The Pendulum Swung: Raw Content Wins Now
I want to repeat something I said on a call this week, because I think most people won't actually realize this for another two years.
There is a total trend shift happening in content right now.
For a while, everything was over-edited. Effects everywhere, cuts every half second, AI backgrounds, the works. That style came up, it peaked, and now the pendulum is swinging hard the other way.
If you're scrolling TikTok or Instagram or Facebook, start taking notice of what's actually winning. It's not the produced stuff. It's someone sitting there, talking into a camera, being a real person.
People are calling it "yapping." And honestly, I don't love that term because it doesn't do it justice. What it actually is: raw, organic, vulnerable, authentic content.
That's what people want now.
Here's WHY this is happening. We're moving from a tech economy to a trust economy. When AI can build anything... write anything... produce anything... the polished output stops being the differentiator. Anyone can have polish now. Polish is free.
You know what's not free? Being a specific, real, trustworthy human. That can't be generated. So the more the internet fills up with produced content, the more valuable the unproduced person becomes.
People buy from people. They always have. It's just that now, it's basically the whole game.
And here's the kicker. It has never been a better time to make content than right now. For two reasons:
-
It's easier than it's ever been. The bar for production quality just DROPPED. You don't need the studio, the editor, the effects. The thing that used to disqualify you ("my stuff looks too homemade") is now the style that wins.
-
Repurposing is basically free. You can record one podcast episode and ship it to every platform. One recording becomes clips, posts, audio, video, everything. The distribution problem that used to take a whole team? It's a workflow now.
Now, the fear. "But what if people don't like me?"
Some won't. And that's fine, because you're not trying to appeal to everybody. The people who click on the stuff you'd click on... the algorithm will carry them to you. Those are your people. And that's all that matters.
You don't need a million followers. A small group of people who genuinely trust you is a real business. I've watched a community of a few hundred people become a life-changing income for the person running it, just because those people trusted the human at the center of it.
So here's my push for you this week.
If you have even one little thought about creating content... do it. Put the camera up. Start writing. Go live. Stop waiting until you have the setup, the editing skills, the confidence.
The rawness isn't the weakness anymore.
It's the whole point.
Stay in the fight, Kevin