Before you get into a rage, let me explain.

There isn’t too much competition.
There isn’t a lack of opportunity.
There sure as hell isn’t a shortage of tools.

There’s a lack of self-respect.
A lack of standards.
A lack of originality.

Everyone got comfortable with copy-and-paste.
With “borrowing” from their heroes.
With building on someone else’s foundation.

That in itself is the entire logic of AI.
Read that again! 

But here’s the uncomfortable truth:

It’s not AI’s fault.

The creative industry was already doing that long before AI ever existed.

We stopped inventing.
We stopped exploring.
We stopped risking.
We started referencing.
We started repeating.
We started pleasing.

A decade ago, artists still had enough self-respect to come up with their own ideas.

But in the last decade, we’ve watched a slow decline in:

Original work
Authentic work
Exciting work

Everything feels the same.
Studios have no style.
Brands have no soul.
Projects feel safe, predictable, painfully familiar.

Nothing truly new has hit culture in years,
not because people lost talent,
but because people lost themselves.

And here’s the painful truth buried underneath it:

You think you have to fit in.
But your inner self is begging you to break away.

Your soul wants to explore.
Your creativity wants to push edges.
Your identity wants to evolve into something only you can be.

But the industry trained you to stay inside the lines.

To be efficient.
To be consistent.
To be reliable.
To be “professional.”

And professionalism slowly suffocated originality.

We traded curiosity for compliance.
We traded exploration for optimization.
We traded identity for performance.

So no, today’s creatives are not underpaid.

You’re undervalued because you’ve undervalued yourself.

Your value used to come from:

Taking the risk of being yourself
Creating from truth, not formulas
Speaking what you actually believe

Those used to be the standards.
Not anymore.

So why should you get paid more than everyone else
if your work looks exactly like everyone else?

You didn’t become a victim of AI.
You became a victim of capitalism combined with creative amnesia.

You optimized yourself into irrelevance.
You replaced your instincts with formulas.
You traded expression for business advice that never understood you.

But remember this:
You’re not rejected because you’re not good enough.
You’re rejected because you’ve blended in so completely
that people can’t feel you anymore.

If you want to make the leap:

Take the risk of being yourself.
Create from your truth.
Have a perspective.
Say the thing you actually think.

Stop treating yourself like a cookie cutter in a world drowning in templates.

Because the future won’t belong to the most efficient creators.

It will belong to the most original ones,
and originality comes from inside, not from a Pinterest board.

Love, Marko

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