the right thing is to copy

2024-09-22 01:00

copy everything around you.

copy that social media trend. copy that new look. copy the way they put on their makeup. copy someone else’s music tastes. copy the CSS from their blog. copy someone else’s whole goddamn aesthetic.

copy the style of your favorite artist. copy code from stack overflow and modify it a bit instead of writing your own. copy that nix configuration (because who actually knows how to write a nix file from scratch?) open the source code of this website and copy it. get the source code of your favorite web app and clone it for your own project.

because it’s good to copy, actually. copying is the first step to learning how to do it on our own. trying to learn it on your own without copying first is like trying to learn to ride a bike without falling off.

do copy that floppy. circulate the tapes. copy things corporations don’t feel are profitable to keep around anymore. copy because they’re doing it anyway and it sure as hell seems like they’re getting away with it.

write that fanfic, because that way no one can really “own” the idea of a story or a character.

copy because it’s a tradition as old as we are human. copy because it’s our history.

copy because without copies, no one can copy them. and eventually, if no one can copy, no one can learn.