NationStates Jolt Archive

How easy it is to be original nowadays?

Especially seeing as we have the Internet that lets us communicate all over the world.

For example, I thought up the word "googleversity" as a portmanteau of "google" and "university". So I searched for it. 45 results (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=googleversity)

i suppose that in the past we had a better shot at being thought of as being original because we were only comparing ourselves (and being compared by others) to our own town or perhaps our own nation.

these days we compete for originality with the whole world. if originality is your goal you are going to have a very tough time of it.

I suppose that in the past we had a better shot at being thought of as being original because we were only comparing ourselves (and being compared by others) to our own town or perhaps our own nation.

These days we compete for originality with the whole world. If originality is your goal you are going to have a very tough time of it. Please tell me someone no, anyone is getting this joke..

-snip-

This is quite original:

http://i4.tinypic.com/4lgp1g5.png

;)

It depends how you define originality. Is it supposed to be something radically different? or taking parts/influenced by previous things but used in a new fresh way? The latter has almost always been the case, very few things are radically new.

In music, you could say Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was radically different (excluding certain influences in his earlier work), but is it somehow more original than his later 'neo-classical' period despite the latter being a new reworking of previous music materials? I guess it's a difference between whether you believe modernism is more original/creative than postmodernism. That may be a bit music-geekish...

How easy it is to be original nowadays?

Especially seeing as we have the Internet that lets us communicate all over the world.

For example, I thought up the word "googleversity" as a portmanteau of "google" and "university". So I searched for it. 45 results (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=googleversity)

I suppose that in the past we had a better shot at being thought of as being original because we were only comparing ourselves (and being compared by others) to our own town or perhaps our own nation.

These days we compete for originality with the whole world. If originality is your goal you are going to have a very tough time of it. Please tell me someone no, anyone is getting this joke..

Meh. Those who seek originality with conscious design are unlikely to attain it.
It's up there with the "Hamlet" joke recently posted. Very well done!

I'll pass on "completely original" and take "original enough" instead.

Besides, although I got "Your search - Araraukar - did not match any documents", I thought the name up from an existing word, so I can't take the credit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria

Having made up my name a long time ago, I searched for it on Google and had 2,310 results.
Virtually all of them were from Jolt.
So I think I can say that it's fairly original.

I suppose that in the past we had a better shot at being thought of as being original because we were only comparing ourselves (and being compared by others) to our own town or perhaps our own nation.

These days we compete for originality with the whole world. If originality is your goal you are going to have a very tough time of it.

hmmm copypasta

i have a puppet that is entirely original to me.

Having made up my name a long time ago, I searched for it on Google and had 2,310 results.
Virtually all of them were from Jolt.
So I think I can say that it's fairly original.

My other nation's name (Nihonou-san) is original. All results are from Jolt.

so make up a new word...like......Morange!

Dying Mont Blanc pink is fairly original.

all i had to do was take the first letters of all my names and put them together. so many Os!!

My other nation's name (Nihonou-san) is original. All results are from Jolt.

The only exceptions I had were some sort of mirror image of Google in which everything was backwards (making the word it was really showing to be 'reali', for some reason) and a single foreign thing that I couldn't understand.

This is quite original:

http://i4.tinypic.com/4lgp1g5.png

;)

*prints off and uses*

The only way to attain originality is to come completely out of left field (cliché metaphor); any word, idea or storyline that even remotely makes sense has been used, plagiarised, parodied, and cut up and used in some asshole's collage at least once by now.
You've just got to get used to being either a street crazy or a secondrate rip-off artist, I have. It seems, for instance, that my name is only one character away from "Lord Fiddlebottom", a character from a German espionage game that has a following worth almost 1,000 Google hits.

I quit trying for original in third grade, now I work to be "memorable" and it seems to be pretty easy......in fact today someone said "if you have ever spent time with Smunkee, you will never forget her"

which my husband looked at me and said "what does he mean by "spent time"?"

Well, my cousin's name is Jonathan, but we always called him Jono. For whatever reason, dad took to calling him "Jonoface".

So as a lark, I took the moniker "Stevioface". And when searched on Google, I'm proud to say that the only references of said name are in reference to me. In that respect, you could say the name itself is original, however, in it's formation it's certainly a rip-off of "Jonoface".

I suppose it depends on what is meant by the term "original".

Anything others can understand is not original as people already have a previous understanding of it.

If you randomly throw paint at a canvas the random pattern is pretty original but holds no meaning. If you paint something then your painting is just a copy of the object it portrays and that is what makes it meaningful to observers. But it can portray the old object in a new way to give a new perspective to observers. Creative work is to use old concepts in new ways.

Or to apply that to this thread I can understand what "googleversity" means because it is not original, it's just a variation of the 2 previous words google and university. On the other hand I can't understand what the name "Ilaer" means because it is orginial and had no previous meaning before it became a name.

I suppose that in the past we had a better shot at being thought of as being original because we were only comparing ourselves (and being compared by others) to our own town or perhaps our own nation.

These days we compete for originality with the whole world. If originality is your goal you are going to have a very tough time of it.

Originality is over-rated.