Copy-Cats with a hint of lemon

Recently, one of my little cousins showed a very clear pattern of copying everything me and my brothers did. He took my username and transformed it into "abunchofswimmingbirds"; He took the profile pictures from one of my brothers and used them as his and he outright mindlessly followed everyone we followed on Instagram. I found it funny, because I've done it before. My brothers found it irritating and stupid. One of them even said "He has no character, he just steals everything from us". I feel it's necessary to talk about this, even if I don't bring much to the table.

When I was 7 years old, my uncle made me a Facebook account so I would stop tampering with his. Back then, I used it exclusively to play games on Facebook. However, given the nature of any toddler my age, I wound up where I shouldn't be. I found myself on the main page, where I would then copy anyone's posts and paste them as posts of my own. Why did I do it? I have zero clue. I certainly didn't do it because I understood the posts I copied, nor did I have a thing for writing back then. The adults in my family soon enough picked up on what I was doing. I vaguely remember my mother's siblings laughing it off, considering how confused they were when they found me posting things I wouldn't understand at my age.

Not too long after that, me and my twin cousins had a clash over similiar usernames. Cringe as it sounds, we were fans of a game called "Ares Extinction Agenda", so each of us had a little flair added to their names. I was "Salman Mega Ares" and they had "Ali Lava Ares" or somesuch. Thing is, I liked the Lava bit. (Which isn't too surprising given our infatuation with fire and anything close to it) so I changed my username to "Salman Lava Ares".. I vaguely remember me and my cousins having a bit of a scuffle over me copying their names.

The point I'm trying to show is that we are not that creative. We usually remix things. We learn and remix by consuming and copying. Some of the "catchy titles" I name for my posts could outright be song names or dialogue pieces from a story I liked. The only story I ever published "Looking Back is Blinding" (which to my dismay still exists on Wattpad) is named after an unused soundtrack from the show "Infinity Train"! I could bring so many examples of copying/sampling. But since it's almost impossible to count every book in the fantasy section along with every subplot each one has, I'll let your mind wander.

It's like how every artist you probably know of either started their hobby by drawing over existing things, or just copying other drawings. This isn't limited to art by the way, it's also how we learn to speak and behave at a young age.

The problem with copying isn't the action itself. It's when it becomes your sole identity. It's when you don't remix. When you just mindlessly copy without understanding or learning, it becomes soulless. If an artist only copied others' work and put their signature on it. That's not theirs. Best it does is serve as practice, but it does not give you an identity. A printer isn't an artist, and if someone copied every word I wrote word for word that does not make them a writer.

So to conclude this somewhat sloppy mess of mine. Copying isn't bad when it's part of the learning.. Just don't copy others' work and label it as your own.. Spread your wings and create something of your own. Remix the different elements that you've consumed to bring forth something the world has not seen before. Like a story about cats that open up a lemonade stand...

P.s I looked it up and it turns out there's actually already a story about a cat that owns a lemonade stand.. I did not know that at the time of writing this. But goes to show how "creative" we are, eh?

P.s.s Ali, I will send you this post. Change your username to "afewswimmingbirds". It makes it more unique when you make my name almost an opposite.. Cheers