Make Something New

We live in a very factual culture. If you have a question about anything, you can find the answer by Googling it. We have a massive aggregator of facts in Wikipedia (which, although it shouldn't be an acceptable source for a research paper, is still very reliable). I don't have a problem with this. I consider myself truly fortunate to live in the time that I do, having universal, unrestricted access to information. However, I am noticing the effect it has on creativity.

There is more stuff being created than ever, but so much of it is either commentary on or modification of things that already exist. Consider entertainment like VH1's I love series (e.g. the 80s, 70s, 90s). It's an hour of comedians and radio personalities riffing on events and objects from a given year. The Daily Show is massively popular and it largely makes fun of clips from cable news networks Online, we have very popular websites like FAIL Blog which takes videos or still pictures and adds captions to them to make them funnier.

I don't have a problem with these either. If people are entertained, then the entertainment is succeeding. I even enjoy some of that stuff myself. But eventually, it all becomes very stale. The world feels small and boring because everybody keeps talking about the same things that everybody else already knows about (and has heard the same five jokes on it over and over again[which is really five rehashings of one joke]). That's when I just need to see something completely new.

I know there are lots of new things out there, but it can be difficult for them to reach a large audience. Go and write something new, something original, something that can stand on its own instead of borrowing from collective pop culture. If you can make something that strong, it will be noticed and then everybody else will follow it and riff on it, making the same jokes over and over again. That's just what you wanted, right?