GenX knows a few things.

Some thoughts on what we know about the greywashing of innovation, Baby Reindeer, and how to flip the bird to all of it.

Small is beautiful

The popular internet prior to the Web 2.0 revolution, grew as small communities, nodes, on a network that expanded organically, distributed, decentralized, and diffused. Lots of independent geeks. Not a lot of "platforms."

The act of commodification and business "productizing" centralizes and homogenizes. Words like "diversity," "divergence," and "innovation" in these ecosystems begin to signify the precise opposite of its stated intent.

Consequently, the growth-change-disruption ecosystem is about slowing change, recapitulating older innovations as new, and consolidating. In order to amass capital things have to stay somewhat predictable. Nothing more than those things we believe to be unpredictable.

It is the eschatology of human creativity. It is the end of things.

No one knows this better than GenX. I am not a big fan of over-generalizing based on generations, but there is a little bit of something to us that you can't count out yet. There is more we have to say and do and we are what I call the "liminal generation," betwixt and between. And liminal spaces are where the change agents live. Take a trip with me here.

I wrote a comedy in the late 1990s, satirizing commercialization of nostalgia, by writing the first piece of 90s nostalgia before we had left them; there is a character named Guitar Guy who has a line the brilliant Pittsburgh-based actor Devin Malcolm (who originated the role) loved to say:

"Time is a cheese factory. Today's bootleg is tomorrow's bargain bin discount CD sale. Van Gogh's Starry Night is all over coffee mugs and t-shirts. History is a process of turning Brie to Velveeta. Over and over again."

I am not saying it was a good line, but at the time, it resonated. We really got the sad truth of commoditized innovation. The Indie movement that inspired us all to be independent makers quickly became the manufactured horror show that was Miramax. That monster machine used independent art as a veneer and delivery mechanism for sadism. The success of the Guitar Guy line was all due to Malcolm's delivery, which betrayed a world-weary wisdom that the character felt melancholy about before he had actually achieved it. Because Malcolm, the actor, felt it in his bones. It's so disappointing that this is what happens. (Hats off, Malcolm, if you find this. You were the first and best Guitar Guy because you set the mold.)

I might not need to explain that my rush to satirize the inevitable rush to nostalgize the 90s illustrates a central point that is true in any business: if it is being mass-produced, it is already dead.

The self-reflexive "diceyness" identified in this review was part of the point, but that kind of got lost in this thoughtful review. He, like another critic who was not as thoughtful as he totally panned me, implied I produced, wrote, and directed it because I was an egomaniac and needed to be reined in.

Was this sexist? Maybe. At that time, independent male auteurs like Tarantino and Kevin Smith and theatre auteurs like Wolfe and the like were all the rage and celebrated. True, the auteur theatre folk came from a more European avant-garde sensibility, which I loved and also made with enthusiasm (like my earlier play The Magdalene Project, which I staged in homage to Peter Brook). But these two comedies in that double bill were my desire to do low-brow, populist but smart art that engaged in a critical self-awareness of the kitsch, even as it reveled in the pure decadent joy of it. This is Gen X. The first generation raised on cable television and the constant feed of cultural products, including the purveyor of InstaNostalgia, VH1, that could be served in minutes like Jell-O instant pudding.

The spokesperson for that pudding and what it turned out he was actually selling behind the manufactured America's Favorite Dad marketing, alludes to why I felt compelled to become indy. I would have gladly partnered with people and an organization with whom I felt safe, and that the young men and women I worked with could be safe, too. I couldn't find it.

Better I go in, raw, under-resourced, trying to do work in the most expensive place to do theatre and be less than perfect. The alternative was clearly to become complicit with the people who sold a glimpse of a dream for a lifetime of control and enslavement. If you have seen Baby Reindeer, I wish I could tell you that was an unusual, dark, biographic experience. It's not. It's common. I'm so glad for this movie and I support #timesup and #Metoo with every fiber of my being but to think that women are the sole victims here is to hide how dark and deep this actually goes. It isn't just women. It's anyone who doesn't have enough wealth and connection to protect them. The machine eats the middle and working class for breakfast, which may be why they are disappearing.

That's why Baby Reindeer is so popular. Not just in entertainment. Tech. Business. Academia. Anywhere there is obscene amounts of money, it's where people with dreams go and they find dream-eaters there ready to devour them.

The secret to legacy success in many businesses is not that you need connections. It's that you need protection.

This means that drive and talent don't always win. Without connections and protection, they will be taken from you along with anything else you have to offer: youth, innocence, loyalty, devotion, and, of course, labor.

Christian Crumlish taught me a word I had not yet encountered that describes this perfectly. Greywashing.

Greywashing in innovation is a colloquial term that has a variety of points of origin. It sometimes means false marketing to Boomers, but that isn't its most revelatory application. Its most cutting and apt application was how Christian meant it: greywashing innovation is a strategy that manufactures a fa?ade of capability and genius. In so doing, it attracts all the investment and talent in academia, business, and entertainment and prevents others from competing and dancing with recognition and resources on the dance floor. The authentically capable arrive and find themselves trapped in inert activities designed to create a cheap, ersatz illusion of innovation where none actually exists. This suffocates truly innovative endeavors and truly innovative people.

You may have already intuited that where I went with this tour into a chapter in my artistic career, there is little difference between what happens in theatre and film and what happens in tech. At that time, I was already working with "deep data" products, and that's what in part financed my theatre projects, as I was also studying AI for an interdisciplinary PhD. (This was pre-kids, and I never slept, LOL. I am paying for this now.)

And no, I am not trying to promote myself as a true innovative genius amongst charlatans; I am saying I am a creative and innovative person who has studied the brain and creativity in general, and I know innovative environments when I see them and I want to play in them.

Sometimes, that means I have to build them myself because I can't find them—or they can't find me.

If your goal is to be creative and innovative, so you want to rush into AI, don't bother. It is already dead, and the genuinely divergent and disruptive people have already moved somewhere else. It is usually the less-sexy path where the innovation is. In truly creative endeavors, it is easy for a major person with authority to poke holes in it, like this critic did, measuring it against projects that are resourced at literally 100 times the budget of my show.

As critics go, this was rather fair and helpful, but it was also billed as a "workshop," and I produced it on a credit card limit budget, so perhaps it was not as fair and helpful as it could have been. In retrospect, I am flattered that it was taken seriously at all and that it was mistaken for a completed, fully produced work in mid-town Manhattan, downstairs from a show called Urinetown that went on to be hugely successful, while Nin never got another run. And truly, while funny and a delight to produce, write, and direct with a group of funny and talented young people, it wasn't the best thing I've ever done. It was the improvisational community of comedy that I wanted and I couldn't find, so on my summer break from graduate work, in between software projects, I made one.

In the final estimation, it was the joy of creating on my own terms with only my own resources.

No, it was not the best I've done or even the best I am capable of.

But perhaps the most defiant until this point in my history.

I'd rather have a lukewarm review of a show that never went anywhere than to do business with people who exploit humans for their own pleasure for one reason only.

Because they can.

You think you can't flip the bird on it all because it will affect your career. It won't. It could affect your second car, your 401 (k), your DoorDash delivery, and 10 different streaming platform subscriptions. It might also mean moving to a less expensive geo and driving a used car instead of a Tesla.

But ask yourself: when you lie on your deathbed, if you are fortunate enough to have time to reflect, what would you give to have just one chance to go back and give those things up and do what is in your heart to do?

GenX, and anyone reading this. There is always still time.

Now is always here.