'Highly Creative People'

A lot of clickbait articles about 'Highly Creative People' keep turning up, what's going on? Where has the phrase come from (sounds like it might be a category teachers use to distinguish between kids' learning styles but idk)? Why do all of these articles assume that normos need a user's manual to deal with creatives? etc

Some examples:

http://iheartintelligence.com/2015/07/08/loving-a-highly-creative-person/

Creative people feel everything on a deeper level. What doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, can be crushing to them. It’s that same passion that goes into whatever they create that drives them to love you, so understand that with the good – comes the bad.

http://www.ideastap.com/IdeasMag/the-knowledge/how-to-date-creative-people

At the risk of sounding like some blazed-out 60s drug casualty, a flower cannot grow in a fist (oh Nell, please). Sometimes you need to give things a bit of freedom for them to flourish (seriously, Nell, where is this coming from?).

Give your potential partner the space – that’s right, the actual physical space – to work on their creative outlets. If that means band practice, going to the studio, meetings in pubs, time at the library, then let them go.
If you let them have the freedom and opportunity to concentrate properly on their work, then you can enjoy some quality post-work fun time. And yes, that is an innuendo.

Also, if you get to the stage of moving in together, do everything you can to make sure that you both have a separate home and workspace. Trust us. Studio flats are to creative romances what power drills are to kneecaps.

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/advice/a38210/things-you-should-know-before-dating-an-artist/

Drawing nude models is not weird or kinky or sexual or threatening in any way. It's about fundamentals. If you can't stand the idea of me looking at naked people for extended periods of time, remember that you watch porn, which actually is sexual.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/20-things-remember-you-love-highly-creative-person.html

http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/people-understand-creative-people/929580/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/04/creativity-habits_n_4859769.html

more self-classifying to explain differences in personality by introducing archetypes that people can identify with, in-built caveats about deviations from what "other people" think are societal norms

Thought Catalog has a lot to say about this.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/jamie-varon/2015/12/11-things-highly-creative-people-sacrifice-for-their-art/
http://thoughtcatalog.com/rania-naim/2016/03/14-things-only-highly-creative-people-will-understand/
http://thoughtcatalog.com/manahil-aleem/2014/04/10-things-only-creative-people-will-understand/
http://thoughtcatalog.com/brianna-wiest/2013/09/20-signs-youre-a-creative-type/
http://thoughtcatalog.com/tatiana-perez/2016/01/10-assumptions-people-make-about-creatives-that-arent-at-all-true/

A good challenge if you're bored is to try to find a LinkinIn profile / CV that doesn't mention the person in question is "creative".

Or even LinkedIn.

I think I mentioned something on the words/usages/phrases thread about how much I hate the modern connotations of the word "creative" -- although what's being described here is even worse than what I had in mind, especially "creatives" as noun.

Assumptions-people-make-about-emperors-and-their-perception-of-clothes

Suspicions raised in these quarters by lack of any direct reference to what the 'creative person' is actually producing. Are they a web designer? A chef? Landscape painter? Cellist? Is the term 'creative' meant to cover all of these?

The 'creative person' these articles describe is thoroughly difficult - they're unreliable, you can't have reasoned conversations with them, they turn up late to things, they're prone to emotional over-reactions ...

The articles all seek to encourage this person's family, friends, managers, colleagues and partners to accept these difficulties as inherent to this person, and also assure us that some sort of creativity is taking place somewhere, which is basically more important than whatever we may think this person owes us (punctuality, honesty, reliability etc).

Sounds to me like an attempt to carve out a privileged caste, basically?

(Which I'd try to tie in to the rise of the 'creative industry' and gentrification if I knew more about that)

it's ego alchemy, using "creative" as the reagent

xp - do you mean "creative class" (i.e. the Richard Florida concept) or something else/a new version/etc?

My guess is that those articles are aimed at the demographic of recent college grads who have no adult identity apart from their long school 'career' and struggling to land a reasonably well-paid 'creative' job. Because competition is so cut-throat for those jobs, the only hope for these people is to separate themselves from being merely competent and figure out how to make the leap to Highly Creative Person, so they can maybe get that entry level job in marketing or publishing or design or whatever.

Lowly creative people tbh

pathology of the age

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/ten_habits_of_highly_creative_people

if you can't find a way to become 'creative' / regarded as 'creative' by others then you're basically consigning yourself to a miserable life of meaningless drudgery at the mercy of unpredictable forces beyond your control, understanding, or ability to adapt to

creativity is the thing that everyone more successful and happier than you has and, once you have it, the thing that will license all your egoism, idiosyncrasies, and entitlement

That's when I come into the room and trick u into signing up to a civil service job, right when yr at yr lowest ebb.

it's not about the money it's about the art

now here's your $10

you've earned it, van gogh

i am the don draper of my workplace, stop trying to put constraints on me, it hampers my creativity

Creative people feel everything on a deeper level. What doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, can be crushing to them. It’s that same passion that goes into whatever they create that drives them to love you, so understand that with the good – comes the bad.

Thought I had borderline personality disorder, thank fuck for this article, turns out I'm actually just a 'Highly Creative Person'.

I refer to Thought Catalog for guidance on my health, keeps life "creative"

passionate people and people with very thin skin who feel everything very deeply tend to make shitty art in my personal experience

need to talk to my dr about excessive creativity

consider changing your name first

passionate people and people with very thin skin who feel everything very deeply tend to make shitty art in my personal experience

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, April 6, 2016 9:34 PM (38 minutes ago)

Okay, I was taking the piss out of these articles w/ my post, but this has just made me feel even worse. Now I have mental health problems *and* I'm a shitty artist.

Well Alfred Hitchcock was notoriously thin skinned and he wasn't a shitty artist.

i pretty much despise this way of thinking, that some people are just creative and some people are just bricks. it's some capitalist alienation bullshit man.

i'm with Andre Breton. let's let everyone get creative. Mr. Plumber probably has some crazy dreams.

Now I have mental health problems *and* I'm a shitty artist.

OK sorry, I was just taking the piss myself, but there was no need for me to be a dick about it.

Am I the only one who sings this thread title to REM?

Highly creative people holding hands
Highly creative people holding hands
Highly creative people laughing

I love all of these clickbaiticles that insist that every single demographic known is in fact a genius - coffee drinkers, guitarists, single dads, people who sleep on their sides, etc.

I can't wait for the "Do You Work For A 77 Rolling Boss?"

I love all of these clickbaiticles that insist that every single demographic known is in fact a genius - coffee drinkers, guitarists, single dads, people who sleep on their sides, etc.

housewives and prostitutes, plumbers in boiler suits, truants in coffee bars, who think they're alone

in the future everybody will be famous for 15 reasons

The 'creative person' these articles describe is thoroughly difficult - they're unreliable, you can't have reasoned conversations with them, they turn up late to things, they're prone to emotional over-reactions ...

The articles all seek to encourage this person's family, friends, managers, colleagues and partners to accept these difficulties as inherent to this person, and also assure us that some sort of creativity is taking place somewhere, which is basically more important than whatever we may think this person owes us (punctuality, honesty, reliability etc).

Sounds to me like an attempt to carve out a privileged caste, basically?

― Never changed username before (cardamon), Wednesday, April 6, 2016 12:01 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

*likes*

thomas frank

http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/2301/15797

What intrigues me about Originals is not so much the advice Grant offers his readers as the technique by which he assures us that his advice is sound. His main characters are, of course, the various inventors, executives, artists, activists, and CEOs whose cases we are asked to study and whose creativity we are supposed to emulate. But what convinces the reader is the book’s cast of secondary characters: The array of academic experts who apparently spend their days studying entrepreneurs and creativity and the amazing complexities of the capitalist brain.

For example, on page 3, Grant tells us that “years ago, psychologists discovered that there are two paths to achievement.” What is interesting here is not the two paths themselves (“conformity and originality,” in case you wanted to know) but the depiction of psychologists as people who spend their time studying “achievement.” A short while later, Grant gussies up a statement about entrepreneurs by telling us, “It’s the rare conclusion on which many economists, sociologists, and psychologists have actually come to agree.”

And so it unfolds throughout the book. Professional authority of the most conventional sort is marshaled to prove this or that point about unconventionality and rule-breaking. We all want to escape the cage of the establishment—and just look at all the careful, traditional, peer-reviewed experts who stand ready to help us do so! Grant is hugely impressed by academic status, always taking pains to reference a scholar’s prestigious employer.

But this unthinking credulity before academic credentialism is only a foothill in the Himalayan elitism of the creativity genre. Consider this statement from Albert Einstein, a hero beloved of creativity gurus everywhere, which Grant uses to introduce one of his chapters: “Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds.”

i think it has much to do with the ascending influence of the advertisement industry on both the fine arts. spending a few days in an ad agency and you'll see the 'creative' department try to 'out-creative' themselves, it's a tragic sight. On top of that, because they have to play around with Fortune 500 money they both get to think they are genius and become gatekeepers on a municipal level. at an ad agency in montreal, there is that conference room with the quote 'creativity starts at the end of your comfort zone' and people there discuss mostly how to sell cat food.

hard to beat

meow meow meow meow
meow meow meow meow
meow meow meow meow
meow meow meow meow

Thomas Frank is at his best when he's taking apart that sort of bullshit. He also had a good piece years ago on the "Creative Class" bullshit spouted by that guy whose last name is Florida.

Good essay

It’s worth remarking that when Grant studies historical movements, they are always leftish or liberal ones: women’s suffrage, the civil-rights uprising, people who helped Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, a former student leader from Serbia who took part in a movement that overthrew Slobodan Milošević and whose clenched-fist logo Grant reproduces on page 223. These are whom we must look to in order to derive lessons for how to manage employees and come up with new business ideas.

One reason for this distinct liberal bias is that it serves to camouflage the essential elitism of the creativity genre. Another is that Grant, like so many other management thinkers, feels he must call bosses “radicals” and compare their role in our civilization to those of protesters and revolutionaries who overthrow “the status quo.” Naturally, someone looking for lessons in capitalist radicalism would start his inquiry by examining genuine radicals.

Sometimes, though, it just feels like the author is trolling us. Officers in the US Navy aren’t “radicals” or “tempered radicals,” as Grant refers to them, even if they do think software is more important than hardware. The low point comes in chapter 3, where Grant describes the struggles of an executive at the CIA to get that agency to put more information on its “classified internet,” presumably so its agents can go about spying, subverting, and droning with more efficiency than before. Fair enough. But what perverse urge makes the author describe this quest as a “countercultural” one? Or as an effort to “speak truth to power”? Or as a project that involves “building a network of rebels within the CIA”?