Stare at this photograph.
It’s an optical illusion that Todd photographed at the Boston Science Museum in 2008. It likely evokes the same cranial thoughts in you as anyone else. Prove me wrong.
The next time you peruse through a magazine rack of a particular genre, take note of how many times the same story is written with a different subject and a different author. Then look at the blogs you read and content therein. Take a hard look at that content for it likely is not original thought.
Bloggers tend to echo each other and it is your challenge to step back, recognize everyone is writing and thinking the same stuff, and to be original.
I dare you to be original.
I challenge you to change your status quo.
Follow my lead as we march into August…
{ 36 comments… read them below or add one }
July 21, 2011 at 9:41 AM
GREAT post, and super timely … I mostly operate in the healthy living blogosphere, where I see my role as being a teacher and a bit of an instigator, helping people use social media and social networking to reach their goals.
I find that in my space, a LOT of people echo each other in both format and content, because they’re afraid to rock the boat. But given how crowded the field is becoming, I think it’s really important that bloggers embrace their own points of view and share them.
#fitblog
July 21, 2011 at 12:36 PM
I guess the problem is, much like any song originates from the three-chord structure, there’s only so much you can say on a topic. Of course, having your own style and infusing that helps.
And @livefyre , eh? Hope it works out for you – I’ll be switching it back on on my blog this week.
July 21, 2011 at 12:37 PM
@kwidrick Do you still manage #AgeOp, Katy? That was a great way for helping people stand out.
@DannyBrown No better time than the present to change my status quo. Considering I’ve never employed a non-Wordpress vanilla commenting system and that you are in my short list of folks who praise @livefyre I decided to give it a whirl.
July 21, 2011 at 1:45 PM
@Ari Herzog @livefyre Look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. Future post?
@DannyBrown @Ari Herzog Hi Ari, we’re happy you’re taking Livefyre for a spin on your site! Feel free to send any questions my way, and I think you’ll like some the features we have in our developer pipeline, guest commenting included.
July 21, 2011 at 4:00 PM
@DannyBrown Hi Danny! I loved #AgeOp, and have weekly thoughts of bringing it back…the major problem for me was timing (carving out time on a weeknight, every week, was tough) and being the only moderator. If I revamped it, I’d need to set up rotating moderators.
July 21, 2011 at 5:04 PM
Grrr.. you beat me to it! Not kidding I have a post much like this scheduled for Monday. Agree with @DannyBrown about style – maybe it’s your own special way of sharing something that makes a difference, but in the end things will stay the same if you do. So time to mix it up, change what I read, all that jazzy jazz. FWIW.
July 21, 2011 at 5:48 PM
@kwidrick I hear you, miss – it was definitely a great chat, and it’d be great to see it return in some form.
July 21, 2011 at 7:43 PM
True words, Ari! I think it can be difficult to feel like you’re saying something original when you’re hit with the same stuff over and over again. Does it seep in and become subliminal messaging that then recycles in your brain and comes to you as something original? I sure hope not; but, I suspect it’s true 90% of the time!
To echo Davina, I’m feeling the same way and really reflecting lately on how to not echo the echo chamber.
Thanks, Ari!
July 22, 2011 at 3:02 AM
Yes it is difficult to write the same story in unique version every time. This is what I think and this thought brings a question in my mind every time. That after the Panda Update unique content is really really necessary for any site. But what about the news how one can distinguish it. It would be same everywhere, is there any relaxation from Panda in this scenario. While I have heard that if your content is 30% unique than Google will not consider it as duplicate.
Also i have a suggestion for you that applying Livefyre may annoy some of this blog users, as all the previous links has been removed. You should tell your visitors, mentioning in a post about that you are going to adopt a latest technology or what so ever to maintain users interest.
I agree with you completely on this.
Ideas flow through the blogging world in waves. Somebody starts it and it acts like a chain email that spreads from person to person. At the climax it feels like everyone is talking about the same thing.
Then it slowly subsides only to return some time later when you see people rehashing old ideas that have been talked about a million times before. We are all guilty of this to some extent.
It is a rare talent to find someone who is creative enough to constantly offer new ideas. At best you are lucky to find someone who can spin an idea just a little bit to make it a little more unique than everyone else.
That is why the success of a blog or the person behind it is sometimes based more on likeability than it is on creativity or content quality.
@UK Wholesale Your suggestion is duly noted but I disagree. The amount of time it takes you to add a comment has hardly changed; merely the interface changed.
@3HatsComm FWIW? Is it ever not worth it?
@DannyBrown In a month or so, sure. @jennalanger will play a part in it, as she’s my new email pal.
July 22, 2011 at 5:46 PM
I think there’s a big difference between being like minded and single minded. People with a single-minded purpose scare me.But we are likely to cross paths with many like-minded people in spaces that interest us. I think challenging the status quo is important and that harvesting fresh ideas is of huge value, but I don’t think there’s any such thing as an original thought…just a thought expressed in a new, refreshing or irritating, way. Call me a cynic, but even at my most brilliant and witty, I’ve never allowed myself to say, “Woah, Sister! Nobody’s ever said THAT before!”
July 22, 2011 at 9:51 PM
@MimiMeredith So true, Mimi. No original thoughts, just fresher ways to put these thoughts.
July 22, 2011 at 10:00 PM
Hi, Ari.
It believe it will be very refreshing to see an original thought online. But, I don’t know if that will happen really. However, I do believe that we will always be seeing fresh perspectives on thoughts that have been shared before. The presentation of a certain thought is where a person’s uniqueness comes out, not on the thought that he’s put forward itself.
Thinking the same but putting the topic into writing in a different approach.
Hi Ari .. I think my blog is totally unique – very eclectic, entertains me and amuses my readers – while teaching us all a lot and reminding us of history – cheers Hilary
@KimDavies How is originality and uniqueness different again?
I think its simply hard to be unique all the time when there are so many people discussing the same topic… Modern art is often unique, but it then becomes ridiculed as “not art”.
This post reminds me of the old Monty Python scene in the Life of Brian, where the speaker is shouting to a crowd of followers, telling them that they are all individuals. The crowd responds back in unison shouting, “We are all individuals! We are all different” And then you one lone voice says meekly, “I’m not.” Ever since I watched that scene years ago, I’ve thought that true independent thinkers are rare….
By the way, how long have you used lifefyre on this blog? I don’t remember seeing it here before, but maybe I’m just getting mixed up…
@WillMarlow It’s new.
@WillMarlow Is anyone not an independent thinker?
July 25, 2011 at 1:43 AM
@Ari Herzog I am not talking about the time require to comment through livefyre but i want to discuss that after applying livefyre, all the links your visitors have given via comments been removed. This may annoy them. And I have read and comment in the post where you mention about livefyre that why it is here and how it will help. I was willing to see that post before this one.
And also you have not answered me about “Is there any relaxation from panda about duplicate news content?”
July 25, 2011 at 1:46 AM
@Ari Herzog Hmm…originality for me is putting out a thought that has not been put forward since time started. Uniqueness is voicing out your thoughts in your own way, even if those thoughts were re-echoed over and over again.
@UK Wholesale I can’t respond to something I don’t know about. The only pandas I know about live in the zoo.
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Hey I stared at for quite some time.Its not Illusion ..its “ILLUSIONS”
Quite amazing.
@Ari Herzog@WillMarlow I think this is quite difficult to find a person whose thought is strictly independent.So long as we have emotions,it will tend to sway or affect our judgments whether consciously or sub consciously. But the degree of this influence varies from individual to individual.What ever our thoughts or opinions they are based on some more fundamental principles which were mostly developed by other thinkers. it also can depend on the objective(s) which one has set for himself to accomplish in life.
Isn’t being original an (optical) illusion?
Being original for the reader depends on if the reader reads other blogs which discuss the same subjects. In that sense this post isn’t original. There are other posts around which tell the reader to be original as well
Hey, it’s funny that you go through university studying everyone else’s ideas and they don’t teach individual thought. Then you are to do a thesis and come up with your own ideas. Maybe university has it around the wrong way.
I still one of the greatest failing of our current education system, is that no-one teaches us how to think.
We get taught how to read, how to write, how to swim and everything else, but thinking is left for us to discover ourselves. Some people pick it up early, and other never get the hang of it at all.
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