Artists have been sold a lie: that you can’t create real work unless you’re broken.

Pain sells. Trauma gets streams. Heartbreak goes viral. So the industry rewards artists who only create when they’re suffering, and punishes those who make art from healing, joy, or stability.

But here’s what nobody talks about: when artists only document pain without pairing it with resolution, they’re not just expressing themselves. They’re programming audiences to expect relationships to fail, success to be traumatic, and healing to be impossible.

Art isn’t neutral. It shapes how people see the world. And right now, most of what we’re creating is making the world uglier, not more bearable.

This episode is a call to artists: You have more power than you realize. Your work reflect reality and also constructs it. So what are you building?

Topics covered:

• Why the music industry conditions artists to create only from pain

• How gangster rap was weaponized against Black communities

• The difference between processing pain and weaponizing it

• Why creating beauty is rebellion, not escapism

• How to turn lived experience into masterpieces, not just content

This isn’t about toxic positivity or pretending pain doesn’t exist. It’s about refusing to let pain be the only thing worth creating from.

Leave this world more beautiful than you found it.

Full episode: So You’re Living in a Simulation podcast.

https://joliartist.com/portal