Experty McExpertman

a very silly name for a very serious survival strategy

There's a part of me I've come to know as Experty McExpertman. He’s that critical inner voice who’s desperate to be seen as intelligent, as having it all figured out, and who’s built a self-appointed career around managing other people’s perceptions of me. He's been in charge of my creative output for the better part of thirteen years.

It is high time for Experty McExpertman’s reign of terror to come to an end.

It all started back when I was still in film school, when I was hired to write for my favorite filmmaking blog. In my mind, I was wildly unqualified to write about film for a website that was reaching millions of people each month. I mean, I was just a lowly film student! So, our boy Experty McExpertman showed up and was like "bro, let me take the reigns here." And so began my decade plus of striving to be perceived as intelligent on the internet. Under his tutelage, I began to read voraciously, and became quite good at regurgitating information in ways that sounded somewhat novel.

Experty took even more control once I launched my first online/creator business. In this new chapter, the stakes felt so much higher. It wasn’t enough to write smart sounding stuff. Now I actually had to sell something if I wanted to keep a roof over my head. I was awash in advice from other professional bloggers and course creators saying that the surest path to traffic and sales and riches beyond measure was to Be An Expert, just like they were. I didn’t see the pyramid scheme nature of the Bullshit Industrial Complex back then. So in response to this onslaught of cultural messaging, Señor McExpertman said "Oh fuck yeah, amigo. Let me take the wheel here. I was BORN FOR THIS."

The truth of the matter is that I've rarely known what I was doing. Not as a filmmaker. Not as a filmmaking commentator. Not as a marketer. Not as... well… anything, really. But I believed, with every fiber of my being, that no one could ever see just how clueless I was. That would surely spell my ruin. No, I had to be seen as intelligent. As an expert. As someone whose authoritative sounding opinions could hopefully Add Value and cement my status as a niche internet microcelebtrity such that I build a business that might finally allow me to feel a modicum of security in the world.

It’s hard to overstate just how miserable it was to live this way. Marinating in a constant stream of “I’m a complete idiot, but I’ll lose everything if anybody finds out” and then wildly overcompensating by consuming ever more information and regurgitating it. I wonder if this is what it’s like to be an LLM. Never having real experiences of your own, because you’re trapped in a story that says if you just combine bits of abstracted information in the right way, then people will accept you. Oof.

That's another thing about Experty McExpertman. My impulse is to ridicule him. I mean, why else would I give him such a stupid name. But the truth is that Experty has only ever wanted the best for me. He's an amalgamation of survival strategies for a scared little boy trying his best to feel safe in a transactional world that massively overvalues performative expertise. The longer I stay in this game, the more I realize that the only winning move is to shower Experty McExpertman with compassion and acceptance, even in spite of all the harm he's caused with his wayward strategies. The move is not to exile him, but to invite him into the conversation.

This is the heart of conversational creativity. To be with what is, exactly as it is, and exactly as you are. To express what’s true in your lived experience, however imperfectly, and then listen for what comes back. When I listen to Experty—like, deeply listen—I can’t help but soften, to grieve, and to laugh a little bit at how absurd the whole charade has been. And even though he’s uncomfortable admitting it, Experty agrees that the old ways are no longer working, and we need a more conversational path forward, together.