total comprehension is a fruitless pursuit, so we self-select. We crave the best. The most viable. The most watchable.

And if infinite content wasn’t enough, now we’ve got AI slop to wade through.
Brands loudly and fragrantly using ChatGPT to write things like we’re not a [category], we’re a [vague metaphor] and the M dash is fighting for its life out here.

We do not need more content.
We need curation.

Scrolling is the new zoning out, the new smoking, the new channel surfing.

So if you’re going to interrupt someone’s spiral of digital dissociation…
You better be giving them something worth the disruption.

I’m feeling generous, so I’m sharing a basic version of the framework I bring to clients when we’re working through a strategy build for digital channels, a campaign, or even a brand architecture:

Six (stupidly easy) Ways to Create Value with Content

These are the six psychological levers I pull, depending on what I want someone to feel or do. (Culty, but did you expect anything less?)

1. Content That Serves as Entertainment

This is content that kills boredom, gives joy, or scratches the dopamine itch.
Distracts. Delights. Amuses.

Why it works:
From an evolutionary perspective, our brains were wired to seek out new stimuli. Novelty once meant survival, spotting an unfamiliar rustle in the bushes could be the difference between dinner and death.

Researchers like Kent Berridge and Robert Sapolsky have shown that unpredictable stimuli hit our motivation circuits hard, which is why entertainment and surprise feel so addictive. Absurd content works because it breaks the pattern just enough to confuse us, then rewards us when it clicks, what Victor Raskin called the pleasure of resolving incongruity. And once we’re laughing, we’re more open. Barbara Fredrickson’s work shows that positive emotion makes us more receptive to new ideas. That’s why a perfectly timed “I needed this” meme isn’t just funny it’s emotional lubrication for whatever message comes next…(like your ad 👀)

2. Content that Inspires Emotional Resonance

This content taps into universal emotions, feelings like grief, nostalgia, beauty, hope, rage.
Makes me experience something real or deep.

Why it works:
Our brains are wired to remember what we feel. The amygdala flags emotionally charged moments as important, telling the memory center to lock them in. That’s why grief, beauty, rage, and nostalgia stick with us longer than facts ever could.
Psychologist Keith Oatley described emotional storytelling as a simulation engine, we turn to fiction, reels, and emotionally charged content to practice feeling. To run scenarios, rehearse empathy, and understand ourselves without the real-world fallout.
Flashbulb Memory Theory, first introduced by Roger Brown and James Kulik, explains why those moments stay with us: emotional arousal sharpens recall, turning a breakup text or a perfect sunset into something permanent.
Paul Ekman’s work on universal emotions shows us that feelings like sadness, joy, and anger are hardwired, they’re emotional currencies that cut across every culture.

3. Social Currency

This content makes me look smart, funny, or in-the-know.
Signals taste, status, and expertise.

Why it works:

Sharing is self-branding. Every post, every story, every retweet is a tiny identity performance. Sociologist Erving Goffman called this impression management, the idea that we’re constantly presenting curated versions of ourselves, depending on the stage we’re on and the audience we’re playing to. Online, that stage is the feed. And what we share is how we signal who we are, or who we want to be.
Psychologist Pierre Bourdieu (sorry for the wiki link) would call this cultural capital, knowledge, taste, and aesthetic fluency that communicates status without saying it outright. A niche reference, an ironic meme, an early link, these are social flexes. They say: I’m ahead. I’m in. I get it. And when content helps someone perform that identity, when it gives them something clever, cool, or high-taste to post, they’ll share it.

4. Aspirational Inspiration

This content makes me want to do, be, or achieve more.
This is vision-fodder for the Future Me™.

Why it works:

The Future Me™ is a cognitive placeholder, a vision we project onto the horizon to give our present self something to move toward. Psychologist Hazel Markus called this the Possible Selves theory: when we see someone else living the life we want, it activates our own latent sense of potential. Dream lifestyle content, behind-the-scenes hustle, glow-ups they tap directly into that hunger. They weaponize the mind’s tendency to simulate transformation, to insert ourselves into the image.
Sartre argued that consciousness is always projecting beyond itself—being-for-itself striving toward what it is not yet. We are, by nature, creatures of becoming. And when content gives someone a glimpse of who they could be, we consume at length…which is counterproductive but monkeys like us were never meant to have smart phones
.

5. Utility

This content teaches me something useful or surprising.
How-tos. Insights. Frameworks. Tips.

Why it works:
We remember people who teach us things. Useful, surprising, well-framed information triggers the reciprocity instinct, if you give me something that solves a problem or makes me look smart, I’m wired to value you for it.

Psychologist Robert Cialdini called this reciprocity bias, one of the core principles of persuasion. We want to give back to those who give to us, even if that just means a follow, a save, a share. That’s why utility content works so well. It builds trust without asking for anything in return. It creates a micro-mentor effect.

6. Curiosity & Intrigue

This content hooks me with mystery, surprise, or an unexpected twist.
Plot twists. Unsolved puzzles. Weird history. Contrarian ideas.

Why it works:
Curiosity is a survival mechanism. It’s the brain’s way of keeping us alert, learning, adapting because not knowing feels like an itch that has to be scratched. Psychologist George Loewenstein called this the Information Gap Theory: when we sense a gap between what we know and what we want to know, our brain locks in until that gap is closed. That’s why intrigue content works so well for both the algorthin and the brain…set up the question, conceal the answer, and delay the reveal just long enough to keep us hooked. Plot twists, unsolved puzzles, forbidden facts, they hijack our attention.