So I’m trying to figure out whether the profession of ‘designer’ or the label of ‘creative’ draws people of a certain temperament or the job itself draws out innate tendencies and amplifies them. Perhaps it has nothing to do with temperament or tendencies and is an evolving  survival response to an economic environment where ‘at-will’ employment means competent people are let go from jobs as a matter of course.

Observed behaviors:

• Frenzied self-promotion – rehashed/echo-chamber postings on LinkedIn, Quora, Meet-up pages
• Retreat to high school cliques at professional association meetups
• Name-dropping and copious use of jargon
• Clothing/accessories conforming to the official hipster uniform – avoiding anyone not wearing said uniform
• Obligatory expressions of disgust/horror whenever Microsoft is mentioned
• Repeated expressions of ‘I’m so glad I’ve found my tribe’ as if the business world was some  devouring race of overlord monsters

To mangle  a cliché, this carries more than a whiff of desperation – it’s the Axe spray drench of an insecurity meltdown. “I’m part of the ‘in’ crowd! I can name-drop! I’m promoting my brand! I dress myself  in the correct designer uniform!”

What drives this?

A professor of international conflict management said his research led him to the theory that people require an ‘us’ (people who are like me) and a ‘them’. Diverse but harmonious societies were able to exist peacefully if they could find some way to all see each other as ‘us’. Societies with social conflict and civil unrest were a result of people living in the same ‘space’ but feeding the ‘us vs them’ mentality until each believed ‘they’ were  intolerable and had to move or be marginalized/eliminated.

It concerns me that people working in user-experience design seem to be contributing to the us (creatives) vs them (corporate drones, developer drudges) mentality, when our empathy skills should be used for good – creating common ground.