I have a fear of being unoriginal. Ultimately, it has little impact on my sense of confidence or self-worth or day to day happiness -- but I hope by prying it apart, you or I will get something of human value.
I first became aware of this fear after watching the clip from Good Will Hunting where Will is wrecking that Harvard guy at the bar. We like the scene because an elitist douchebag is receiving the poetic justice he deserves, but I am terrified of unwittingly being that same sort of elitist douchebag. After all, all the things I've learned in school have been discovered by other people, people far smarter and more successful than I'll ever be. What if I, too, am masking my total lack of originality with pretentious arrogance? What if I'm wasting my time rethinking thoughts already thought countless times before, expressed in ways far more skilled than I could express them? And it doesn't end with thoughts: I've no doubt that all the emotions I've ever felt have been felt countless times before by countless people, and that moreover there exist emotions I've never felt that have also been felt by countless people, emotions far more vivid and compelling than anything I'll ever experience. It's frightening because originality is another way to say human value, a way to tangibly measure one's contribution to the world. This video (one of my favorite things on Youtube) expresses it in even starker terms: "if, in the end, we find ourselves with nothing left to say, nothing new to add, idly tracing outlines left by others long ago, it'll be as if we weren't here at all." And so perhaps this fear, at its core, is a roundabout fear of death, or else of the ultimate purposelessness and futility of life.
The times when this fear is most clear is on social media. I scroll through my various feeds and can't help but notice a sameness to it all, each post a clone of the last in nearly every sense: structure, content, tone, and all vaguely suggesting something is more important than it actually is, or something is less important than it actually is, or, even if it gets the importance of the thing just right, laced with a faint, hypocritical inaction and/or apathy, because there's a social media paradox: You don't need to post the unimportant thing on social media by definition, and spending your time posting about the important thing on social media seems both ineffective and lazy, because if someone truly cared about the thing, they wouldn't need your post to be doing something about it, and if you truly cared about the thing, you would surely be finding ways to contribute which are far superior to posting about it, and if someone didn't care about the thing, your post isn't going to persuade them anyway. Merely posting about something important on social media is the best way to make yourself feel like you've contributed while simultaneously expending the least amount of effort possible. The level of exertion has diminished to literally the lowest level to which it could possibly descend: A single button press. The "share" button is prominently -- almost garishly -- displayed across every article, video, image, and blog post in existence.
Viral content, shares, retweets, and so on are the epitome of unoriginality, and so in a way, the fear I'm describing is the very bedrock social media is built on. It's not an unfortunate byproduct of getting on Facebook; it is the Facebook experience. It reminds me of the concept of "clutter" in advertising: due to the massive amount of advertising consumers are subjected to on a daily basis, it becomes increasingly harder for marketing teams to stand out. So in an attempt to separate itself from the clutter, advertising inevitably and paradoxically becomes a part of it. And I hate that irony.
This disappointment and cynicism towards social media always results in me hitting backspace, restraining myself from posting whatever is on my mind. I am just becoming a part of the clutter, I tell myself. I'm still not sure whether this restraint is good or bad. On one hand, I can already hear people telling me it's bad, and to just go ahead and post whatever I was going to, because I'll never know who might find it interesting. On the other hand, I also can't help but think of this advice as yet another bit of unoriginality, a worthless platitude incessantly repeated in every feel-good movie ever, a substanceless suggestion to "just be yourself" when there's really no other Wei I can be, and when in fact the "self" being given this advice is a self terrified of being unoriginal. And I also think people giving this advice might change their mind if I actually revealed to them what I was thinking of posting, which I would never do, because of the same fear that prevented me from posting it in the first place.
I can see how it could be argued that this whole fear is irrational and unwarranted, and how I am an original and unique person, with my own unrepeatable set of influences and experiences. But even the words I've just typed sound so hollow, yet more recycled syllables fed to me in a banal attempt to console my insecurities. My uniqueness itself is not a unique quality. Everyone is unique, and this uniqueness takes even less than a single button press; it takes nothing more than to be born. There is nothing redeeming about this kind of originality.
I'm also thinking about how this disappointment and cynicism toward the lack of originality on social media is itself unoriginal, and how I'm constantly seeing criticisms of this type hypocritically show up on my various social media feeds, and how I myself am going to, in a few moments, share this very blog post on social media. The irony is so staggering that, even while typing the words you are currently reading, I'm considering deleting this entire post, and I'm thinking maybe the only reason I'm not is because the "just be yourself" platitude has so thoroughly sunk into my subconscious that I've managed to delude myself into thinking what I've done here has even a modicum of originality (which is to say human value). If that's the case, I at least hope you were fooled as well.
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