2018-09-23-the-indie-problem.md 2.1 KB
layout: post title: "The 'indie' problem" date: 2018-09-23 01:01:01
categories: misc
Let me be clear: there are good works which have been labeled (or even self-labeled) as "indie". Depending on your taste, maybe even most of your favourites are. But that doesn't make "indie" good. As a matter of my authoritative opinion, it is bad in almost any sense possible.
First and foremost, the word "indie" itself is beyond redemption. If you have at least a vague idea of the whole concept, you should know that it is a derivative from "independent". Independent from big publishers, big money or other kind of power which strangles creative impulse...
As if no "indie creator" ever got themselves tons of money. As if no "indie creator" strives to hit a major publishing contract.
The next problem naturally emerges from the first one. As "indie" becomes to be misinterpreted as something more than "lack of major publishing contract" status, people start to use it as part of marketing strategy. And here's the power of money, which one supposedly sought to escape, is returning.
Adding to this already grim picture is the fact that even those who never enter the mainstream or get too rich can also easily lose the ephemeral "independence". Arguably, many are even more dependent than their colleagues working on contract: when you try to live off your creative output on your own, it's hard not to notice what strategies are more profitable. What an irony: some "indie creators" actually do it on purpose!
There are probably more problems to tackle, but i want to only mention one more: "indie" is a culture of constantly looking up to mainstream. Yes, very often critically and analytically, but nevertheless you can only go that far with applying typical transformations to typical mainstream. Hubris (which comes easily with tagging yourself with a cool label and then hanging around similarly-minded people) doesn't help being creative and self-critical either.
...
So yeah, a word with no coherent meaning, whose supposed purpose is defeated on regular basis by its proponents. That's like what natural human languages are about.