I don’t know exactly when writers ceased to be writers. In ancient times, people who made their living with the pen were sometimes called scribes, although ancient scribes were sometimes a bit closer to accountants and business correspondents than authors.
With the Internet, writing became content, writers became content providers, and “repurposing content” became a term useful for any type of writing endeavor up to and including plagiarism.
So now people like me don’t know what to put on their income tax form. Are we writers still? Or are we now content providers and content repurposers?
Amazingly, the word writer has resurfaced as a term for a grafitti artist. Those who pursue grafitti as some form of expression (rather than an act of vandalism) are sometimes called taggers or writers, although I suspect the spelling would get hacked up.
With this transition away from the term writer as a vocation or noble profession come a slew of interesting changes. Plagiarism is rampant and may not even be recognized by some as a crime. I mean that literally. Some people don’t know that one is not legally permitted to take original material from another and attribute it to oneself. I think in the minds of some the concept of “published material” and “no copyright” have become blended.
Writers are both badly needed and not well paid. Contrast this to the bevy of Fortune 500 vice presidents who are heftily compensated for providing no discernible services (unless one counts collapsing the economy as a service).
Illiteracy is increasingly accepted; in some circles today in the U.S., it is considered a bit of a social faux pas to automatically assume a stranger can read. Most school children can scarcely spell, unless you count acronyms.
Is there an association between the trend of discounting writing as a worthy and valued endeavor and the current swamp of social malaise in our society? I couldn’t prove it.
However, I’m not sure that a crop of Gangsta Writahs is going to usher in a new age of respect for the writer’s craft, either.
