Everything Looks The Same

Gotta say, it feels like we missed an opportunity to reinvent social. Can you tell them apart?

One philosophical objection I have to Silicon Valley is that people are very derivative. They tend to rely too much on what other people do. When everyone relies on what everyone else does, you end up getting a deeply mimetic-culture where no one thinks for themselves.

Rival products (burgers, pop songs, political parties) tend to grow more alike over time, because creators copy more successful rivals to replicate their success and steal their customers/audiences.

Paradoxically, this increases the value of being different.