Google Anything

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Sean Sandulak

Google Anything (Or the Simpsons Did It.)

There are no more new ideas. You don’t believe me? Think of something new. Go on, you can do it. Not so easy, is it? Assuming you do come up with something you think is brilliant, new, and original, Google search it. There will be ten people who have already thought of it and six of those projects will be better than yours. Someone has probably done their doctoral thesis on it and is now the world expert.

It kind of makes it hard to write sometimes, knowing that nothing is original anymore. I like to see myself as an adventurer, blazing a new trail across the virgin countryside, when in fact, it’s just the same old dirt road that millions have already tramped.

Maybe I’m thinking about this all wrong. It’s like music. There are only so many notes, but they can be rearranged into an infinite combination of sounds. Unless you’re Nickelback and just just keep doing the same thing over and over. Okay, bad example.

It’s more like there are no new letters in the alphabet, but new words, sentences, and even whole books can appear out of nothing but our imaginations. The stories may be similar to one’s we’ve heard before, but that’s only because they are about our needs and desires. Those have not fundamentally changed in millennia, and they are not likely to start changing anytime soon. It’s not because we’re lazy that we can’t come up with new plot lines. (Okay, it’s not just because we’re lazy…) It’s that universal truths are true for all time.

So yes, it may be boy meets girl, the fall of an empire, or slaying the dragon, but the beauty of a story is in its telling. It’s much the same as getting there is half the fun. Sometimes when you visit a familiar place you can find things you missed before. Other times, you can remember what you loved about it in the first place.

Also, don’t Google yourself. If you’re famous then you don’t need to, and if you’re not then it’s just depressing. And it sounds dirty.