If anyone’s rocking their own brand of awesome, it’s you. Because you, my friend, are ninjariffic

I’ve seen the turning-into-clones thing myself. And it always makes me kind of sad.

Not because the person other people are cloning is bad. But because in the process of imitating someone else, a huge chunk of awesome gets lost.

One of the things I really dig is seeing someone’s own unique brand of awesome shine through what they do. Even if they’re influenced by other people or inspired by other people, it’s delicious when their awesome is still totally visible.

Inspiration and influence is fine, normal and (sometimes) helpful.

Losing your awesome in someone else’s awesome isn’t so helpful. Because the world needs every bit of unique awesome it can get.

A confident freely expressed ‘me’ only fits some parts of these roles sometimes. At other times I could shut up and listen more.

There’s also a lifetime of experience of dealing with thousands of slight facial and body reactions when speaking face-to-face. Most of these reactions are only subliminally picked up, but they help to check and steer the conversation.

When it comes to writing, that’s a totally different sort of communication as it can be more considered, and it certainly lacks the subtle gesture feedback. That may explain some of the rabidly insensitive and inane unmoderated comment you see on certain newspaper sites.

Sadly, those comments may represent the ‘true me’for some people. Which begs the question: is ‘the true me’ always worth having? We all have dark sides.

Is ‘the true me’ actually ever attainable? We are always communicating in situations with contextual influences: everything we see, read, experience and hear, for example. The ‘true me’ is probably a myth and for the sake of society, that could be just as well.

When we write, are we taking on yet another role that is reasonably consistent with our main values? Or a better version of the other ‘mes’? Or do we take the opportunity to explore personas with different values? We can do all of that.

Could the writers on the big name blog be having fun playing with a comedic streak that the blog has awakened in them? You’re free to play if it appeals. What’s not to like about feeling cool and funny from time to time? It’s a big leap from that to a Stepford-ish personality take-over. Obviously, not knowing the blog involved, I can’t be certain it doesn’t contain extensive video evidence of whole towns full of identi-kit young women…. but somehow I doubt it.

For some, it may be unconscious copying, like finding yourself mimicking an accent.

Writing styles are infectious and that can be a useful development tool. Painters often copy parts of pictures to learn more about creating certain effects.

I discovered as a teenager that if I read Byron’s poetry, I had Byronic couplets running around my head for a while like a pervasive song. It doesn’t last, but it gave me a lingering confidence that I could ‘hold a rhyme.’ That gave me the confidence more recently to have lots of fun ‘adapting’ Burns’ style to create personalised speeches for Burns suppers. These were only performed at clubs where I know the people well.

I hope some of the young women playing with their comedy streak on the big name blog will develop confidence in being funny. We could all do with a laugh at times.

I do know that the one thing we needn’t worry about when it comes to writing is finding our unique voice. We all already have one. The way we each use words is so distinct, it is as individual as a finger print. In fact, language patterns have been analysed to prove authorship as evidence in court.

With that amount of linguistic variety to handle, no wonder Google is still adapting natural language filters to identify good information online. And spammers can adapt their messages so easily to get past our message rules.

Sometimes what’s needed to save the world (village?) is what makes us different from everyone else. =)

That’s a great point. I don’t dispute that groups have things in common, including a shared language, but there’s usually still a fair amount of variation. The group that I’m referring to in my post used to have that – a common vocabulary, similar interests and values, yet they were still quite individual in spite of all that was so similar. And then, the individuality started disappearing, in a sort of Stepford Wife-ish kind of way… it feels like it’s gone beyond simple group homogeneity now, and this scares and saddens me.

Think back to your youth. We tend to gravitate to groups where we share similar values, ideas and in youth image. Recall the youth culture you shared with your friends. The haircuts, fashion and music that both divided and united our community. Perhaps these are examples of homophily.

Is it that we all have our own unique voice and if so is it really that different from other peoples. Perhaps you can’t see the uniqueness because you’re attributing characteristics to others.

You’ve brought up something so important – that time during which we’re finding our own voice, when we’re so vulnerable and susceptible to outside influences. It takes wisdom and courage to stand firm in our commitment to ourselves during this time and recognise when we’re drifting from our true selves. Thank you for bringing this up!

Its a very, very tempting thing to drift ourselves into something we love that isn’t quite us. I know it’s taken me a year and a half to even start finding my voice as a writer and I see it as a tender time where I almost have to protect my growing voice from influences that could make it less ME.

Thanks for putting this into words.