Not Being a ‘Perfect’ Fit

Who gets to decide what culture is when access to the room matters more than contribution?

We have a major classist problem, and no one wants to really talk about it. There’s a major trait spreading for the sake of who should belong to what, and who can own what based on what you have to offer.

“You’ve got to tell the world how to treat you. If the world tells you how you are going to be treated you are in trouble.” — James Baldwin

You have probably seen those people who seem to always know the right person. Or those who end up in the room where decisions get made, opportunities are given, and careers get launched—not necessarily because their work is better, but because they fit? They just, for some reason, got the unspoken codes that unlock doors the rest of us didn’t even know existed.

And before you say, “Are they not the ‘Nepo babies’?”, I put it to you that it’s not just them. They have their leeway, sure, but others rule these things. More often than not, we see talented people who never get the opportunity to be seen. Not because their work wasn’t good enough or they didn’t hustle hard enough or perfect their craft. But because they never made it into the room where the people with resources determine who deserves a shot. They got filtered out long before anyone ever looked at their portfolio, listened to their demo, or read their manuscript.

The Invisible Codes That Keep You Out

The creative industries love to talk about discovery, finding raw talent, and seeking out fresh voices. But what they actually do is pull from the same circles, the same networks, the same types of people who already know how to talk the talk. People who understand the “know-hows.”

I remember sitting in a meeting once, listening to a creative director explain why they were passing on a project from someone whose work was genuinely innovative. “It’s just not the vibe we’re going for,” they said. “It’s almost there, it just doesn’t hit.” I knew it did.

Meanwhile, they green-lit something from a former colleague that was basic at most. It was just there. Nothing special. The selection was not based on quality but on familiarity; it was knowing that this person would understand the unstated expectations, the way things are done around here.

You can be the most talented person in the room and still be invisible because you don’t speak fluently in their particular brand of cultural capital. You don’t have the right taste in the right things. You didn’t read the right books or listen to the right records or watch the right films—or you did, but you talk about them differently, reference them differently, frame them in ways that don’t compute as “sophisticated” or “innovative” to people who decide what those words mean.

Culture Fit: The Polite Way to Say “Not Like Us”

Corporate America figured this out a long time ago and gave it the name culture fit.

On paper, it sounds reasonable. Of course, you want people who align with your values, who work well with the team, and who contribute to a positive environment. But in practice? Culture fit becomes the polite way to say “you make us uncomfortable,” or “you don’t remind us of ourselves,” or “we can’t imagine grabbing drinks with you after work.”

It’s the same mechanism operating in creative spaces, just without the HR jargon. Instead of culture fit, you hear statements like “not quite what we’re looking for,” or “doesn’t align with our aesthetic,” or “we’re going in a different direction.”

Translation: you don’t fit the template. You require us to expand our imagination of who belongs here, and that feels like work we’re not interested in doing.

The brilliance—if you can call it that—is how it obscures exclusion behind language that sounds neutral, even thoughtful. Nobody has to say “we only hire people who talk and act as we do” or “we only sign artists who move in our social circles.” They just say you’re “not the right fit” and move on to someone whose entire existence confirms what they already believe good looks like.

“When culture is treated as exclusive property, it demands conformity and our obsession with cultural ownership creates invisible borders. Borders that invite those who belong and reject those who do not.” — Abi Adamson

And because it’s framed as a matter of compatibility rather than discrimination, you can’t even argue with it. You’re just left standing outside the room, your work unexamined, wondering what you could have done differently when the real answer is: nothing. The game was rigged before you showed up.

Looking Out for Your People Creates New Gates

Now, I know what some of you are thinking: “What’s wrong with looking out for your own? When I finally blow, why shouldn’t I bring my guys along?”

Listen, I get it. With the way the system is built to keep us out, when you finally claw your way into a position where you can make decisions, you would want to put those who have had your back to fill those spots. Which is understandable; we can call corrective justice in industries that historically locked us out.

But here’s where it gets blurry. When every opportunity gets distributed through personal relationships, when the metric for “deserving” becomes “do I know them” instead of “is their work exceptional,” we end up replicating the same exclusionary systems we claim to oppose. Just with different people holding the keys.

I’ve read about talented artists getting passed over because they weren’t part of the right crew. Writers whose work was fire but who didn’t run in the circles where opportunities got discussed. Filmmakers who couldn’t get anyone to watch their short film because they didn’t have the social capital to demand attention. Meanwhile, mid-tier work gets elevated because someone knew someone who knew someone.

We’re all trying to eat. We’re all trying to build something sustainable in industries that chew people up and spit them out. Looking out for your people isn’t wrong. But when it becomes the primary path to visibility, when the culture of a scene is determined entirely by who already has access to the people making decisions, we’re just creating new gates yet again.

Food for thought: are we building alternative structures that actually expand access, or are we just rotating who gets to be exclusive?

What We Lose When the Room Stays Small

The tragedy is not just individual careers that never launch or brilliant work that never gets seen, though that’s real and it matters. The deeper loss is cultural.

When creative industries operate primarily through proximity and personal networks, we get a narrower culture than we claim to value. The same aesthetics recycled. The same narratives retold. The same perspectives are centered. Why? Because the people making decisions only see people who already look, sound, and move like the people they know.

We lose the ones whose work would actually push culture forward because they’re thinking in ways the room isn’t equipped to recognise yet. We lose voices that don’t fit neatly into existing categories because nobody in the decision-making seat can imagine what box to put them in. We lose innovation, risk, and genuine newness all because the system rewards familiarity over discovery.

And we tell ourselves we’re being discerning, that we’re maintaining standards, and protecting quality. But what we’re actually doing is protecting comfort. We’re prioritising the known over the unknown, and limiting what we have to explore.

Making the Room Bigger

So how do we operate with integrity when we’re working within systems designed to concentrate power and access?

It starts with interrogating our own filters. When we’re in positions to make decisions about who to publish, who to platform, who to fund, or who to hire, we have to ask ourselves honest questions. Am I choosing this person because their work is genuinely exceptional, or because they’re familiar? Because they feel safe, or because I can already imagine them in the room?

It means creating structures that force us to look beyond our immediate networks. Blind submissions. Open calls. Mentorship programmes that actively seek out people who don’t already have connections. Funding mechanisms that don’t require you to know someone on the board.

It means acknowledging that “good” isn’t neutral or objective, that our taste has been shaped by our access and proximity, and that what feels immediately legible to us might just be a reflection of our own limitations.

It means supporting your people and staying open to people you don’t know yet. Loyalty to community and responsibility to culture. Both things can be true.

But mostly, it means recognising that if we’re only ever pulling from the same rooms, listening to the same voices, elevating the same kinds of people, we’re not actually building culture. We’re just maintaining it. And maintenance isn’t the same as growth.

The room doesn’t have to stay this small. We can make it bigger. We can create more doors. We can build tables instead of fighting over chairs. But only if we’re willing to admit that the current system isn’t actually serving the culture we claim to care about.

It’s just serving the people who already made it inside.

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