The Hypocrisy of Networking Events
By Leroy James King · May 18, 2010
There’s a necessary evil, especially if you’ve jumped off the bridge of “staff job” to “freelance” – the networking event. Now, I get that networking events aren’t solely niched to the entertainment industry. My buddy back home works for a non-profit food bank organization and is forced to network with other food bank professionals, and as he puts it, they’re all “painfully boring, soul sucking, pointless,” and a slew of other malcontented phrases. So it seems to me that the networking event is universally loathed, though still completely necessary.
Let me just say that entertainment industry networking events are slightly different from the non-profit food bank networking event. Yeah, they’re soul sucking, and yeah, they at least feel pointless, BUT they’re never, ever boring. And no, that’s not to say that they’re enjoyable. It’s the kind of “not boring” you experience at a family reunion that’s dappled with distant relatives that somehow look inbred, but since you’re the only one that doesn’t look inbred, you’re the odd man out. It’s infinitely entertaining, but it’s because you’re on a mild, kiddie roller coaster of toddler emotions. You’re anxious when you get there, then after a drink or 2 you realize that you have no reason to be nervous, so then you get a little excited that you’re there – that you might even meet someone that can become a good addition to your arsenal of contacts. So then you light a short-lived fire under your ass and you start chatting up random people, who like you, are all writers, or an agency lackie, or an assistant. You soon discover that there’s no in between – everyone falls into one of these 3 categories, and then you’re like, “Okay, well I need to exchange contact info with some of these people,” but then the truth sets in that everyone is just waiting for their turn to talk, and after about 30 to 45 minutes of bouncing between random people you resolve to the fact that this entire charade was pointless and that you just want to get drunk with your buddies who keep milling around the wannabe models over in the corner as they come down from their Adderall highs long enough to make you get a half boner. Then you have to make the decision of whether or not you’re going to leave early and actually get some work done on your side project, or if you’re just going to keep pounding the “discounted” networking event booze and let yourself self-indulgently make snap judgments about everyone around you because you can feel them doing that exact same thing in the back of your head, their eyes burning laser holes into your cranium as they suckle on their festering ego concoctions, made to order from the struggling actress behind the bar who refuses to audition for anything other than feature films because commercials and stage plays are just that much beneath her.
Yeah, so the industry networking event is chock full of entertainment, but I’m hard pressed to find any real use for them. I mean, how the hell do you really pitch a project or yourself to tipsy strangers who keep eyeing the tits over your shoulder? I personally find it completely useless, and I for one wouldn’t take anyone really seriously that was downing a Whisky Soda, while they frantically tried to tell me how cool everything they’re doing is.
So I have to ask, has anyone really benefited from these kinds of events? Something tells me I just need to improve my overall disposition towards them, as I’m becoming a Jaded Jerry on all sorts of fronts these days. Somehow my general well-being and health have taken a backseat to the amount of hustling I’m able to pack into a day of faceless networking opportunities – thousands of emails. I’m not sleeping as much, I’m eating shit, I haven’t run in like 3 months, and all I think about is how I can turn thin air into opportunity.
Which brings me to my big point. Networking events are misleading – you can’t go in with the prerogative that you’re going to create an opportunity out of thin air, or a 10-minute conversation with that guy at UTA who knows the 2nd assistant to Johnny Depp’s agent’s 1st assistant. Fuck that. You create opportunity for yourself, and it’s absolutely, positively contingent on you. You have to embody the self-confidence you’re always looking for in other people.
What I’m realizing about myself the further and further I get immersed in the freelance writing world is that so many of us have incredibly high expectations for everyone around us, yet we ignore applying the same criteria to ourselves. You have to live the lifestyle of you want to work with. Hypocrisy runs rampant, and the sooner your identify the hypocrisy in your day-to-day, the sooner you’ll actually get shit done that matters to you, and the sooner you’ll actually get people to pay attention to you.
I’m sick of bitching, I’m sick of moaning, and I’m sick of feeling stuck. Because when it’s all said and done, this stuck feeling is my doing. I’ve given into the willful rejection of going through what seem like pointless formalities. But sooner or later you have to indulge at least a minute few of them to get people to take you seriously. Otherwise you’re just going to come off as apathetic, entitled, and lazy. And no, this isn’t something that just struck me – it’s been lurking in the back of my head for a while now, but I’m lucky enough to have the most solid group of friends in the world to bring this shit to a head for me. It’s time for a drastic change. It’s time to sack up and take responsibility.
Cynicism is a black hole – one that can’t be dug for you. The depth of your cynicism hole is completely up to you. You have to make the conscious choice to start filling the hole with positivity and action and a passion for what you’re trying to do. Bitching and rejecting criticism and feeling sorry for yourself will do nothing. And yeah, this applies to anything, but especially in an industry flooded with self-entitled people, you’ve gotta gotta gotta stand apart from the rest.
Do your work. Take care of yourself. The rest will follow.
No haikus for this one.
