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on my quest to not be so unique, because I am tired

Tonight is the beginning of Passover. For any of my non Jewish readers, Passover is a holiday where we dip celery into saltwater and take one bite of it and decide that now we know what it’s like to be a slave in ancient Egypt. For my Jewish readers, Passover is a time where everyone, all walks of life, in person or over zoom, can get together and sing Diyenu in 8 different keys at 8 different tempos. For any of my dog readers, Passover is a time where there’s a huge, and I mean huge shank bone on a plate and you’re not allowed to eat it or even go near it because it would make you sick. Even though it looks and smells so good to you. You get to eat your Purina thyroid control kibble and call it a night.

This is not a story about Passover, though. I’m just filling you in on the context of my life while I‘m writing this. I’m trying to do that because that’s what all the great authors are judged on. We read their work and we contextualize in their lives and what was going on in them when they wrote. I’m currently sitting on the floor of my boyfriend’s childhood bedroom. He’s downstairs watching the new Eric Andre movie with his parents which is making me love him even more. This is a story about plagiarism, and idea theft, and what it means to me.

All this happened, more or less.

I’ve been thinking a lot about plagiarism. Not necessarily of words, but of ideas. I just watched the Social Network for the first time because I love to be intentionally a decade behind on trends. The plot of the movie is basically Armie Hammer and Armie Hammer were mad at Mark Zuckerberg because they think he stole his idea in creating Facebook. While that could be true, I don’t think it matters who had the idea, it matters who executed it. When I was little I didn’t understand why cars needed gas and why they couldn’t be plugged in like all the other machines I knew in my life. But I was young and also bad at math so I couldn’t have invented the electric car. Even though it was my idea.

I often worry that I’m not unique enough. That I don’t have something atypical to offer. That my thoughts have thusly been thunk. As an aspiring creative writer of some sort, this worries me. I don’t want to add noise to an already crowded space. Everyone now is a content creator. Your social media is your own show and you’re the director. And I hated that analogy. I’m allowed to hate what I write sometimes! Sometimes I hate what I cook. One time I made tuna salad with hummus because I didn’t have mayo. It was so gross and it made me upset. I’m not perfect.

But here’s my thesis- nobody is unique. We all kind of want the same things. And I think that’s beautiful. We have different methods, we have different drink orders, and wear different perfume, but in all, people are people. I might have said this before (again, not perfect) but I hate the term basic. We try so hard to be unique that in the end we are all asking ourselves the same questions to get there. So what if everyone has those white sneakers! They’re comfy and they go with everything. Some things are popular for a reason and that’s sort of how democracy works. Except I don’t know if democracy does work because I don’t think the US really is a democracy but that’s another pillowtweet for another month.

Speaking on behalf of girls, we put so much pressure on ourselves to be unique. We want to follow trends to fit in but how we express the trend should be unique enough that nobody could have your exact shirt. My senior year of high school we had a Facebook group dedicated to the cause of eliminating Prom dress repetition. If you wanted to wear a dress but someone already had it? That’s taboo. Next. I imagine there was a guy equivalent to this group called “Here’s where I rented my tux and here’s the link and address so you can buy the exact one using group discount code SEN1OR5.”

Maybe we could spend less time trying to be so much of a standout and more time just being. Order the spaghetti and meatballs at the Italian place because classics are classic for a reason. Go to Skeeps and take a picture in front of the block M on the wall for your Instagram because universally bad college bar nights are universally bad for a reason. I think it would’ve been cool if all my friends and I wore the same Prom dress because we could have looked like a weirdly young bridal party and that would have been funny. 

I do take plagiarism seriously, and I would never actually do it with my words because even if we have similar ideas, as humans, we have different ways of expressing them. And that’s why there are so many of us.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Because we’re all boats in the current of life. And currently I’m full of flourless chocolate cake. The end.