We Sold Them The Culture

We keep complaining to corporations about OUR culture, not like it’s not a completely understandable thing to do. But looking through all the complaints throughout history. Like they don’t value us, they don’t pay us our just due, they destroy our livelihoods if not compliant, they steal from us, they ignore our complaints, they are the problem. These are all true sentiments. My issue with that is, what history do you have of them doing otherwise. Where they have done right by us. Corporate has given us a massive sample size of examples of their destructive ways, of their psychopathy/narcissism, it’s obviously evident that this is who they are, and they will never change, a concrete fact, or maybe you want to try another 100+yrs to see if they’ll budge. That’s the annoying part, decades on decades of the same exact complaints. After a while, it’s insanity on us.

The most disheartening part about our complaints is that we sold them the culture. Collectively over time, we gave them all the power to dictate culture. And now we complain because we want them to fix how they dictate our culture. And it’s like cmon, are we that weak. We should’ve never given it to these uncreative bland soulless apathetic greedy commodifying people. They are deteriorating the value and cachet of the culture, and we gave them the power to do so. For example, if so many people take a brand deal there, take a brand deal here. Work with this corporate company about this culture. Where the company gets to use our cachet and value, and make a huge profit off our culture. Then to pay a low price of a few individuals’ self preservation, basically a huge bail out, by avoiding investing into those cultures’ communities they profit off of. To the point, if every time we talk about the culture, do anything with the culture, and it’s behind the lens or production of corporate. Utilizing the low price of those self preservation individuals that grant them access. Then corporate dictates the culture, and can change and manipulate it how they please. We have collectively given them the power. When for a long time and still to this day, we could collectively come together as creatives to house and support ourselves.

I think it’s important to define who I mean by we and culture. At the core, I typically like to keep it in general terms, and talk about the common person, the general public, commoners. This overall issue affects us all. But also I am coming from a creative background, with a creative perspective on this. The creative culture & industries also tend to bleed into each other. Like how fashion & beauty bleed into each other, but also media. Things including music, basically the art world. If you have art, creative ideas, product, or want to be part of the teams or process of creating. It’s a widely encompassing culture. The culture is basically a melting pot of creativity. Especially when you’re in NY, you fully see the cluster melting pot of creativity, it’s very potent. I remember first trying to figure my way into the art culture and industry. I went to a couple events, and I was just like woah, I was in awe. It’s not hard to discern when you’re amongst the people in the culture, to see how potent the creative value is. It’s a beautiful thing to witness.

In my mind, if this is what the creative field looks like, then the people who have the positions in corporate, and the corporate spotlights must be out of this world. And that was a terribly wrong sentiment. Which is so very confusing, why don’t the most talented and skilled creatives have the position. Looking into it more, in prominent cultural positions I was seeing very pedestrian non-creatives, with very mundane work or production. How could this be, when you have so many amazingly talented creatives who would love to be in one of those positions. What industry am I speaking to? And it doesn’t matter, pick an industry, there are many people that have a lack of expertise and care for the respective facet or industry they take up space in. In trying to make sense of all this absurdity and incompetence, I kept on researching and looking deeper and deeper into this.

I looked into the hiring process. To look into what was the issue with all these terrible discrepancies of lack of cultural expertise and quality in prominent cultural positions. And it was glaringly obvious incompetence. People who were in charge of filling these cultural creative positions weren’t creative whatsoever, no background in creativity at all. The people who are supposed to vet the creatives, don’t have the expertise and ability to discern their qualifications. “I’m willing to put the absolute consistent work in, a massive amount of effort. Absolutely confident in my craft and product. But I never even get a slight chance or opportunity to prove myself…Then what’s worse is the only people you can get to are the incompetent gatekeepers of the incompetent bureaucracy. They’re the only people you have access to. You do your best to display your work and quality to some of them, and you can tell they don’t have the level of expertise to critique your work. Now you’re getting rejected based on a bad judgment call from someone who doesn’t have the expertise or insight to judge your work. (The danger of incompetence is that it often looks like expertise.)”

That’s when I started looking into bureaucratic structures. It seems to me that it’s an obviously incompetent system. Where it feels like “Bureaucracies: Make the possible, impossible!!”. That’s what I feel bureaucracies are. Where I feel some of the simplest things are extremely overcomplicated, because of bureaucracies being such a rigid rule-bound structure, with all these overly complicated complex regulations and mandates. It causes and stirs up confusions, creating a lot of messes, leading to incompetent decisions, and also a lot of inefficient productivity. You see and hear it in the hiring processes. I have to go through all these different channels just to get hired or interviewed. Where you can even deal with multiple rounds of interviews. The only way to really bypass all these ridiculous channels and regulations that all the other people have to go through, is to have the connections and network to gain access. Having to go through the front door and try to go through all the BS processes feels impossible and inefficient for anything productive to happen, when most of the access is accomplished through people having established connections and networks inside already. This is where I tried to look for who would benefit from such an incompetent system full of confusion.

That’s when we get to corporate, the heads and leadership of these corporations. So that’s where I saw a lot of the blueprint or foundation of incompetency. Within the leadership, executive positions, and CEOs. The heads of the corporations. That’s where the intentional confusion comes into play. With all these walls you can hide behind and do your dirty work. You’re able to create your reinforced network of power. You’re able to launder and fudge with the numbers, money, and data, by destroying the transparency. You’re able to dismantle certain structures or people who you feel are a threat to authority, and also put people in place that are controllable and can reinforce your power. These are the people who benefit from incompetent bureaucratic systems, from keeping things obscure and ambiguous. Like for me, before researching and just looking at these companies as is, I held the sentiments that the people at top must be very intelligent. Also these complicated structures are too overly complex for my understanding. Once I saw the fraudulence of that sentiment, I also realized an overly complex bureaucratic system is the perfect concept to create that illusion. It makes you feel like this system is too intellectually complex for my understanding. With that confusion it keeps you from questioning the system. It’s crazy to see how many people are afraid of coming off as they don’t know what they’re doing, which many people feel. But instead of saying hey I’m confused, I really don’t know what’s going on. They just go on with the program as if they confidently or generally know what they’re doing. So when everyone is doing that, being confidently ignorant at their job, it comes off as everyone is confidently doing their job. Then creates this aspect of you don’t want to be the one person that doesn’t know what they’re doing. Like if everyone would just be courageous together and just say hey, I’m confused. First off, you would see how many major systems suffer from mass confusion. We could all in our respective systems come together and create questions that could lead us to the source of the confusion. Also mass imposter syndrome would come to an end…maybe.

A DM I sent recently: Definitely more editorial, I know somewhat of the design process but not fully. But there’s so many people that want to work in the fashion industry. In the exclusive limited cool club. From the outside it looks so cool. Especially fashion week. But then when you start really getting inside and see a lot of what’s really happening. You get a peek inside the cool club. You just see a lot of what it seemed to be is not that true. The fraudulence of the glitz and glamour. Then you start to question what do you guys all do, for the people that are within it. And you get a large sense of imposter syndrome. Like many people are grateful for the opportunity of getting a placement within the cool club, position within industry, and networks within the industry. That they just accept whatever their position is and go with the motions. But really feel like a cog on the wheel. Also that in the large limited industry that it is, the true creative glitz and glamour is truly because of a small percentage of creatives.

That’s when I started looking more into these corporate characters, these execs and heads of corporations. Trying to understand why corporate is so destructive. Why does it operate the way that it does? Looking more into the actions of corporate ways, and the effects they have caused. Why the Sackler family and pharmaceutical companies are so destructive, and why they won’t stop. Why the music execs are so destructive and why they won’t stop. Why studio heads are so destructive and why they won’t stop. Then you look into their actions across different industries, and how it’s so strikingly similar how many of them operate. You see no matter how much they gain, and in these different stories, they get to the high billions. But no matter how much they gain, even at the sometimes heinously destructive expense of the general public, the game for them never stops. And that’s what it is for many of them, a game, at the expense of the general public’s lives and well-being. It’s these money guys, the sales people, execs, and lawyers. These are the people who head these companies. You see that many of them have no care for the respective field they take up space in. You see that many do not have any expertise for the respective industry they take up space in. It’s mainly about what generates the most money, preferably in a short-term manner. And that has been the game. They’re just pure money guys. So in creative industries, you have non-creative people controlling creative things, and milking it for the majority of its value.

Money guys and public companies that need to generate short-term growth form a destructively perfect marriage. With public companies, they are obligated and have a promise to shareholders to maximize growth in revenue. With quarterly and annual reports, the stock market doesn’t provide the most grace. There can be a very judgmental expectation to generate quarterly growth, unless you risk your stock price and company devaluing. So many people feel like they have to be short-term minded. Which can be very destructive for innovation and long-term sustainability. Go to the execs and higher ups, and say you have this amazing cultural disrupting idea. The idea is going to take time to develop, and going to have to invest money into creating it. Basically some risks for an unproven idea. Which is basically the formula for many or most innovative ideas, which is the formula for the higher ups to think you’re crazy. The better bet for them is to go look at the data chart, which can sometimes be informative, but also can become apathetically monotonous when over-reliant on data. But it’s all about what is guaranteed to generate revenue fast, short-term profit, and typically it’s previously successful products and models that become the repetitive model for the future. Instead of investing money into creating brand new sneaker silhouette designs, let’s manufacture another Nike dunk collaboration. Instead of innovating iPhones with crazy new technology, let’s manufacture the iPhone 11v5 (basically iPhone 15). Instead of focusing on creating a better gameplay experience for the gamers, we’ll repackage the same product as the new one. “Same game, different year” basically. Instead of making interestingly new original movies, let’s reuse old IP blockbusters to manufacture more blockbusters in remakes, sequels, trilogies, or spin-offs. Instead of innovating new beautiful music, let’s remanufacture a hit that’s already on the billboards, or let’s take this successful sample, and manufacture it like that other song that has a successful sample. Instead of designing a fashion collection full of artistic integrity, that the fashion community will appreciate, where we’ve seen designers be dropped from labels and criticized for creating. Let’s focus on the trends, and prioritize massive sales. Especially since you don’t have time to focus on new cool ideas. We have to meet all the fashion deadlines for the 3-5 shows we have this year. You can even say instead of creating a party environment, on the foundation people come, have fun, and dance. Just manufacture a status hierarchal club culture & bottle service. Then instead of investing in building up new stars, ones that care about the craft. These new influencers are gaining so much engagement on tiktok. We’ll manufacture some songs for that one. We’ll star that one in our next remanufactured IP blockbuster. We’ll make that one the creative director of this fashion or beauty line. We’ll give that influencer the next Nike dunk collab. “Ma’am I understand you’ve been in the fashion industry for 10+ years, but this tiktok sensation is getting millions of views, we want her next to Anna”…“But she’s wearing shien”… “Please can you make your way to the third row please”. I don’t think people can say that this is not happening. This rise of this nihilistically mundane and apathetic aspects in art is a multi-cultural and industry epidemic. Instead of creating cultures and art full of vibrant color, full of beauty and life. Let’s manufacture this already successfully molded product, as much as we can and generate as much money as possible. Which eventually people get sick of. But for now, in this hyper-consumerism state we’re in, people are buying into the garbage. “Conflating numbers and value has been one of the most destructive aspects to culture, enabled by execs. It puts this ticking time bomb on the culture it is set on. When that culture’s stock crashes. They don’t care. They never cared what happened to the culture or the field they are in. They just have the luxury to play musical chairs and get another executive job for whatever absurd reason.”

“…And that’s when I remembered, so many recruiters, people helping with resumes, people of that sort kept talking about you need numbers on your resume. Where are the numbers on your resumes? They wanted me and others to include the quantifiable metrics on our resumes to show our value and impact. Obviously my naive self thought, but I have my portfolio and work. I’ll just show them what I got. It’s really good work, when they see it, they’ll see my value. That’s when you walk into the constant cycle of people with absolutely futile discernable ability. Like they had no idea what they were looking at. So if you don’t understand art, how can you vet creative artists? I used to think very low of recruiters and hirers because of that…I still do. It’s just that it might be corporately enforced to vet through these quantifiable metrics. Which is probably fine for a sales position of some sort. But terrible for vetting creatives that will have to create interesting or innovate things. That’s when it made the discrepancy make sense, of the lack of quality in creative positions, and the long line of quality creatives waiting for positions. Quantifiable metrics are a good gauge for sales impact, where discernible creative eyes are good to gauge creative impact and quality. Conflating numeric metrics and creativity value is a destructive pairing, you don’t evaluate creativity through numbers and data, at least not be over-reliant on it. It turns out very cheap most times, when turning creativity into a numbers game. It was affirming this realization, that it’s simply mostly about upward going numbers for these people. They have no care what the quality of content is to generate upward going numbers, they have no care for the industry they take up space in and the integrity of it. Whatever happens to the industry and culture it’s connected to doesn’t matter. Just make the numbers go up. Which leads to very cheap methods to get upward numbers. What happens when you buy cheap clothes, it doesn’t last long. So when you put together cheap lazy songs, or cheap lazy ideas in movies. Cheapness doesn’t last and resonate long. The essence and content will diminish faster. Especially when you’re not injecting sustaining qualities in your work. Manufacturing a spectacle for everyone to take a peak at doesn’t require quality marketing. You can use cheap artificial and gimmicky methods, even publicity stunt type methods, or latch on to the “hottest & trendy” things to conjure up some attraction and interest for people to view what you want them to. Probably what the state of PR is, garbage. I don’t know how the PR girlies operate or who they are, but if you ask me, they probably suck, or are blocked from doing a good job. Probably a mix of both. Those cheap methods though will sometimes bring big initial numbers. But if you don’t have a quality product that will generate returning engagement, you can’t sustain those numbers, due to the cheapness, it will wear away fast. Reasons why you have to create so much fast food like cheapness in products to somewhat sustain. And it’s a somewhat workable method from the perspective of someone who cares nothing about the culture, and wants upward graphs. But someone who appreciates the culture, and sees all this commodifying cheapness that’s degrading their culture, it’s heartbreaking. Where many people just stop engaging. Over time you can’t use cheap gimmicks, people don’t care at all anymore, that’s where you can crash a whole culture. The originators that are the creators and support base leave, and you’re probably left with a monotonous casual general consumer, and formulaic manufacturers commodifying all that’s left. Just an absurd mess.”

Then further down this destructive perpetual model of corporate meddling in creativity. For creatives that want a chance to make a name for themselves, outside of the corporate machine and directly to the consumer. That window is also decreasing. When you have a general consumer market, constantly getting fed cheap garbage, and the general consumer accepting it. The general consumer is becoming more desensitized by artificial cheapness. “You don’t need inspiration, your imagination, skill, a soul to express, you don’t need those things to replicate something that will pop. Large groups of people are still getting stimulated through artificial substances, just like in the opioid crisis. Even though it’s an instant gratification substance that wears off quickly, you have a lot of access because of the over-saturation of these opioid-like content, “art”, and product. Like opioids, it’s so readily available for consumption. Which leads to a very high consumption of it. Long term effects of this synthetic manufactured culture, has seemingly desensitized a large bulk of the masses from receiving actual genuine beautiful art. They have been consuming mainly artificial art & culture for so long, the stimulation they have been experiencing is cheap artificial pleasures, and they haven’t been experiencing joy, happiness, and pleasure from beautiful genuine art. They haven’t been interacting with the mechanisms that stimulate their spirit and soul. So the mechanisms in your body and soul that are typically used to create the natural feelings of euphoria and joy are not in use. With long-term use these mechanisms become corroded, you start to lose the ability to stimulate these feelings naturally.” Which is the perfect mechanism for corporate companies, and a nightmare for creatives. The companies don’t need the creatives during this “feed the consumer junk” bubble. They can replicate this level of quality of “art” & products that the consumer will accept. For creatives that want to create beautiful genuine art, they may come to the conundrum where consumers can’t discern or have the ability to receive, or be stimulated by their art.

It’s an absolutely unsustainable model, that most likely systems that operate like that are doomed to crash. Where basically we’re in a time where there’s this growing commodification of everything possible, it feels like this absolute war against nature and humanity. It’s like why be under a destructive system like that. I’m not even big on, you need to be an “independent entrepreneur businessman” gimmick. It’s more about us having to disband from the destructive corporate structures, that is so destructive to humanity. At least the way they currently are structured. There’s this hypernormalisation of these destructive corporate structures. Like a “That’s Life” attitude. And no it’s not, that’s callous destruction, that’s a demise of humanity. You can’t just throw it up and say that’s life, because it’s the exact same as resigning, and just rolling into our demise with no fight.

People may look at it as, how can we produce like the corporate entities, especially since we don’t have their wealth. And honestly, we don’t have to. We don’t need to create extremely big budgeted box office movies. Yeah, maybe we can’t manufacture marvel movies or overproduced blockbusters, which is probably a good thing. We can get back to making very potently good smaller budget successful films, especially when we have creatives leading projects, and no input from uncreative, soulless, incompetent execs. Pulp Fiction had an $8 million budget, also American Psycho. It’s not easy, but it’s humanly possible to gather the resources and funds to create those products. We can use that mindset for so many other creative projects. Lot of artists or bands’ early projects, I wouldn’t expect those to have the biggest budgets. Where many of them probably didn’t break the bank, and were made locally. We could create a lot more non-corporate, and more human made & produced art and products. People can say, but won’t there be less…, and yes, there will be less. But why did we ever need that much, this hyper-consumerist culture is absolutely unsustainable. We don’t need that many Nike dunks. We never needed that many iPhones to where it has to drop every year. We never needed all these hyper-consumerist products, it’s overload. But these public companies have to grow to protect their stock price. That’s why I never liked companies talking about their sustainability movements. Your whole model and business practices are unsustainable. It’s not that you need to learn how to make your products more sustainably, you’re just making an absurd amount of products no matter how sustainable you’ve made them. Aren’t you guys sick of getting hyper-flooded with all these products to where you can’t even keep up with anything anymore.

We were never able to create at this rate of hyper-consumerism. Where people need new products and digital content daily and weekly. It’s an inhumane rate, set by these public company corporate structures, of constantly needing growth. Where it’s overworking the artists and creatives. Creating at inhumane levels. Where you put so much time and effort into one of your pieces of art and product. Then you have to create another, and another, and another to be able to sustain and barely survive sometimes. You see so much burnout in modern day creatives, because of the hyper demand rate caused by hyperconsumerism. “Always having to be active. It’s a grueling lifestyle after a while. High production level for minimal lifeline and attention. That can be demoralizing. Feels so constricting, lack of being able to relax and breathe. Also feeling like you really are not in the position to relax. Especially in NYC fast paced culture. You always gotta go…But it seems like some people trying to be hyper-creative, is more of a response to fear. Fear of not making it. Or slowing down, and everyone is moving past accomplishing everything, or taking over all the vacant spaces. Everyone, everyday is working. So you always have to be on it.” The creative world is not for the weak, it can get really rough. And corporate creative culture makes it exponentially harder.

Like one of the most annoying aspects about corporate creative culture, is that it stripped the belief system from local creatives and avenues. We all collectively got to the point, not fully, but for the most part, I believe collectively people don’t believe in creatives until they have received the corporate stamp of approval. Which is an absolutely absurd sentiment within creativity. Art has always come from the common human. So why do we have to wait for them to get in elitist spaces to validate what they’re doing. It’s like in many cases no one opens their mouths about your creations, disregards it, until you get the corporate stamp of approval. Your music ain’t nothing until you’re next to certain popping people, received a co-sign, or on a record label. Your t-shirt or clothes don’t mean nothing until someone of relevance is wearing it. Your writing or articles don’t mean anything until you’ve been writing in established magazines or publications. So until then, good chance that your art remains quiet and means nothing, until you get your corporate stamp of approval. It’s so destructive to people wanting to be creatives. While giving corporate an extreme amount of validation and power. “We shouldn’t need to have to scale to fairytale heights. We should be able to be an artist and still be human. Believing in these corporate business first art forms, is decapitating the art world.” We have to start believing in the creatives that are next to you, in your local communities. This is how you can build more local avenues, and you have to believe in those as well. If we all give these spaces that belief and spotlight, it will become a real and humane place to resort to. We all have to be able to discern art on a local level. You can totally flip the culture around. Instead of having this status hungry culture, where people work hard to develop their status in sometimes the most fraudulent and transactional ways. The problem with status chasing, the top of elitism and the higher statuses is where an empty meaningless nothingness is there for you. “I’ve allowed my work to reach the price point where only the class of people in this room[elite class] can access it. And I’ve been fooled into trying to please people who can never be pleased.” – The Menu. Instead you can form a meritocracy, which in so many facets can create more of a creative prosperity. People work more on developing their craft, creating a more innovative culture, and more authentic communities of people who actually love the craft. People who have the ability to appreciate art and culture. Also have people with the actual abilities to discern the people that get to be included into the communities. If we don’t do this, then we allow corporate to control the creative power, and people who don’t have the ability to evaluate or discern your creativity, incompetent gatekeepers get to dictate if you’re validated, corporate gets to dictate creativity.

As a black creative, and understanding I was gonna be dealing with more obstacles than privileges, I was trying to see how I could get around these incompetent gatekeepers. I was like let me go try to enter the industry through affirmative action or DEI. If that’s the open door I gotta go through to gain access, I don’t mind, I won’t feel any less. But then you see you can’t really get through that door. Off observations, seemingly it’s only for other non-black colored people, and preppy black kids. I started seeing the people that were allowed in that DEI door. Started running my own personal data notetaking. And you see that it was more of a 2 parent household, and you could see that they went on summer vacations to Europe or other cool places. Or found a way into the black elitist kid club. I know because I saw a large sample size of them talk about it. Then they have the luxury of living in NYC in their young 20’s comfortably with assistance from their parents. I saw a lot of them talk about their stories on their social platforms, on how they made it in the NY fashion or beauty industry. Lot of them said themselves statements like “I know I come from a privileged background…”. And I’m not hating on you, shout out to your moms and pops, they did it big. My issue came in when I started to notice a weird cliqueyness within this group. The diversity & inclusion blacks didn’t feel so inclusive. I did not feel the black love from them, I didn’t feel the I’m for us energy. I felt a, I’m only for the black bourgeoisie set of blacks, a black elitism. Also blacks that had a higher likability rating, black socialites. This dilemma I was seeing of “black excellence vs. black creatives”. Where black excellence gets to take the forefront and be the face of black creativity. And you see a lot of black creatives have to take a backseat to black socialite content creators. If you’re a content creator, it doesn’t mean you’re not a creative as well, but I also believe some content creators aren’t creatives, more like content manufacturers. These black excellence content creatives do muddy the black creative market. Many of them are the ones that are standing in the door of prosperity and opportunity, and clogging it for others, they take up most of the available spaces. The black image-friendly, palatable, likable socialites, that don’t have a message, product, or content that’s moving anything forward. Not a 100% rule, but I feel it’s happening at a high percentage. But it’s just a waste of progress, stunting progress, and not making the door wider for others, and sometimes shutting the door behind them. That’s where my main gripe is, that it’s stunting the growth of others. That’s how I feel. I’m just not the biggest fan of “black excellence”. Lot of the time it feels so empty and fraudulent who gets chosen as “black excellence”. It feels too image heavy and a likability bias on who gets chosen. Because when I went to check some of their quality of work and production it was very subpar, very empty. Their likability rating has just carried them along. They get paraded based on the nothingness aspect of a palatable image. I don’t see this as hating, because this point is not even centered around me, but what I’ve seen constantly happen. I can tell how disheartened and jaded someone feels when they put all that work in. The amount of passion and effort they put in. Just to be beat out by someone who has a higher likability rating than them, and also having a heavy lack of care, passion, dedication to the artform or position. And don’t have the vision or understanding to expand or open the door wider for others to get opportunity.

Black creatives complained to corporate about a lack of representation of black creatives in these companies, and how elitist those spaces were. So DEI seemed like it was a response to that, and I thought it did help, I’m pretty sure there were some benefits. But honestly they just created black elitist spaces. It wasn’t inclusive to all blacks. Just a black expansion under corporate structure, a controllable structure.

I watch it, black “creatives” having their conversation panels on diversity, equity, & inclusion. Some of the most insightless conversations you’ll hear. Just a bunch of meaningless gibberish. So what is DEI, when they use up all your blackness until they’re done with you, lay the blacks off, and we’re left with nothing, where’s the equity? You panel DEI speakers were just a mouthpiece to raise corporate ESG score. They avoided and are bailed out from actually making contributions from the communities they take from, by paying the cheap price of your self preservation. Making it seem like they are socially responsible, and providing to black people because you hosted or were speaking on a panel for DEI. You pseudo “black activists” are more destructive than helping the issues. You guys are only for moral and ethics when brand partnerships are backing it with money. This is not a stance I see many take outside of it being sponsorships. Like why at these panels I always have to see a whole bunch of logos and thank you’s to said companies. Also panels that grow yourself, and not really insightful or impactful to the people you grifted into coming. Never really sincere genuine concern for creators in this culture and industry. At least I don’t feel the sincerity, just more inflated egos.

Like just think about the billions made off our cachet, style, lingo, imagery, sound, looks. It gets commodified not by the daily, but the second. Like look at the creative media industry. How black influenced that is. How much insane amount of engagements it receives off our black likeness. The insane amount of ad dollars made off engagement based on our likeness. Then look back at the blacks in the creative industry. Who got rich off selling out our likeness to these corporations, off of bailing them out of paying their just due to the communities they take from. Like none to maybe a very few. We sold our multi-billion dollar likeness away for a very few number of blacks to live in luxury apartments, and for the bigger few to live in regular apartments in NYC. Then the rest left in a creative survival crisis. Who was at the negotiating table for that one. That’s not even that jokingly of a question. Who really negotiated all our likeness away, when the vast majority of us weren’t at those meetings. Sometimes we may feel as if we didn’t consent to the usage of our likeness. But somehow gets bypassed.

That’s when you get to the question, who owns black art and culture? And I can assure you it’s definitely not black people, I can tell you that. Like black people don’t own black art. Black people no longer dictate black culture. “It’s all a commodity that the corporations and labels run. Look at everything they generated that could’ve been used to spark an economy and sustainability within black communities, but all that wealth is in the hand of others. Gave it all to these institutions that don’t value them[us] at all. Don’t care about black culture, Hip-Hop, their well-being, but use and egregiously abuse it for their own self interests. Now look at today’s product of Hip-Hop, and black culture. It’s basically completely sold out, it’s a full-on commodity. It’s a self destructive gimmick. Sometimes there’s cool stuff, but never really anything that evokes the amazingness that used to be attached to Hip-Hop[and culture], turned into a more monotonous, apathetic, repetitive, and regurgitated culture. Honestly it’s looking like Hip-Hop[and culture] is near death, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Hip-Hop is not black owned, black people do not have an executive decision on what’s dictated within it. Whatever image, sound, or whatever within black culture these institutions want to run, they can get any black “creative” to sell their likeness to them and perpetuate whatever they want them to. And now we have black people complaining and asking these institutions if they can be viewed in the media & art in a better way. It’s not ours to dictate. This shouldn’t be the way. ”

How did we get here? All these creative spaces were elitist white spaces prior. And honestly it should’ve been left that way. We should’ve taken the rougher route to build a creative culture of our own. Especially not join institutions that didn’t respect and view us in our proper light. But honestly it’s very understandable why we didn’t. Especially if we go back to the 1900’s, and also even early 2000’s. Like in music where vinyls were a very expensive expense, and other inconveniences like that. We didn’t have the infrastructure, resources, and funds to create the art & culture. We didn’t have access to mass communication to share our art & culture. So I understand why black people had to go into those institutions at the time, but in retrospect, it’s strange why we have never left those institutions with how the creatives saw how dark those institutions were. Then you see this aspect that all the older black creatives and entertainers allowed the younger black creatives to go into those institutions knowing how dark they were, not giving warning to them. Like older artists allowing younger artists to sign bad record deals, like they did in the past. There could be a multitude of reasons why that could’ve been, but it was evident that black camaraderie wasn’t present, and self preservation was. Like look at more of the modern day media state within things like fashion & beauty culture. Go back to the early 2010’s, and maybe a bit before that, pre-DEI media era. I’m pretty sure it was an elitist space then, that had no care in the world to accommodate and include black creatives. Where we now have more access to communications and infrastructure, why did we want so badly to join these spaces that looked so lowly on black people entering their spaces, why not leave people like that where they’re at. Like I’m not the person that’s gonna try to prove to you that “I’m also a human that deserves respect, I’m good enough to be here too,” if you can’t see the blatant obvious truth, then you can keep that over there, I’m going to do my thing over here. Like why is it important for Cardi-B to sit next to Anna Wintour, that’s not monumental, that just looks stupid, and so out of place, trying to fit in those elitist spaces, so very disharmonious. Just vampires siphoning.

Why haven’t we created our own spaces? Like spaces we can constantly resort to, that accommodate us. Not ones where you think it’s normal to code-switch. Why do we have this hypernormalised attitudes to why we have to resort to these destructive institutions. Institutions that have repeatedly flat out robbed black culture, now that they dictate it still put it in disrespectful lights. And the black creatives that take part, still get egregiously underpaid. So why do we keep constantly showing face for these corporations to use with no compensation and minimal respect for it. Why do you keep on getting in bed with the monster especially when the monster keeps showing you that they’re a monster with all their destructive actions.

Like look at the writer and actors strike. Also with AI, we can speak about all the media layoffs and writers’ strikes. It shows the callousness and the absolute lack of care for creatives. After decades of work creatives have put into building and adding values to these corporate companies. Corporate in the very instance they could, attempted and are still in the process of replacing creatives with AI. It just shows, you want to strike & plead to work for a company that doesn’t value your life, doesn’t have an ounce of care how you land, and not appreciative for the decades of work you put in. With statements about studios waiting for strikers to lose their houses so they are forced to crawl back to the studios and beg for work. That’s the people you’re striking and wanting to negotiate with. That in an instance they would look to replace you. And the writer’s strike speaks to how we beg and complain for corporate to fix how they dictate culture, the ones that creatives created and just gave right to them, with manipulative measures with how they took it as well. You shouldn’t strike to beg corporate to be nicer, that’s more of a weak gesture. You should see all the creatives together, and start asking the questions or bring up the aspect of “we should just do this ourselves”. Like why wasn’t that one of the options and conversations during the strike. You see the thousands of people striking together, many with resources. The thought of disbanding the corporate structure didn’t occur? With a huge collectivism movement of the creatives, we can create content and work not just as good, but way beyond what corporate entities offer, and this speaks to the solution. The answer is always going to be community and collectivism. But instead you know the Hollywood monster is a heinous monster, and you want to negotiate with that?

It’s extremely understandable, but it’s annoying when people talk to these execs and corporate, like pay us what we deserve!!! And it’s like, you talk to these people as if they’re human, and I don’t think people understand that concept. You speak to them with your rationale, and feelings & system of empathy. Many of them aren’t human, they are humanoids. They are human representing, but they internally don’t hold those interior core aspects that make us human. They simply don’t bare a soul, they don’t have empathy, and what rationale do you think you can get from that. Their sole perspective in life is themselves, and they have no care in the world for anything or anyone outside of that. No regard for other people’s well-being. That is what you’re dealing with. So from that perspective of not seeing anything outside of yourself, it’s not crazy to not care an ounce about the people’s well-being. It doesn’t matter that they steal from the people and culture. They don’t care that you can’t make a livable wage, and can’t survive. So when I see things like “studio execs waiting for actors and writers to lose their apartments and homes,” it’s not like, what type of people are they, or how can someone do this. I saw it and thought welp, that seems about right. Not like I want that to happen, but this has evidently always been who these people are.

I think it’s important to bring up psychopathic/narcissistic relationships, parasitical relationships. They diminished us so severely, stripped us of access and resources, monopolized for themselves. To the point it feels like we need them. And over time it has become so hypernormalised to the point, it feels like there is no other way. There doesn’t feel like there’s a culture outside of corporate, there’s no life outside the monster we’re feeding off of. There’s no massive blueprint for it, maybe sprinkles here and there. And that’s where psychopathic and narcissistic relationships come into play. When I was little, I used to be so confused by people who stayed in relationships with those types of people. You know he’s a monster, why are you going to bed with him? And it’s because of all the tactics that psychopaths and narcissists use to control and infantilize their prey. They demoralize and diminish you to lower your self esteem and value. Make you so low, so that you will feel grateful for them, also more accepting of the BS. Then strip you of any independence. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you”, it’s a psychopathic tactic disguised as a charming gesture. You become too vulnerable, when you the prey is accepting and getting comfortable in what you think is a charming gesture you’re grateful for, you’re really trapped on being dependent. You now lost the ability to stand on your own two feet, and the psychopath/narcissist takes you way high up on a pedestal, higher living. So if in the event you want to leave. Now you have to fall from grace harshly. It’s hard to go from luxurious or just general comfort, not just to normal grounds, but rock bottom because your ability to create a life of your own has been decapitated. You were comfortable with a monster for too long, and didn’t create a safety net, what did you expect to happen? Of course, I can be like I told you so, but with grace, I can see how you can be charmed into a life like that. I used to think it was crazy to go to bed with the man that abused you, but now I understand how the monster could manipulate one into that. And we have a culture so complicit with the monster.

The next important part about getting in bed with the monster. When the person actually attempts to leave a parasitical psychopathic/narcissistic relationship. How destructive the predator gets. You would think they would just discard you, and let you go by the way they make it seem like you should be grateful for them, for how much they degrade you. But when you go, they are begging you to stay, and promise things will change. Then you go back and nothing changes, and you both go through this cycle a few times to the point where you’re truly leaving now. Blocking them on everything, and never coming back. You’re done. Then you see the true wrath of the parasitical psychopath/narcissist. You decided to be in bed with a monster, you don’t get to just leave. And it’s like why, and that’s what parasites are. They can’t live off their own, literally. They have to feed off others, that is their only lifeline. So they have to create these systems where they turn the tables and make it seem like you need them. These pyramid and psychopathic structures are extremely convenient for them. They can constantly feed off you now. That’s why when you try to leave, it looks crazy when they beg you to stay after degrading you. But they’ve always needed you. They can’t live without you. They’re nothing without prey to feed off of. These are just evil parasitical creatures. Why are they in nature, they just always have been. They’re just a parasitical evil species that you just can’t cross paths with. Like a blood in, and blood out concept. And when you look at corporate execs, the people in the board rooms, lawyers, just heads of corporations, you see a lot of these aspects. Lot of these people don’t actually do anything, especially in the creative industry. They don’t have the ability to. That’s why they’re so destructive. They need the people they feed off of. It’s not an analogy that I’m creating. The psychopathic/evil boyfriends, the evil corporate execs, parasites, they are all one and the same. It feels more than just a coincidence, but more of a pattern that roots from all similar places. The patterns are too frequent, clear, and direct to deny.

Maybe we have to accept that the devil is winning, they up on us. They have their hands in all the substantial systems of society. So you may have to tap in with them, temporarily, to get away from them. Like you may have to sell drugs, scam, or dabble in a life of criminality for now(I am not endorsing these actions). Take those brand deals for now. Be a creative inside corporate, giving them keys to culture for now. I actually don’t judge it. But at some point you have to come home to something. You have to put those resources for you to go home and build there, or build your own home. At least start building something outside the destructive corporate structures. If you don’t, and remain in your ways inside those structures, then you reside with the devil, become the demon, you become the corporate incarnate. That’s when you’re judged. You were there all that time, made excess, but didn’t utilize it for anything. I understand why you go in it, I’m not understanding why you’re not getting out of it.

You notice a lot of people that benefited from corporate. Happily accepted their lifestyles being under those structures. Staying quiet while others complained, because as long as they got to stay comfortable, outside their self preservation bubble didn’t matter. Not until it affected them, now you see them come out and start complaining about and to corporate, on how they’re so evil. Not because the structure is evil like it always has been, but it disrupted your comfortability. Not all them years when they were smoothly operating in their destructive ways, when you were smiling and happy in those institutions living your lives. But when they started to do massive layoffs, and caused writer’s strikes, that’s when it was a problem. When dealing with these destructive corporate structures, a lot of people have this I gotta do what I gotta do to feed myself and family attitude, self preservation attitudes. Also feel innocent in being a docile bystander. That’s an understandable sentiment. But just understand you’re endorsing, complicit, and working with the nefarious heads. You enable the parasite and allow it to metastasize and fester. Their resources and tools of destruction grow. Leading to more of a demise of culture and humanity. That’s why you see stage 4 cancer level danger within things like Hip-Hop, media, and other cultures, on the brink of collapse. That’s why you see growing levels of job loss, poverty, and human crises.

“That ties back into the point of everyone collectively being in this docile and innocent bystander state. Individually it seems innocent that they’re doing honest work. But we see where being “innocent”, docile, and having a lack of agency got Beau. Maybe his judgment wasn’t the most fair, but there were honest parts to his guilt… His lack of agency can cause harm, his “innocence” can be guilty sometimes. People while they still have access to some sort of comfort will stay in their docile zone. Remain in their role, even if it’s a role that has a nefarious head, but as long as they feel like they didn’t have a direct role, they feel innocent in their actions. God would tell them to do right by their choices, and stand for something righteous. Instead they fall for anything, remaining in their docile comfort, until the devil says they are coming, that’s when they will start screaming for the righteousness of God, when their comfort and security gets disturbed. Which means a lot of them even in their screams aren’t authentic in their late praise for God. We as a collective are not as proactive in calling for God, we mostly react to the devil. With a collectivism of that, we all contribute to this evil coming, to the point it’s too late. We’re all going to blame the evil world, but we played a role in building it the way that it is. We are all not as innocent as we think, like we have the inability to make a choice.”

We all collectively can’t be self preservers. Society can’t support it, it’s been telling us for centuries that it’s an unsustainable model, with multiple societal collapses to prove it, even in recent years. Especially when there’s parasitical presences within a majority of our systems and fabric of society. We can’t just throw up our hands and say I gotta do what I gotta do to survive and feed my family, also we can’t just say that’s life. We can’t be bystanders to all the injustice, especially when you’re comfortable in your situation despite the chaos. Society will collapse around you, disrupting and taking your comfortable situation with it. The collapse of the middle class is important because it represents the collapsing of opportunity and creating a feasible life for yourself. To where the wealth and poverty gap widens, and it just turns into a wealthy class and the poverty class, and there’s no opportunity to change that. And we were complicit and took part with our self-preservation acts of completely commodifying everything and draining the well of opportunity.

Look at one of the recent Soviet Union collapses and the outlook on it“The Soviet Union became instead a society where no one believed in anything or had any vision of the future…everything was still going according to plan, and what emerged instead was a fake version of the society. The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew that what their leaders said was not real because they could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling apart, but everybody had to play along and pretend that it was real because no one could imagine any alternative. One Soviet writer called it hypernormalization. You were so much a part of the system that it was impossible to see beyond it. Fakeness was hyper normal”-Adam Curtis. It’s not that it’s not too far off, but it sounds exactly like American society currently. An oncoming collapse of a deteriorating society, but in the meantime, where living this lie that is this society.

When everyone knows everything is a lie within our society. We are currently in Hypernormalization. This isn’t a conspiracy theory. This is a growing reality. Growing economy, housing, job market crises, and more. Where it is without a doubt collapsing around most of you and will take you with it. People need to see it and act now. “We live in this world full of optimism bias, illusion of invulnerability, where people feel immune to chaos. Especially in this American society, a society that operates on illusions. People understand that chaos is a real thing, just never believe it will occur in their own reality, like they are so special, that they’re absolved from their demise. So if you are in a world full of that, and you hold the dark truth, the truth of the demise of humanity. And tell the people the truth you hold, you’re just a crazy person that just needs to be locked up in a mental institution, that’s just crazy talk.” People need to act now. The world will collapse due to your self preservation and being a bystander, in the face of this collective and destructive corporate oligarchy. If people don’t come together and act together, if there isn’t a human collectivism movement, and we keep living life as is. I feel the Demise of Humanity will come, very possible. “Create the change that you would like to see, or be stuck as a slave to the system”