“They are the consummate consumers of a culture that they don’t produce.”
I hate “creatives.”
✨ Hate Read Season 2 is brought to you by the legendary champion of indie media herself, Ruth Ann Harnisch, of the Harnisch Foundation. ✨
You can always tell when someone doesn’t really have a full-time job and doesn’t really care—but they make a lot of money anyway. On the global-city circuit, these are people who flit from meeting to meeting all day: breakfasts, lunches, coffees, dinners, drinks. They set up shop at Balthazar in the morning. They linger in cafes and hotel lobbies in SoHo or Soho. They have opinions about airport lounges. They are not investors nor producers, but they do put together deals, i.e., introduce people to each other, dabble in art direction, and then take a finder’s fee or a few percentage points of the overall budget. They make pitch decks. (Pitch decks might be their sole reason for existence.) Their contribution to the world consists of ephemeral marketing campaigns, brand activations, merchandise collaborations, and parties attended by their co-conspirators. Everyone is their friend, but also no one is. Their websites list clients, not projects, because who you’re affiliated with matters more than what you do. They are the walking epitome of IYKYK. What you really want to know is: How do they pay rent? (More likely a mortgage, or multiple.)
This is the “creative,” the agency bro, the tasteboy. They are not unpleasant. They wear cool clothes and listen to cool music but won’t pretend to not know who Sabrina Carpenter is. They show up at magazine issue launches; they know which painter just had a strong solo show and which writer just got a book deal. They are the consummate consumers of a culture that they don’t produce, though the consulting gigs and sponsored content deals they dole out do help the committed artists around them survive another year in north Brooklyn. Maybe they worked at a firm through their 20s and then started their own, or they just freelance here and there. Either way, they outsource their tasks until the Balthazar breakfasts are the only real labor left to perform. They’re like the construction general contractor who always knows a guy for the job, but the job is a photo shoot, video editing, a logo overhaul — nothing that requires getting your hands dirty.
Perhaps the creative begins to produce original content. Surely then he is making something of his own? He starts a band or learns how to DJ. He releases annual screen-printed T-shirts with obscure references. He launches a podcast, then another one. Perhaps he becomes a cooking influencer, who clearly does not consume the austere food he so carefully lays out for the camera. But a shallowness dogs these efforts. You can smell the desperation, the sweaty effort to escape the alienated comfort of their situation. In the end, the creative is not that creative; he is passionless. No matter the side project, it turns back toward the pursuit of more deals and more money.
One wants to ask the creative: What did you really want to do? Once upon a time, which art form broke your brain and left you with no other motivating force in life save making that thing? And then when did the quest fail? What was the final straw before you gave it up? Maybe it was the need to pay rent and the unwillingness to flee the capitalist capital in order to actually move to the fringe and live on your own belief. Or it was the pull of stability, seeing as the marketing industry is never going to crumble and the corporations are only getting bigger. Despite his best efforts to dress in a state of convincing dishevelment or to develop competitively idiosyncratic “taste,” the creative is not actually a bohemian, but then our late-capitalist society doesn’t really believe in bohemians anymore. Real bohemianism requires a certain amount of not caring what other people think about you, or about the legibility of your success, both of which the creative prizes above all else. In the absence of bohemianism, artistry is confined to the task of playing a mascot. Creativity is the secondary consequence of an effort to sell sunglasses or a billionaire’s desire to reproduce their wealth. The creative is not mad at this state of affairs; they just want to be the one to sell the sunglasses.
Kids these days don’t start magazines; they go straight to launching creative consultancies and editorial workshops, hustling for clients with a portfolio site and self-published zines that are almost not about marketing (“place making,” “identity building”). It used to be that you had to contribute to the culture first, establishing your reputation by coming up with some noncommercial innovation, an artistic or curatorial leap. Afterward, you might commodify your clout and take on a few under the table gigs for a fashion label or a vanity art museum. Now, the consultancy is the culture. It has become aspirational to perform labor for a brand. Where the influencer is praised for publicly shilling logo-bedecked debris on their TikTok account, the creative is who makes it happen behind the scenes. Somehow, that’s even worse.
I simultaneously agree wholeheartedly and disagree vehemently
"the influencer is praised for publicly shilling logo-bedecked debris"
Brutal and delicious.