The Hypocrisy of Free Content

With the internet at its current stage and with all of us having smartphones in our hands, at every moment of time, there is a ton of content available to us, just about everywhere.

But, our hypocrisy with free content is, we want free, but we don’t value free.

To elaborate it further, and having observed this for a period of time, given the choice between consuming something for free versus being charged to consume it, majority of the people always choose free first.

When asked who’d like something for free, everybody’s hands will jump up. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting free, why pay when something similar or better is available for free.

But the problem occurs when you have that certain thing or you consume that certain thing, but you’re not able to emotionally attach any value to it.

Because the initial thought is, I haven’t paid anything for it, therefore, I’m not gaining any expected value out of it. Only when I pay for it, is when I can attach a certain value to it as well.

For example, in the world of content creation, people will end up creating courses and e-books etc., with information so basic that it could’ve been given for free, but only because it isn’t valued enough and to create that value, is when creators resort to such methods (except when their primary reason to do it is for monetary purposes).

Such consumption, when paid for, is then cherished and now you celebrate the value you get. On the contrary, if you’d have received the exact same information or even more, but for free, would you have valued it the same? Or would you criticize that it wasn’t enough?

That is the hypocrisy of free content.

Even when you get less, you want to pay a certain amount so you can psychologically tick off in your mind that now you’re ready to accept the value in return for that amount.

What can you takeaway from this?
Well, just because something is free, doesn’t mean it has no value to it. And just because something is being charged for, doesn’t mean it’s valuable.