at a party with creatives in LA: oh hey, so-and-so told me you work in tech (derogatory)

these same people will tell you that they’re very open-minded people and love learning new things

writing about products & protocols on Farcaster | prev. Juicebox, Nouns, RAW DAO | casting about coffee, hi-fi, and other rabbit holes

IMO: When your group is stereotyped, there usually is some truth to it — these things are never unfounded 

Its on the people of the given group to fix the perception, not the crowd

The Farcaster formerly known as Kchamp. Books, beats, bodybuilding, bright ideas and beautiful things.

katherinechampagne.com

yeah, not so much a comment on the stereotype but rather that creatives are some of the least open-minded people who consider themselves very open-minded

Why do you think that is? How else does it express itself? Is this just rote snobbery or smth more

This is super thought provoking 

the pendulum for sure is swinging rightward, I’ll say, from a commercial perspective

Some of these people will have to play ball if they want to stay fed 

It’s hard to not go along sometimes too, I wish I could remember who on here noted it but they told me the nail that sticks up always gets hammered down

not sure I have a clear answer for the “why,” but overall creatives are generally quite good at sussing out what is cool, trendy, interesting, etc. so a lot of the meta game being played by creatives on social (and through their work) is about navigating trends and responding to them by sitting at the bleeding edge of what’s next.

put another way, creatives are very attuned to trends but also therefore susceptible to a certain degree of groupthink. every designer on planet earth loved mushroom lamps a few years ago, did they all really have a genuine interest in Guzzini et. al? probably not.

I think that same tendency extends elsewhere but on longer timescales. artists and creatives have historically been largely left-leaning, and that has been amplified by “infographic activism” on IG and elsewhere that promotes a particularly shallow form of activism devoid of much critical thought or material engagement. signalling, riffing, and referencing in much the same way that one engages in visual culture. 

all of this to say that there tends to be a great degree of homogeneity to the publicly expressed views of artists and creatives, which is at odds with personality traits like openmindedness and curiosity which encourage heterogeneity, diversity of thought, etc.

far more than I could summarize in a short reply, but most creative fields (fine art and design in particular) have lots of performative politics baked into the culture. so there is a set of “right” opinions on issues that one needs to hold publicly, straying beyond that is dangerous. it’s not quite as over the top as bluesky’s culture but certainly not dissimilar.

despite this, most of these same people consider themselves fundamentally open-minded and define that as a value. what they mean by this is more like “I will consider new viewpoints that reinforce my existing viewpoints” rather than actually being open to new ideas or challenging their existing beliefs.

AI is a good example, lots of these folks share infographics that are presenting false information (e.g. water usage) and never fact check or try to learn more. genuinely curious and open-minded people don’t behave like this, of course.