Views Over Values: The Slow Rot of “Content Detecting” and “Influencers”

There was a time when metal detecting was a quiet hobby. You’d go out, do the miles, dig the rubbish, fill the holes, and come home with a pocket full of damp history and one decent story. The only audience was the farmer, your mate, and the dog who watched you excavate a shotgun cap like it was the Crown Jewels.

Then the algorithm arrived. And suddenly the hobby didn’t just have detectorists. It had “creators”.

Content detecting is what happens when the point of the day isn’t the field. It’s the footage. The finds become props, the permission becomes a set, and the whole thing gets shaped around what performs rather than what’s responsible.

Its getting worse!

You can feel the shift in the style of posts. The exaggerated reactions. The breathless “you won’t believe what happens next” nonsense. The camera pointed at the hole before the plug is even cut properly. The constant need to be entertaining, which usually means being reckless. Because neat reinstatement doesn’t trend. Reporting doesn’t trend. Quiet competence definitely doesn’t trend.

And that’s the rot. Not that people share finds. Sharing is fine. It’s the incentive structure: the algorithm rewards the behaviour that undermines the hobby.

The first casualty is dignity. Suddenly every outing has to be cinematic. Every signal has to be dramatic. Every find has to be “rare” even when it’s clearly a modern badge, a Georgian button, or a bit of lead that looks like it’s survived three plough wars and a tractor tantrum.

The language gets inflated because normal honesty doesn’t get clicks. “Nice little copper coin” becomes “MASSIVE HISTORIC DISCOVERY” and the comments fill with clapping hands and lies.

The second casualty is permissions. Because content detecting leaks. It leaks locations in the background. It leaks gates, tracks, church spires, distinctive tree lines. It leaks the “I’m back out on the same permission tomorrow” habit, which is basically an open invitation to every opportunist with a machine and no morals. A farmer doesn’t need a lecture on heritage crime to understand risk. They see their land as an asset and they’ll shut the gate the moment you turn it into public entertainment.

Then the real damage: behaviour changes in the field.

The focus drifts from careful recovery to fast recovery. From minimising disturbance to maximising drama. From recording and reporting to posting and bragging. Portable Antiquities Scheme recording doesn’t deliver dopamine like a viral reel does, so it gets quietly deprioritised. Treasure process? “I’ll sort it later.” Later becomes never. Not for everyone, but for enough people that trust erodes.

And trust is the currency of detecting in the UK. Without it, you don’t have permissions. Without permissions, you’re reduced to public scraps and excuses. Without credible reporting, you lose the argument that detecting contributes to history rather than stripping it.

The saddest part is that content detecting doesn’t even create better stories. It creates louder ones. The real stories are slower: the pattern of finds that reveals a lost route, the scatter that hints at a settlement, the permission earned over years because you were tidy and discreet. The kind of story that never fits a 30-second video, because it requires patience and context—two things the algorithm actively punishes.

So here’s the standard I’m putting down, and you can take it or leave it.

• If your detecting becomes worse when the camera is on, you’re doing it wrong.
• If you can’t resist exaggerating, you’re not “building engagement,” you’re building a lie.
• If your posts leak permissions, you’re not a creator, you’re a liability.

And if your idea of contributing to the hobby is chasing views while ignoring the responsibilities that keep it legitimate, you’re not modernising detecting. You’re cheapening it.

Detecting is not content. It can be shared, photographed, written about, laughed about, even argued about. But at its core it’s a privilege: access to someone’s land and everyone’s past.

Act like it.