I’m not one for gatekeeping.
If you compliment my outfit, I’ll tell you exactly where I got it from—I’ll even send you the links if you’d like. If you like my makeup or how I did my hair, I don’t hesitate to tell you how I achieved the look. If a piece of media or an artist goes “mainstream,” I won’t board the hate train, surrendering to the belief that being a part of a popular collective would somehow ruin my aspirational image to be perceived as different, unique, not like the rest.
While I practice and preach this act of shared knowledge, I find it collapses in the face of a private obsession of mine: the desperate need to create something that’s never been done before. Because for a long time, I believed that if something were to be deemed worthwhile, it had to be completely new—untouched, unprecedented, unlike anything that had come before.
Differentiation. Especially to someone who works in advertising/PR, it’s a word that’s been battered into us from the moment we step foot into this highly competitive, overly saturated world. And while this might work when building up a corporate brand, I find the pressure to translate this belief upon one’s personhood somewhat futile, especially in the age of catering to social media algorithms. In her essay “micro-individuality,” Rayne Fisher-Quann writes, “the online world has not only turned its users into on-screen products, requiring personal branding and careful aesthetic curation, but also into corporations whose goal is to sell their own lives…in this ecosystem, uniqueness is a kind of commodity, perhaps this is what it looks like when it, too, becomes mass-produced.”
It’s pervasive, it’s paralyzing, this need to always create something seemingly unique and singular from the rest. I started questioning whether true originality can ever really survive online. I saw it happen to the popular narrator and Lizzy McGuire trends across social media. What started as someone’s signature content style suddenly became just another CapCut template, reduced to a formula that’s easily replicated. The internet moves too fast to properly credit anyone; by the time we recognize something as innovative, it’s already been commodified into oblivion.
We’re trapped in this impossible cycle: the algorithm rewards us for feeding the current trend of the moment, yet when we do, we’re chastised for being unoriginal copycats. Because of this, we are taught to believe that to be noticed, we must be different—all until we watch our unique ideas get repackaged by someone with more followers. It’s exhausting, this constant performance of uniqueness while knowing nothing stays original for long. We start treating influences like dirty secrets we can’t reveal, rather than acknowledging them as the building blocks they are. I’ll hesitate to film a video because I’ve seen someone else execute the idea already. I’ll abandon a draft because I’ve found that someone has already written about this topic before, and better. I have a stifling fear of committing to anything—a thought, a style, a passion—knowing that I am not, and might never be, the first.
If I find I can trace an idea’s lineage too clearly, I’ll abandon it, as if recognizing my inspirations somehow invalidates the work. I’m of a generation of people so terrified of being derivative that we’d rather create nothing at all than risk being unoriginal. But nothing emerges from a vacuum. Even the trends we mock as unoriginal were once someone’s authentic expression before the internet flattened them into templates. I love this quote by B.D. McClay from their essay, “on not being the first:” “it is important to go back into the past and find your peers there (and, of course, for women writers that doesn’t mean only—or even primarily—women writers). You know them when you find them—there’s a sense of recognition. A door opens. A tie forms. You aren’t alone, you aren’t the first, and you don’t have to think of yourself as the only one. It’s a lot better that way.”
At the end of the day, we are the amalgamations of our environments and all that we consume; being able to acknowledge and credit what inspires us is critical to feeling connected to the creation process. Because here’s the thing: if I wait until I have an idea no one has ever had before, I’ll never make anything. And if I refuse to engage with anything that’s been done in the past, I cut myself off from the very things that could help me find my own voice, my own style. The writers and artists I love didn’t become who they are by avoiding influence—they became themselves by processing it, by filtering what they consumed through their own perspective.
The harder we strive to be unique, the more we risk losing the very relatability that connects us. If you’ve been on TikTok as long as I have, you most likely have seen the popular comment, “I’ve never had a unique experience,” in response to someone sharing a part of their lives that’s surprisingly relatable. At first, I interpreted this saying as disappointment—the jarring realization that a part of our individuality had been shattered, that what we thought was a singular experience was actually universal. But I’ve started to see it differently: that the recognition of shared experiences doesn’t strip away our uniqueness, but allows us to create work that truly resonates. When we stop straining for absolute originality, we free ourselves to create something that’s both personal and universal.
I’m starting to realize that the only way to truly differentiate myself isn’t by avoiding what’s come before, but by engaging with it, by acknowledging its influence and trusting that my own perspective will emerge in the process. Because the alternative is worse: to not create at all. And I wouldn’t want to give up the joy of creating, of adding my own voice to the choir, just because mine isn’t the only one singing. So I’m trying to let go. To write the essay even if it’s been written before. To film that “What’s in my bag” video, even if there’s already a million other ones on the internet (because what’s another girl showing off her many purse trinkets?). To make things, even if they’re imperfect, even if they’re influenced, even if they’re just my small contribution to a conversation that started long before me. The things we create don’t have to be unprecedented to matter. They just have to be ours.
Been going through this struggle my entire life, and this post is such a needed awakening
amazing work as always, great read