Robin

the funny thing is that this is kind of my philosophy when it comes to igf; the question for me is not "is it indie" so much as "is it a thing I think it would be valuable or interesting for the independent game awards to recognize" and that alone is enough to eliminate a number of games that I do consider indie

Hot take but I'm glad Geoff Keighly has inadvertently killed the concept of Indie Games since a vast majority of them have multi-millon dollar budgets, require publisher support to run massive PR campaigns to get any kind of attention, and are so far removed from what basement and bedroom coders can do that bridging the gap is impossible.

"Indie" should mean "independent". Yes, that means that Valve is an indie.
Indie doesn't mean "quirky". Indie games are often quirky because the people making them aren't beholden to shareholders or to their sponsors to hit specific targets of revenue.
Publishers used to make quirky stuff, they used to diversify their portfolios, they used to seek out new talent, they used to have studio systems. Late-stage capitalism has been working against it.
"Diver Dan" might be an attempt to resurrect that spirit of diversity, but you're right, we shouldn't be branding quirky as "indie". Because indie games shouldn't have to be quirky. They might be dark, they might be serious, they might be personal, they might be instructional, and they might even be soul-less sell-outs.

and the dave the diver devs said as much and Geoff just keeps digging the whole