post-production

I have been walking around deeply unsettled/disquieted/disturbed for the last week or so, shunning company and conversation, trying not to ask about things I know will not be to my liking.

It all boils down to the discovery that grown-ups don't care about imagination.

They don't care about creativity or originality or innovation. They want to follow their business models or common sense, and are proud of their own little projects when money comes in, because the entire enterprise was never about interest or talent or making something new - they applied what works to something else they knew would work, and called that entrepreneurship.

I'm so disappointed it's flooring me mentally. I don't know how to talk to these people without being shockingly critical. I always thought everyone would at least bother to make their project unique or inventive, but no. The only imagination they did was putting together two ideas that already existed, and not bothering to do anything beyond catering to these two separate things, rather than the special amalgamation of both.

In fact, they seem to put in so little effort that things like this happen: I tell them that their publicity media is lackluster and in some places just wrong. It is the only thing I feel like I can fix, but everything is ignored. They spend the entirety of their time using their connections to sell their project, which I feel is simply not worth investing in, because I myself wouldn't bother looking at it - it doesn't have any actual content, entertainment value or use at all.

Another group bothers so little about quality that their 'publicity model' item physically falls apart at at event. It looks good on camera. Nobody cares.

Nobody seems to have a sense of shame or an eye for perfection any more - they have in their heads the 'typical consumer' (whom I believe never existed and is an excuse for sloppiness) and proceed to attempt to cater everything to this half-assed standard. "Don't you think you need higher quality production?" "(patient look) See, the typical consumer won't bother looking at the details, they just see the big flashy whole.."

People are expecting things to earn money based on a well-constructed plan to make money. Whether the actual products make sense doesn't matter, as long as they have friends.

The worst part is that all these happenings are headed by people I actually have pretty good relationships with. I am starting to hate myself because I have to support them - it's impossible to get them to understand or care about what I mean by creativity here, and being apathetic is being a shitty friend when they are spending so much time and emotion on this - and the only way I feel like I can do this is trying to some up with ideas, myself.

So the past few weeks have been spent at war with myself, trying to ignore the fact that I am surrounded (or actually within) various groups that I disagree wholly with, giving them my support while hoping, for the sake of meritocracy, that they won't succeed, and trying to convince myself to numb myself to all this and just learn whatever I can, or lose people I care about.

I am very sick of everything, as is my usual refrain nowadays.