What was the last book you read? The last movie you watched? The last song you listened to?
…and was it really your own?
I have been grappling with this question of what originality is left within me. I mean, so far any media that I have been consuming has not really felt like my own. And talking about it with my friends, I realized this has been a commonplace experience for so many of us. Instagram reels tell us which movie to watch, Spotify Blends introduce us to new songs, Substack pieces govern which book we pick up. Everything has just started morphing into each other. Everybody agrees on what’s hot (and what’s not).
So, I am left wondering, what originality do I have in me if all that is ever happening with what I consume and imbibe is based on other’s approval or consensus? And this is an impact that permeates, beyond just passive consumption. Suddenly, the posters in my room, the pictures on my Pinterest board, while they do feel cohesive and “in-with-the-times,” they also seem so foreign. It really makes me pull out hair strands, thinking I have lost a mind of my own. Even when I try to go and pick up something “original,” it feels pointless or boring. I just cannot sit through it. Because who will I talk about it with? Is it too cringe? Is it too dated? What is the metric of my originality? Even if there is one, surely it is going to be weighed against something. There’s too many questions and silences that are frustrating, just gnawing at me from afar when I think about this.
Even if I pick up some book (which I am damn sure I am not gonna get through) or curate the perfect playlist of obscure, underrated songs by artists unheard of, it is a rebellion borne out of the need to stand out. It still is very much governed by wanting it to be a response to the dominant conversations everywhere. So, even in a departure from or denial of their influence, it is still the starting point. This begs the question—where do I even begin discovering things of my own that do not have this looming binary of compliance or defiance circling them? How hard can it be to pick up something that is gonna stick and something I can call my own? Why does music have to come with an expiry date of “if this goes viral, it spoils my gatekept secret, and enjoying it in full bloom makes me no different than the others”?
I do not have an answer to this yet. I don’t think anybody else does either. At least not anything substantial. The very fact that even the way media is ordered and curated by the algorithm a certain way already skews our choices is too mind-numbing for me. How do I stumble upon my media, untangled from the spools of algorithmic pushes or peer-preferences? How do I chase my own personhood in a hallway surrounded by mirrors, facing one another, mirroring more mirrors.
Some will say it’s not that deep, or that it is a privileged quirk to ponder upon this. But ask this to the seven-year-old storyteller in me who has grown up now to bear the brunt of being the unoriginal intellectual.