The Beige Series, Pt.I

Drowning in Beige: Why Greatness Can’t Get a Signal

AUG 03, 2025

Introduction

Greatness used to be a lightning rod. A bolt of energy hurled from Olympus to Earth, striking one poor bastard in the chest and demanding: you. You will matter. You will carry the weight of expectation. You will be exceptional. You will suffer for it. But you will change the world.

Now? Greatness is something you scroll past.

We live in an era where talent is not enough. In fact, it might be a hindrance. Because while you were honing your craft, someone else was learning how to go viral. The algorithm doesn't want your genius, mate. It wants your pliability. Your photogenic smirk and ability to dance on cue. It wants quick cuts, controversy, and a hook in the first three seconds. Greatness needs time. The algorithm gives you milliseconds. It doesn't reward soul. It rewards sensation.

There was a time when being great meant being seen as a bit mad. A recluse. A threat. Now, you’re expected to be digestible. Marketable. Safe for work and sanitised for mass appeal. And that’s not greatness. That’s compliance. We’ve flattened the curve of excellence to make it easier to monetise.

Defining Greatness

Greatness, real greatness, is weird. It doesn’t follow trends; it sets them. It isn’t desperate to be liked. It’s usually misunderstood, often mocked, and always punished before it’s celebrated. It requires talent, yes, but also a complete disregard for the consensus. It’s having the audacity to think differently and the courage to be wrong in public.

And when it lands, it shifts things. It bends culture around itself like gravity. Think Ali, Bowie, Tarantino. Think Hendrix. Think The Beatles. People who took their singular obsessions and bludgeoned the world with them until it listened. That’s greatness.

There’s a crucial difference between charm and charisma. Charm says, "I’ll come to you." Charisma says, "You’ll come to me." Great people are never charming. They’re charismatic. They draw you in like a black hole wrapped in velvet. They don’t pander. They lead. They don’t play the game. They reinvent it. That’s not to say charm isn’t everywhere—it is. The world is full of charming posers, masters of engagement with nothing to say. But charisma? Real, spine-snapping charisma? That’s rare. And it never begs.

Greatness repels comfort. It rejects blandness. It doesn’t want to be liked by everyone—only understood by a few. It’s lonely. Often unbearable. But it changes the shape of things. It’s not about being the loudest. It’s about being undeniable. Greatness doesn’t knock. It kicks the door off the hinges.

The Modern Blockade

But let’s not pretend the modern world is designed to let greatness through. It’s not. It’s rigged for sameness. The metrics are rigged for safety. And we’ve bought into a lie—that in the age of the internet, greatness can no longer hide. That the cream will rise because the world is so connected, so open. Bollocks. The truth is the opposite. Greatness is harder to find than ever, not because it doesn’t exist, but because it’s buried under the avalanche of everyone trying to be seen. We’ve turned the pool of talent into a flooded sewer of self-promotion. It’s no longer lightning in a bottle—it’s a needle in a haystack, and every one of them is screaming 'look at me.'

Imagine success as a person. Its sole purpose? To find greatness. That’s its entire mission. It walks into the world, scanning, searching, drawn like a moth to brilliance. But the moment it steps foot into our modern carnival, it’s mobbed. Swarmed by a crowd of mediocrities, each jostling for its attention. Shouting. Performing. Desperate to be noticed. The real greatness? It’s over there, sitting in the corner, silent and smouldering. But success can’t see it. It can’t reach it. The wall of noise forbids it.

There was a time when success found the Beatles, Elvis, Hendrix. Not because they were what the people wanted—but because they were what the people needed. They weren’t market-tested. They were earth-shattering. Success came to them because they weren’t begging for it. They were magnetic. And the world moved to them.

Now we chase metrics. We chase trends. And we punish those who don’t fit the mould. There are no more happy accidents. Only algorithms. Even rebellion is curated now. Punk is sponsored. Edginess is available via subscription. We have created a system where greatness must apologise for its own existence.

We have handed the gatekeeping role to machines. Machines that measure success by engagement, not excellence. But here’s the fatal flaw: the machine only sees what it has been programmed to see. It scans the past to predict the future, offering you more of what has already worked. So if we rely on it to unearth the new, the groundbreaking, the different—we're deluded. It can't show us what hasn't been quantified yet. Greatness lives in the margins, in the anomalies, in the data that doesn't fit. And algorithms don't deal well with anomalies. That means the beautiful, the safe, the replicable, the familiar—these rise. The raw, the complex, the jagged edges of real art? Buried. Demoted. Shadowbanned. Ignored.

Even if you are great, you’re competing against a tidal wave of content. Not talent. Content. Output. Noise. The algorithm is a tyrant of volume, not value. And so the truly brilliant get lost in the scroll. Or worse, they adapt. They sand off their uniqueness to fit the mould.

The Shift in the Success Paradigm

We used to know the formula: talent + work + time = success. You grafted. You failed in silence. You came back better. You earned the right to be heard. It was earned. It was tested. It meant something.

Now? Success is a side effect of visibility. Skill is optional. Work ethic is quaint. You just need a moment. A spark. A meme. A meltdown. A lucky break that you can ride into a merch line and Patreon account.

Success used to be a long road with milestones. Now it’s a slot machine. Pull the handle and hope. Hope it hits. Hope you trend. Hope someone important shares you. Hope you're marketable enough to survive the brief attention span of a distracted culture.

Worse still, the new success doesn’t sustain. It’s sugar. A spike. A rush. And then it crashes. There’s no staying power in this landscape unless you keep feeding the beast. Keep producing. Keep dancing. Keep shouting louder than the next person. Even if you’re empty. Especially if you’re empty.

The Impact of Mediocrity

Mediocrity is the new pandemic. It's not that there aren't brilliant people out there—they're just drowning. We’ve flooded the system with average and convinced ourselves it's exceptional. We call it inclusive. We call it democratic. But let’s not kid ourselves. It’s diluted. It’s beige. It’s noise.

The consequence? Culture becomes mush. No edge. No risk. No provocation. Everyone’s a brand. Every artist is a content creator. Every moment is a campaign. And the people who could’ve created the next symphony, novel, movement? They’re tweaking their thumbnails and checking their analytics.

This culture of constant self-promotion is choking the soul of art. You don’t get to disappear into your craft anymore. You have to explain it, market it, meme it, and shove it in front of eyeballs that have already glazed over. The artist becomes the salesman. The work becomes the pitch. Authenticity dies in the comments section.

And the worst part? We’ve accepted this. We defend it. We call it progress. We confuse accessibility with value. But not everything deserves a platform. Not every voice is art. Not every performance is worthy of applause. We’ve lost our standards in the name of engagement.

We need to want better. To value quality over quantity. To elevate the strange, the raw, the wild ones who don’t fit into tidy boxes. Because greatness isn’t always marketable. But it’s necessary.

Support the genius in your midst. Share the song that only five people get. Read the book that doesn’t have a BookTok following. Teach your kids to chase mastery, not followers.

Because without greatness, we are nothing but noise. And the algorithm doesn’t care. But we should.

We need to untrain our eyes. Stop equating visibility with value. Start listening for the low frequencies again—the deep, distorted echoes of something real. We must resist the smooth and seek the jagged. Because greatness doesn’t entertain. It confronts. It claws. It refuses to be ignored.

And if you’re lucky enough to find it—recognise it. Protect it. Amplify it. Because it might be the only thing that still has the power to move us.

Ray x