I keep saying that everything we do today is either an imitation or an improvement to something that has already been done in the past, and it shows in the way I struggle to come up with an interesting topic to talk about here every day. A couple of weeks ago, my best friend went through a bit of a situation where her work was used by someone else without giving her acknowledging my best friend’s role in writing the piece. Plainly put, her work was stolen and misused.
Upon asking the person to either credit my friend or take down her post, she lashed out at both of us saying that we were ‘defaming’ her for no reason at all. The funny thing is, we only asked her to give my friend the credit she deserved for the original content she wrote. You know how they say that it never truly hits you until it happens to you or somebody you know? It got me thinking about how I would feel if somebody used my content without my permission, without any kind of acknowledgement.
There’s no way in Hell I would let that happen. I have always had the highest respect for people who can belt out original content regularly because it is an incredibly hard thing to do. So I can understand how horrible it must feel to have somebody else take credit for our original work. There’s always going to be people out there who will be on the lookout for new content from you so that they can use it as ‘inspiration’ (code for copying). And because we live in the age of social media, it’s difficult to do something that has already been done in a better way.
One of the very first things I had in mind when I started this blog was to talk about things that aren’t talked about too much, in a way that everybody can understand. I just wanted to stay as original as possible, but I very quickly learned that I could either write 100% original content and have nobody relate to it or write something that had already been written better and have it resonate with you. 3 years later, I’m still trying my very best to write better content, as regularly as I can.
It hasn’t been easy, but I am trying every day to stay true to myself on this site. It was meant to be a journal-like outlet for my thoughts and it has expanded into something a lot bigger than that. I might have collaborated with some of my friends on some of the content here or asked them for their opinions for a truly unbiased perspective, but I’ve never felt the need to copy anybody’s content simply because I didn’t know what to write here. And I think that’s a good enough reason to be proud of.
Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery, but staying true to ourselves is pretty damn empowering. We might not always have 100% original ideas— that’s a very unrealistic goal. But what we can do is do our homework properly to see just what it is that we’re doing, just enough to do it our own unique way.
Just something for you to chew on.
Cheerio! Xx
Hey guys! I hope you liked this post. Let me know in the comments below or share with someone you might wanna show this to! You can also reach out to me and say ‘Hi’ on Twitter and Instagram. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.
Yours truly,
The Shubhster.
Featured Image by Da Kraplak on Unsplash
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