marketing was born with competition, you need marketing, because you are not the only one good at what you do

marketing is anything and everything you do, to influence others, to achieve your objectives .. this does include the product design and features .. or in other words, the features you chose to include in your product

marketing is not bad, and is not a waste

marketing is not, in my opinion, more important than the skills required to create a product, but it is definitely very important ... because simply put, you are not the only "skilled" one in the market

Building a brand is a skill many artists don't excel at. It requires similar people skills to being a salesman. Often they have to rely on dealers, gallery owners and store owners who have the people skills to do retail and wholesale more successfully. The situation is somewhat mirrored in tech with the schism between programmers and CEO/investor/founder type personalities.

In the niche I work in, some people got lucky and became 'famous' in a kind of underground video way on Instagram and Snapchat. These days it's starting to resemble a more traditional art market.

nah. while not always bad, most of the time it looks like a prisoners dilemma