The Industry Needs Your Curiosity, Not Your Ego
The other day I had a very unpleasant interaction with an industry partner, someone much older and more experienced than me, over a misunderstanding on social media, and I'm not going to fool any of you: I'm not the guy who can just say "IDGAF what anyone thinks of me" and brush these things off because I do. Reputation matters and you all know it.
I see it happen all the time: people gain experience, earn reputations, climb the ladder of socio-economic relevance. But for many, instead of letting that growth translate into wisdom and humility, it hardens into ego-structure. They become industry gatekeepers who speak with authority but not kindness. Somewhere along the way, they decided that their elevated experience gave them permission to treat the up-and-coming creatives with contempt.
As if they weren't in that EXACT SAME POSITION themselves.
It creates a culture where people are afraid to ask questions, be wrong, and admit they don't know something they feel they should (which is how learning works, BTW). This is the spirit of shameless curiosity — and the creative industry needs curiosity — and it gets squashed by others who had their own curiosity squashed by the generation before them. As a result, we get people aggrandizing their own sense of greatness instead of accelerating the evolution of the craft.
The heart of compassion lies in considering the possibility that if you were born in someone else's body and faced their circumstances, you’d have no way of knowing that you'd act any differently.
This does not mean that you pretend someone's right when they're blatantly wrong — but there is a way to correct someone without being cruel. You can defend your own name without roping other people into your web of personal tensions. And if you've built the reputation already, you've seen how powerful your words are when directed at the newbies.
This is a call-out to those hardened egos, but it's also a call-in: if you've been in the game for 20+ years, ask yourself — what kind of industry are you creating? Is it a culture of authority-based fear, or of genuine respect, curiosity, and kindness?
Your reputation isn't just the quality of your work; it's what people feel and think when they're reminded of you. You may have done a great job at projecting a certain public image, but what do the people who work with you, who see you when the camera's not pointed at you, think?
And to those feeling down today because someone shamed them for their lack of knowledge or experience — don't let other people's bullshit get in the way of your creative growth. Let these experiences remind you of who you'll be to the up-and-coming generation years from now.
