Something weird happens when you spend enough time online.


You start knowing what you’re going to see before you see it.


The same restaurants. The same apartments. The same outfits. The same

campaigns. The same references saved by people who swear they found them first.

Everything looks good.


Almost suspiciously good.


We have more access to inspiration than anyone before us ever had. We can see

what someone is wearing in Tokyo before breakfast, find a magazine scan from 1994

by lunch, save a campaign from Copenhagen, an apartment in Paris, a movie still

from 1977, and somebody’s blurry iPhone photo from last weekend.


Our references are endless.


Somehow, our output is getting narrower.


We got really good at referencing each other.


The internet made inspiration basically infinite.


That’s a good thing.


It means someone making something from their bedroom can access decades of art,

design, fashion, film, music, photography, and culture without needing permission or

an invitation.


But there’s a strange side effect.


We save the same posts.


Follow the same accounts.


Build the same moodboards.


Pin the same interiors.


Reference the same campaigns.


Then we sit down to make something “different” with a folder full of things everybody

else already decided were cool.


Of course some of it starts to look the same.


The problem isn’t having references. Nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything comes

from somewhere.


The problem starts when the reference becomes the idea.



The algorithm has taste.



Or at least, it knows ours.


You like one thing, so it gives you twelve more.


You save one photograph, and suddenly your feed is full of photographs that feel

vaguely related to it.


You watch one campaign twice and spend the next week being shown different

versions of the same idea.


It feels like discovery because the content keeps changing.

But eventually you realize you’ve been walking around the same room.


The algorithm is incredibly good at figuring out what we already like.


It’s less interested in showing us what we never would have thought to look for.


And when enough creative people are being fed variations of the same references,

those references eventually make their way into the things we create.


The cycle gets tighter.


Even rebellion develops a uniform.

Good taste isn’t enough anymore.


This is the uncomfortable part.


Something can be beautiful and still be completely forgettable.


Good typography is expected.


Good photography is expected.


Good design is expected.


We’ve become incredibly good at making things look good.


But looking good and having something to say are not the same thing.


You can execute every current visual cue perfectly and still make something nobody

remembers ten minutes later.


Because aesthetics without a point of view are just decoration.


The question can’t only be:


Does this look good?


It also has to be:


Could this belong to anybody else?


If the answer is yes, there’s probably more digging to do.



Specificity is getting rare.


The most interesting things usually contain something that couldn’t have come from

anybody else.


An oddly specific sentence.


A photograph that technically isn’t perfect.


A reference nobody understands until you explain where it came from.


A color someone probably told you not to use.


A joke only five people are going to get.


Something personal enough that another person couldn’t copy and paste it without it

feeling obviously wrong.


That’s identity.


Not being different just to prove you can be.


Being specific enough that the result naturally becomes different.


Your references don’t have to come from whatever the internet decided was

important this week.


They can come from the restaurant your family always went to.


The album you played until you got sick of it.


The house you grew up in.


A terrible movie you somehow love.


The way your hometown looked at 6 p.m. in July.


The disposable camera photo that technically sucks but feels better than the

professional one.


The things you naturally come back to when nobody is watching.


That’s where it starts getting interesting.



Maybe we need to look away from the screen.


Not forever.


The internet is incredible. It has given us access to people, ideas, places, and

creative work we might never have found otherwise.


Use it.


Save things.


Make the moodboard.


Steal a feeling from a movie made thirty years before you were born.


But then close the laptop.


Go outside.


Read something old.


Watch something bad.


Walk into a store you would normally ignore.


Talk to somebody who doesn’t work in your industry.


Look through your parents’ photo albums.


Notice the sign outside the laundromat.


Keep the receipt.


Listen to the weird song.


Pay attention to your actual life.


Because the more the internet starts to look the same, the more valuable a real point

of view becomes.


Not different for the sake of being different.


Not weird because weird is trending.


Just specific enough to actually belong to you.


The internet doesn’t need another perfect moodboard.


It could probably use a few more people with something to say.

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