August 3, 2008

• The Generic Effect

  Current mood:argumentative

  For every valuable genuine entity, there is a generic. An imitation, a forgery. Any conceivable noun (person, place, thing, idea) that is favorable or desirable will eventually have something ride in behind it and try to pass itself off as “just as good as the original” to try to win some of that favor, whether economic, societal, or existential. Sometimes it’s beneficial, like a medicine with the same formula sold at a lower price because the manufacturers didn’t have to waste money on advertising. But most of the time what it does it turn the original into a commodity and devalue it. What makes something valuable to humans is the balance of almost infinite complexity but possessing traits that make it instantly recognizable. Those traits are what the imitators seek out to use for themselves. And, unless it’s in nature and an adaptation used for survival of the species, it’s just really really sad. Big example that parked this rant: counterculture. Members of a certain subculture rag on people who enter that subculture for purposes of self-promotion without really understanding it, calling them posers. I personally feel sorry for them. To not own an identity and have to come up with a formula [black clothes + painful looking jewelery + icy stare + lots of candle burning + screaming music = goth] just to gain acceptance. (I use that example because goth was too scary to be huge back when it was popular, even under the influence of Marylin Manson, but nowadays anyone over the age of 40 who looks at kids who dress like punk or emo kids calls them “goth”, much to their chagrin. Oops.) And those outside the counterculture don’t understand why we get angry. The answer is very simple. Every subculture started out as a genuine movement, evolved in complexity, grew in favor until someone picked it up and started marketing to the general public. So what happened was this amazing thing got distilled down to four or five basic ingredients, sanitized for the protection of the easily offended, and shipped off to fifteen year olds who think it’s the coolest thing in the world to be edgy. Wait, this had a point, didn’t it? All things that are desirable are simple yet infinitely complex. Up to a certain point this complexity is what makes the thing amazing, until it becomes a formula and copied all to hell. Then because there are two where there once was just the original, the original loses value and complexity very quickly. The imitation is shiny, buy unbearably shallow.

  • 9:43 pm
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