In my field of work, I always encounter the phrase “content is king.” In SEO, the more you write content in your website, the better it is for web engines to understand what your product or service is. I believe that to be true. But as I grow older, content is just secondary. It’s really context that drives the intent of the communication.
A king chooses his queen and her opinions matter to him.
Let me explain that better in terms of examples.
Adjusting colloquially in a foreign place
Listening to my favorite morning show, Good Times Radio, I encountered this topic: what do you modify in your way of communicating when you’re travelling abroad? (link below, start at 11:33 for the actual conversation)
Karylle, one of the hosts, and now semi-based in Singapore, shared that she uses “can” and “cannot” more often now compared to before when she was still in The Philippines because can and cannot are big in Singapore casual communications. If we’re going to be nitpicky about this, can and cannot are not always best to be used in casual conversations. This would constantly trigger the grammar police. 😝
Now, looking at it neutrally and stripping off the racism of it all, isn’t it fascinating that we do adjust colloquially to better understand and be better understood by people in a foreign place?
See? Content is nothing without context. Content, no matter how polished or grammatically correct, is nothing without context.
I think it goes the same with other environments as well.
Same words, different experiences
Another good example is when my boyfriend told me that he gets confused whenever I say “papasok ako bukas.” (I will go to work tomorrow) only for me to work at home on a Wednesday. We sometimes do midweek coffee dates whenever I am at the office because he also works around the area. So it’s important for him to know if I am gonna be nearby on said Wednesday.
For better context, I work onsite on most Wednesdays if the condition is suitable and safe. For him, going to work means driving to the workplace because he does that everyday. While for me, going to work means opening my laptop and working in my home office.
I told him, we’ll use this phrase instead: I will work onsite tomorrow. And he finds that option better because it’s clear now that I will work in the office on that particular Wednesday and we can do a midweek coffee date.
Moving through contrasting emotions
Another example would be a friend interviewing me about the impact of AI in my career. She’s wise to gather respondents who work in different industries: a freelancer, a corporate girlie (me), and one from the academe if I am not mistaken. She mentioned that out of all the respondents, my answers fascinated her the most because of the contrast in context compared to the other two respondents.
For example, people outside of my industry — say freelancers especially photographers and media-related roles, get confused about AI and it sends off a creeping feeling that they might lose their job because of it. Their feelings are valid. On the other hand, people in the academe hate it because it is often used by students to bypass the usual route of learning. That, of course, invalidates the point of them teaching.
For me, however, I find AI useful in my day to day job. Does it scare me? A part of me would say yes but I find my role more important now more than ever. Because while these automations simplify things, these technological improvements won’t interpret themselves. Or maybe they do, but not in the context of my workplace.
Sure, I cannot gather millions of data in 30 minutes. But what do we do with this data now? And if this data says that we should do Action A, is that the best decision for us and our stakeholders moving forward? Will there be no legalities crossed or corporate branding defied? All I am saying is that while AI provides quick and easy visualizations, it’s still the humans like us that could interpret the data better in a way that’s suitable for us.
Long live the queen
Now, going back to my first point, content is really king but context is the queen. Without context, we’re directionless. This now begs the question: how do we immerse ourselves in spaces we do not understand?
We go out of our comfort zones.
We do not isolate. We travel. We take up space and join communities. We do not spend most of our time ruminating and getting inside our heads.
We ask questions. And when we do, we must be willing to listen to answers. We must keep an open mind, free of judgement of who’s right and who’s wrong. We do not impose. We measure the weight of the opinions of others and see if there’s something that we can adapt from them or if we’re gonna discard these information altogether.
Context is not one-way. It is two-way in a sense that we only get to know it if we’re willing to learn about it. And learning is a continuous journey regardless of age. Once we’ve decided that we’re done with learning, that’s the time that we get self-absorbed and obnoxious. And no one in their good mind and heart would want to be that way.
So I say keep learning. Keep consuming content. Keep digging until you better understand the context.
Great Read! 💯