There was a time when you could tell where somebody was from just by listening to them talk.
Not because they announced their hometown. You could hear it.
People from different regions had different accents, different slang, different expressions, and different ways of saying the same thing. Somebody from New York didn't necessarily sound like somebody from Memphis. Somebody from Chicago didn't necessarily sound like somebody from Atlanta. The way people spoke was shaped by where they lived, who raised them, who they grew up around, and the culture that surrounded them.
Then came social media.
And apparently, the entire country decided we needed to sound like the same 14 people on TikTok.
Now somebody can live in Mississippi, spend six hours scrolling through Instagram, and wake up the next morning talking like an influencer from Los Angeles.
"Girl, I literally cannot."
You could literally. You just did.
And it's not just the way we talk.
- It's the way we dress.
- The way we pose.
- The way we decorate our houses.
- The restaurants we photograph.
- The vacations we take.
- The phrases we use.
- The coffee orders.
Even the way we announce that we're having a good time has become strangely standardized.
Social media has created something we've never really had before: billions of people being exposed to the exact same cultural references at almost exactly the same time.
And we're surprised that we're starting to look alike.
Think about the vacation pictures.
How many times have you seen the same photo of a woman reclined on a transparent surfboard in crystal-clear waters as a drone captures the photo from above?
She's usually wearing the same general type of swimsuit, striking the same general pose, in the same general kind of tropical location.
And somewhere in the caption is something about "living my best life."
I'm not saying she shouldn't do it.
If chilling on a clear surfboard in the middle of the ocean makes you happy, please relax on that thing until the battery in the drone dies.
The question isn't whether people should enjoy popular things.
The question is: How many identical pictures do we need before we start asking ourselves whether we're actually creating memories or simply reproducing someone else's?
Because there's a difference between inspiration and imitation. We see something we like, so we try it.
That's normal.
Society have always borrowed from one another. Fashion, music, language, art, food, hairstyles and traditions have always traveled from one community to another.
But social media has industrialized imitation. The algorithm doesn't necessarily reward originality. It rewards familiarity.
If a particular video works, people make another version. If that version works, thousands make their version.
Then everybody is doing the same dance, using the same sound, making the same facial expression and pointing at the same words appearing on the screen.
Eventually, something that was once creative becomes a template. And the template becomes a trend. And the trend becomes something everybody does. Then we move on to the next thing.
We're living in an era where people have more opportunities to express themselves than any generation in history, yet somehow we're increasingly expressing ourselves in remarkably similar ways.
That's the irony.
We have more individuality available to us while simultaneously becoming more culturally synchronized.
And maybe that's because we're no longer just consuming culture. We're constantly being shown what we're supposed to consume.
Before social media, you might have known what was popular among the people around you. Now you can see what's popular among millions of strangers before you've even brushed your teeth.
And when you see something enough times, it starts feeling normal.
Then desirable.
Then necessary.
That's how influence works.
You don't necessarily have to be told what to think. Sometimes you just have to be given the same thing repeatedly until you stop questioning why you want it. Why do you think some songs become "hits" although most people you know can't stand it?
This doesn't mean originality is dead. I don't think it is. But I do think originality has gotten harder.
Not because people have become less creative, but because we're surrounded by so much other people's creativity that it's difficult to hear our own ideas.
Before social media, you had to come up with something on your own. Now you can simply open your phone and find 10,000 people who already came up with something. And there's nothing wrong with borrowing an idea. The problem starts when you stop asking yourself whether you actually like the idea.
Are you wearing that because you like it? Or because everybody you follow is wearing it?
Are you taking that vacation picture because it's beautiful? Or because you've seen it 47 times and decided that's what a vacation is supposed to look like?
Are you doing something because you want to? Or because you've been trained by an algorithm to want it?
That's the part worth thinking about.
Because maybe the real threat isn't that social media is making everybody the same. Maybe it's that we're becoming so accustomed to being influenced that we've forgotten how to make decisions without influence.
There used to be a lot more room for people to simply be themselves. Somebody could be strange without immediately discovering that 2.7 million other people were also being strange in exactly the same way.
And maybe that's what we're missing. Individuality.
The freedom to do something because you like it. To wear something nobody on your timeline is wearing. To take a vacation picture that doesn't look like everybody else's vacation picture. To say something in your own voice. To have an opinion that didn't arrive prepackaged by a podcast, influencer, celebrity or algorithm.
Because being yourself has never required being completely different from everybody else.
It simply requires knowing the difference between "I like this" and "I'm supposed to like this."
That's a pretty important distinction.
Especially when everybody has the same phone in their hand telling them what to like next.
Maybe originality isn't dead.
Maybe it's just buried underneath everybody else's influence.
And perhaps the most original thing you can do these days...
is stop scrolling long enough to figure out what you actually think.