A World of Copies of Copies

Sometimes it feels as if everything is starting to look the same.

The same camera movements. The same music. The same cuts. The same facial expressions. The same story arcs. The same ways of speaking. Even the same opinions, just with slightly different words.

Trends move fast now, but they also move shallow. Something appears, gets copied a thousand times, gets exhausted, and is replaced by the next thing. Not because anyone had more to say, but because the algorithm moved on.

What we call creativity often becomes a form of fast imitation.

This is not new, of course. Humans have always copied each other. We learn by imitation. Styles spread. Techniques get reused. That is normal.

But something feels different when the speed becomes so high and the volume so overwhelming that nothing has time to mature anymore.

Instead of someone developing a voice, we get thousands of people approximating a format.

Instead of ideas being explored, we get ideas being repeated.

And now, with machines entering the process, this feedback loop becomes even tighter. A system trained on existing material produces more material that looks like what already exists, which then gets fed back into the system again.

A copy of a copy of a copy.

Each round slightly smoother. Slightly more optimized. Slightly more empty.

The strange thing is that on the surface, everything still looks impressive. Production quality keeps going up. Tools keep getting better. Access keeps getting easier.

But when I look at much of what circulates, I often struggle to feel where it came from. Who actually needed to say this. What problem, question, or experience gave birth to it.

It feels less like expression and more like output.

I notice how easy it is to get caught in this myself. To unconsciously imitate what works. To shape things toward what already seems familiar and accepted. To aim for something that fits, rather than something that is true.

But the things that have stayed with me in life rarely came from that place.

They came from people who were slightly out of step. Slightly inconvenient. Slightly strange. People who did not quite fit into the current pattern.

Their work often looked rougher at first. Harder to categorize. Less immediately pleasing.

But it had weight.

A culture that only recombines itself eventually starts to feel like it is talking to itself. Busy, loud, and strangely circular.

Maybe that is why so much content today feels both overwhelming and forgettable at the same time. There is a lot of movement, but very little travel.

I do not think we need more output.

I think we need more origins.

More things that come from someone actually living, noticing, struggling, and then trying to say something that did not exist before, at least not in exactly that way.