There's some gatekeeping going on for sure. My brother in law works in state media and he argues they prefer someone that's mediocre but pliable over someone amazing but hard to work with. In terms of what constitutes being "hard to work with" I'm inclined to believe that's up to interpretation. It might be anything from speaking your mind, or not playing ball, to just having the wrong vibe. Apparently the private industry is even worse, because it's the media equivalent of feudal Japan masquerading itself to be bohemian. They won't chop your head off, but you won't be working either.

You could say that's a reality in most industries, but man. Meeting them feels a bit like being scanned by a socially opportunistic Terminator calculating your usefulness. They generally don't mean what they say and you'll have to read between the lines constantly. Like one day you exchange numbers and talk about how great it would be to play squash, probably just code for go fuck yourself, but then they turn unreachable and if you're dumb enough to insist they end up feigning diarrhea.

Truth be told, my experience is both limited and provincial, but I doubt it gets any better up the totem pole. Especially once serious money is involved, with a seemingly endless supply of cannon fodder. That said: Heard in terms of traditional publishing your agent basically functions like a pre-filter. Unsolicited manuscripts just go plonk into the trash can and that's that. If anything you're supposed to send an expose and if they're interested from there they'll ask for a text sample. Ideally going some kind of accepted channel featuring a codified song and dance. The correct fonts and whatnot. But that's just hearsay and stuff I've read.

I forgot what I was going to say, but with you mentioning groups of artists helping eachother it's kind of interesting in context of the podcast scene. With comedians they started appearing on eachother's podcast doing cross-promotion. Think Joe Rogan. They're essentially sharing audiences they've been cultivating in that parasocial sense. Like their fans consider them friends and feel obligated to support them. Then those comedians use that platform to promote their specials, club appearances, or other scams. The thing is, a good chunk of them isn't even that funny. It's mediocre people banding together. Like some sort of comedy fascism.

Don't know much about show business, but I guess it's a bit like regular work, in the sense of not making your coworkers look bad. Especially your bosses. They won't give you credit for uncalled-for displays of exceptionalism either way, they'll just ask them why they didn't come up with it (instead of that intern). Probably going back to that idea of playing ball.