Of all the social mediums that are out there, the one I tend to follow the most is InstaPic (Instagram, to those who may know it otherwise).
I like the format because is lends itself mostly to pictures and minimal text; posting lengthy diatribes about the world and its woes or how certain people with certain beliefs of any stripe are <fill in the blank> almost never appear. It is also the one that my children are most likely to post on; if I want to see (in something like real time) what is going on in their lives, InstaPic is where it will be posted.
(As an aside, The Book of Face lends itself to opinions and diatribes, and inevitably when I am there I find out more about people than I care to. Also via feedback, every political season now becomes a version of The Great Unfriending for a lot of folk. I find the less I inquire into some things, the better I get along with people.)
Were you to see my InstaPic feed, I fear it would be an unremarkable thing, a feed filled with rabbits (real and art), cats and dogs and ducks, Roman and Viking re-enactors, hiking memes, and quotes from Rumi and the Orthodox church fathers. InstaPic also insists on putting in "Things we think you like because of other things", which ranges from the slightly interesting to the somewhat aggravating.
And ads. Lots and lots of ads for games, clever things that I need to buy, and apparently mental health services and apps for older men (go figure).
However, it was only recently that I was struck by the fact that a great deal of the content is essentially a repeat of itself.
Part of that is simply the idea of "retweeting" (from back in the days of Twitter): a clever or cute or thoughtful thing that one drops into one's own feed and then gets propagated from there. That is pretty benign (and how I find a lot of things, honestly). But the other part - the slightly concerning part - is simply taking something and redoing it.
There are two versions of this.
In the first version, one takes a quote that one finds amusing or clever and simply reuses it, putting a different background or picture in it. In the other, one does not actually "create" anything, but simply reacts to smaller snippets of other pictures or videos. In the beginning, both of these were only slightly bothersome. Now, they make me actively annoyed. Why? Because it represents a real loss of creativity and a certain form of intellectual laziness.
I am as much for taking a good idea and running with it as the next person. And in some sense, imitation is the higher form of flattery. But what this becomes instead is merely a grasp for more "views" (ah, that great trap of the modern era, attention). It was maybe funny or amusing the first time, and maybe the four or five times after that, but after a while it is simply boring: endless retakes on the same phrase or set piece, endless small movies of pets inserted "reacting" to the situation.
I know. This is very much a First World problem, and a curmudgeonly complaint about it. But it strikes a chord in me, I suppose because I greatly believe in the creative process. But this is not the creative process, no matter how "different" people feel their take on it is. It really just reflects what much of modern entertainment has become: rather than try something new, just recycle the things that worked in the past in hopes they will work again.
Sigh. At this rate there will be nothing in my feed and I will be reduced to sending pictures via my phone to my family and hoping I get some in return. How truly 2006 of me.
Interesting thoughts, TB. Dan likes youtube and has lamented more than once how so much content is just a rehash of something someone else did. Except with deceptive titles that cause one to think it's something new.
ReplyDeleteCreativity requires free thinking, but humans are very much imitative creatures. Which is why "trends" and peer pressure work so well. That coupled with the apparent loss of ability to understand cause-and-effect and think things through, paints a rather sad picture of us, I think. I'm guessing the internet and social marketing have accelerated this, especially when creative people are pressured by the pack to conform.
Leigh - The Tube of You is another great example. There is still original content out there (our friend Kev Alviti from An English Homestead, for example) but so much of what I was watching recently was simply people re-submitting the same information heard elsewhere.
DeleteCreativity does require free thinking. It also requires the willingness to try and fail and go against the grain - things that groupthink completely work against. And it seems that so much - media, social media, marketing - is dead set against anything that is outside of a narrowly defined bubble.
I think when that happens, it is often a person coming across a useful idea who think it is an original thought and want to share with others.
ReplyDeleteWho doesn't like a stunning sunset or sunrise picture. Simple things like that speak to me for some reason. Having a camera for times like that is a valuable asset.
Anon - I think that could indeed be true. That said, it would be useful and or helpful to present the original link, not just present it as one's own work.
DeleteI will be fair that most beautiful natural things I have seen are posted by those that have taken the pictures. It is the "creative" retakes that seem to get recycled.
Read a book? That'll be the day!
ReplyDelete"Nationwide, on average, 79% of U.S. adults are literate in 2024.
21% of adults in the US are illiterate in 2024.
54% of adults have a literacy below 6th grade level."
- https://www.thinkimpact.com/literacy-statistics/
o
"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't
even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny
doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
- Thomas Sowell
o
"Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think."
- Thomas Edison
A lot of truth in these comments. Yes, a reposting :-)
A few people really think. Most run on a mixture of thought and feelings about things.
That's why propaganda works so well, appeal to a person's preconceived opinions (prejudices) and you can lead them anywhere.
Or as a think man once said:
“Never appeal to a man's better nature. He may not have one. Invoking his self-interest gives you more leverage.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
If that is the case, then it is incumbent upon us to encourage creativity where we can.
DeleteParents and Grandparents can encourage creativity. Teachers used to but now it seems Ritalin to help babysit them while pouring "knowledge" to pass the standardized testing into them.
DeleteWhen I find an artist I like I tend to read about their lives and history. Most were at least "Eccentric" and more often deemed a bit crazy. Seldom were they "average" citizens.
It has been said that artists of previous ages would never have made it out of the current education system intact.
DeleteThis post along with Michael's comments remind me that we are a few steps on the path to that movie documentary "Idiocracy" which came out in.....hmmmm......2006.
ReplyDeleteI have not seen that movie Nylon12, although Demolition Man may also be along the same lines (Taco Bell commercials as pop music).
DeleteI guess I'm a word man, even if it requires occasionally reading painfully ignorant political rants on the Book of Face. I find InstaPic too photoshopped and without the context that I crave. I also like the ability on the Book of Face to Unfollow (while remaining friends) those who just churn out the above mentioned non-creativity picture/saying posts. If I had to guess, I probably don't follow about 2/3rds of my "Friends" because they lack creativity always and of the remaining 1/3rd, maybe 10% of their posts are ever worth reading. There are certainly more productive uses of my time but I continue on just to have something to talk about the next time we meet in person.
ReplyDeleteEd - Interesting that I do not see as much photoshopped items that I am aware of, though perhaps that is just a different set of things I follow. And interestingly, now that I think about it, I do not see much of that on The Book of Face either, though to be fair I do not really go there at all.
DeleteAs a passive experiment, I have been checking in once a day or so on The Book of Face to see what I am missing. There is very little that seems to appear or change on a daily basis, at least from those I follow regularly. Perhaps to your point, I might start selectively unfollowing people and see what happens (although since I almost never post there, I likely could just completely disappear from their feed without incident).
Ah, yes. The Entertainment Landfill™, wherein all media of the day eventually comes to rest, rotting and forgotten, until some brave(?) souls come along to sieve through the detritus for the choicest bits. Then, with stained fingers and reeking nails, they present it to the masses like a grisly trophy.
ReplyDelete"Behold, [Thing]!" they proclaim. "Such boundless creativity! Such infinite jest! Marvel upon what our forebears crafted, and make it your standard to bear ever onward!"
Perhaps that's a bit over-dramatic. We know "the classics" from previous generations because there has been plenty of time for the wheat to split from the chaff; depending on how far back you go, there may be none left who recall The Churn of any said strata of the Landfill. Who, in living memory, still recalls the not-quite-greats from the Roaring 20's, or the lesser known hits of Colonial America (such as they were)? Much less the leavings of another culture that weren't up to societal snuff?
However, it seems like all we now witness is little more than cultural dumpster diving, at least from the Respectable Media Establishment. Some of the carcasses have yet to fully decompose before being hoisted up on a palanquin and paraded down the streets; a few might even still bear a pulse, if one bothers to check.
... I think the point I'm trying to make is, it seems like our current creatives (or "creatives") lack faith in their ability to create; or, many of such supposed "creatives" are not, in fact, possessed of the creative mindset, with all its faults and foibles.
P_P - "Cultural Dumpster Diving". What an excellent turn of phrase.
DeleteI wonder if it a lack of confidence in the ability to create or simply we have lowered the bar of creativity. I guess to be fair, the stakes have only gotten higher and higher in terms of cost, so every failure is extreme. But with you, I would agree that the establishment of new tales and genres and series seems low. Most people seem intent on mining existing IP until there is nothing left to remember about the original.
In that sense, I suppose I am lucky to have grown up in an age when these things were fresh and in their prime (and the hands of the original creators).
I might go so far as to say that the Information Age has made many possessed of a creative bent more keenly aware than ever before that "every story has already been told". In that respect, I believe there are many of such who simply do not believe they can spin a tale in an interesting way; lacking confidence in the more traditional sense, I suppose.
DeleteIt's a different beast when you feel that your own works can little but sully the shadows of the classics, rather than being blithely unaware of how lacking your attempts are in the first place.
P_P, that is a keen insight. Once upon a time perhaps different stories could be told that were really the same story, only separated by time or culture. Now we know that every story in principle has been told - although perhaps this is where history might be a booming field with the continued discoveries in archaeology, for example.
DeleteI wonder what a year of nothing but novel and new releases (instead of telling old stories) would look like.