unsolicited ideas
Why do the companies, brands, and public figures I admire most seem to have no interest in my ideas? At first glance, that feels like a contradiction. Doesn’t engagement marketing encourage participation? Isn’t the whole point to get people talking, whether they love you or hate you?
In a sense, yes. Every brand wants interaction. But consumers also learn, almost instinctively, that every community has an expected script. Belonging often means understanding how to behave without anyone having to explain the rules.
So where does that leave someone on the outside? Can I get closer to the things that inspire me? Could I fill my portfolio with ideas for games, films, or franchises that very clearly do not want brilliant ideas from strangers?
And they have a very specific reason for that. You are not part of it. Years of training go into building a company’s culture. There are explicit rules, but even more important are the invisible ones. There are salaries, ownership, responsibilities, and forms of creative labor that are surprisingly difficult to define. At some point, you simply mistook familiarity for intimacy. It happens. That’s the risk of making products feel deeply human and approachable. Imagine if ChatGPT or Gemini had a face.
That sense of closeness blurs boundaries, much like relatives who feel entitled to offer advice about your life. More interestingly, think about how often you feel compelled to improve things for free. I’ve written long critiques only to delete them. Occasionally a suggestion slips through and reaches its destination anyway. Do we actually want criticism? Or only praise? Anyone busy creating something rarely has the luxury of deciding that in advance. Criticism arrives without warning, whether you’re ready or not. Where does this desire to see other people’s projects succeed come from?
It reminds me of the psychologist Albert Bandura’s concept of vicarious learning. We learn constantly by watching other people’s failures and successes. We observe, test, compare, and quietly refine our own theories, whether we notice it or not.
Which brings me to an idea almost nobody wants to hear: Technique is never what’s missing.
That probably sounds wrong at first. Not because technique is perfect, but because technique has another function entirely. It is also a way of belonging. Companies have little interest in presenting technique as something complete or settled. Artists, too, are often reluctant to admit that technique isn’t the whole story, while quietly allowing others to believe it is. The mechanics behind things have value. Knowing how something works changes your relationship to it. Sometimes outside interventions help. Sometimes they only interrupt.
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So what exactly is the secret? Perhaps the secret is simply that there is one. Whenever someone joins a company, a fan community, or any tightly knit group, they immediately begin searching for its unwritten rules. One of those rules is almost always the same: Don’t speak.
Once we’re inside the club, something curious happens. We begin defending its rules ourselves. In exchange, we’re spared endless explanations and a certain kind of bureaucracy. Of course, another bureaucracy quietly takes its place. Perhaps less rigid, but certainly more Kafkaesque. The old codes give way to subtler mechanisms. Evaluation. Metrics. Protocols. Performance reviews. Invisible ways of regulating how things move.
Where does this come from? Is it about protecting intellectual property Making organizations easier to manage? Legitimizing decisions? Technique becomes both a shield against public opinion and the framework that quietly holds entire organizations together.
People usually accept difference only after that difference has been domesticated. Companies and institutions are not people, even when they work very hard to look like people. Our lives, our work, and our identities become fragmented enough that organizations can borrow fragments of humanity and wear them convincingly. Appearing open to ideas is useful. Until it isn’t. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if anyone could simply walk into a library and place a new book on the shelf? Or introduce a new food directly into the supermarket?
Before that happens, there are certifications, qualifications, manufacturing standards, distribution systems, and countless forms of social validation. I’m not arguing that these structures shouldn’t exist. They obviously do. What interests me is something else: We’re often encouraged to believe they don’t.
Mental notes:
Question every promise of unlimited creative freedom. Is it genuinely expanding possibilities, or simply channeling them into an existing pattern?
Whenever something claims to become “more human,” ask what kind of human relationship is actually being offered.
Between hype and hate, how much of my energy goes into improving other people’s work for free? And what, exactly, do I expect in return?
