anything goes with emma chamberlain - my philosophy on copying

Episode Date: December 22, 2022

today we're going to talk about copying. the interesting thing about copying is...when people think about copying, most people think of it as a bad thing, but, in some instances, it can actually be an incredible thing. copying is definitely a complicated topic. so i wanted to talk about it today and discuss my philosophy on copying: when it's good, when it's bad, when it's useful, when it's evil, etc. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello. My neighbor has been playing Mario Kart all morning at top volume. Like the soundtrack of my morning this morning was Mario Kart music, which is crazy because my neighbor isn't even that close to me. Like they're kind of far away. You know, there's an entire yard between us, but yet somehow I can hear them play Mario Kart at nine in the morning at Top volume. I It's crazy. I'll be honest. It's been kind of awful, but I think that they might be done now

Anyway, today we're talking about copying the interesting thing about copying is that most people, when they think of it, think that it's a bad thing. They think copying is bad. But if you investigate further into the concept of copying, you'll find that copying can actually be an incredible thing as well. Copying is a complicated topic, actually. And so I wanted to talk about it today and discuss my philosophy on copying when it's good, when it's bad, when it's useful, when it's evil, etc., etc. And maybe we'll all learn something, okay? Before we begin, let's look at the Oxford Dictionaries definition definition of copying. To make a similar or identical version of to reproduce or to imitate the style or behavior of. We all knew that, but I just wanted to read it, make sure we're all on the same page, and now we can begin. I think that copying can be three things.

So first let's discuss when copying is evil. This is what we all think of when we think of copying. The key characteristic, it's evil when you directly replicate something and then pretend it's your idea and then profit from it. That is when copying is evil. Let's give an example. You're on your Instagram Explorer page one day

and you see a clothing designer who doesn't have a lot of followers, just created a new, cool jacket. They sewed it by hand. They completely designed it themselves. It's a design that only they have made. It is one of one, it is their thing, but no one knows about it. This person has like 10 followers, okay?

They're just getting started. And then let's say you are a slightly more experienced clothing designer. You have 10,000 followers and you sell your clothes online and you're pretty successful and you're relatively well-known and you go and you steal that design from that designer who is just starting out. And then you say, this is my design. That's when copying is evil. When you steal an idea from someone else, especially if they have less of an advantage than you do, maybe they're just starting out and you've been in the game for a little longer or something like that. And then you profit off of their idea.

And you don't give them credit and you don't tell anyone and you say, this was my idea and I came up with it out of my own noggin. And it's my creation, I created this, and no one gave me the idea, this is me, I'm trademarking it, it's mine. That's kind of evil. I think the most evil part about it is that there was a scheme involved.

If you copy somebody with the intent of not giving them credit and of profiting off of it, you schemed a little bit. It wasn't like this happened on accident. You know, you knew what you were doing. And that's when it's evil. See, the thing is copying is the act of, perfectly replicating something.

Okay, in this example that I'm using, that would be copying the exact shape, the exact color, or maybe a slightly different color, or a slightly different shape, but it's pretty much the exact same. You know, not even trying to make it different. Like, listen, you might add to it a little bit, or take a little bit away from it. You might change it a little bit. But if you were to put your copy and they're original next to each other, they would look almost identical. It would be obvious that they resemble each other heavily.

The problem is that copying in this way is basically stealing, you know? And it's being sneaky. It's not having empathy or respect for the person who originally created that concept or that thing. It's intentionally stealing an idea from somebody for your own gain.

And knowing that you're doing it. That is when copying is evil. It's evil when it's like a premeditated plan. There's something about this planning that's evil. Like, I'm going to steal this really good idea and I'm going to make it mine and I'm going to profit off of it and that person is going to get left in the dust and they're going to look like they're copying me. The planning of that in someone's head is what makes it so wrong. Because there's also a type of copying that's evil on the outside. It looks evil. It seems evil, but it might

have been an accident. For example, there have been times in my life when I have been convinced that I had come up with an idea out of my head, like just pulled it out of my head, and it had never, I've never seen it before, whatever. And it turns out I was subconsciously copying somebody because I didn't remember ever seeing it. It just entered my psyche on accident. And then I thought I had come up with the idea.

And that's happened to me before. And so I think we can't ignore the fact that there might be times when someone copies someone else on accident and they're profiting off of it. Do I think it happens very often? No, I don't. I think that's far less common, but I think it probably does happen every once in a while.

And that's a lot less evil in reality because the intent wasn't there. The premeditation of, I'm going to steal this idea and then I'm going to make money out of it. Like, that didn't happen. So then it's up to the person who copied on accident to make it right. Maybe that's giving credit where it's due. Maybe that's, you know, not selling or profiting off of the thing that they stole on accident. Like, whatever it may be, how they react once they find out they were a copycat on accident, that's what determines whether or not they did the right thing.

Because accidentally copying somebody or something, you can't, this shit happens. I'll give an example that doesn't include profiting off of anyone, but I don't know. It's just like an example of me copying someone on accident. I remember one time I was wearing this outfit and I posted it on Instagram, whatever. And then I think I got a comment or something from someone saying,

oh, you copied this other person out person's outfit. And I was like, what? Or you look like this person. And I was like, what? And I went and looked at their page and I was like, oh my god, I am literally wearing almost the exact same outfit as this other person. And I actually had never even seen this person wearing that outfit before.

I had never seen it. It wasn't even like subliminally copying them. I had never seen this image. I had never seen this person wearing this outfit. I had never seen it in my life. But I posted my photo of me wearing almost the exact same outfit after they posted theirs. And I swear to God, I never saw them wearing it, but now it looks like

I copied them, but that was an accident. That was just coincidence. You see what I'm saying? And I think that stuff like that happens. And so it might seem weird to the outside world, like, oh, she copied whatever. When in reality, it's like, it might have been an accident. It all depends on what the intent of the person was

and also whether or not they're profiting from it. Because in that scenario where I just copy that girl's outfits, like, well, number one, no, I didn't, it was an accident, I guess. And then number two, no one was profiting from it. It was like, it's harmless. So it didn't matter anyway. You see what I mean there.

Now, on the other hand, a lot of times, people don't exactly copy, but instead they take inspiration, innocent copying. Seeing somebody else's outfit and thinking, that is so cute. I'm going to go copy that outfit. That's innocent. Why? Because it's just flattering. It's like a compliment, in my opinion. It can be frustrating in certain scenarios. Let's say your friend starts copying all of your outfits. Yeah, that can get irritating. Don't get me wrong.

But at the same time, I still consider it innocent because no one's getting hurt. You know, nobody's profiting off of this. Nobody's walking around claiming I came up with this outfit, you know, it's just, it's just harmless, I guess, in a way. Innocent copying could also be replicating what somebody else does in order to learn. Now this is huge because as we grow in life as people or as hobby pursuers, there are gonna be times in our life when we need to copy in order to learn who we are.

For example, let's say you are a painter. It might be helpful when you first start painting to copy famous paintings, try to paint them yourself in order to learn how to paint. Like, that's extremely helpful. It's like reverse engineering this painting to teach yourself how to paint something like a professional. You see what I'm saying?

That's extremely helpful. Or, let's say you're learning how to play instruments, playing a song that's famous and amazing and trying to learn how to play that can teach you so much about how to play an instrument. But taking it a step further, copying people's personality traits that you admire can also help you learn how to behave in a way socially that's maybe more mature. For example, let's say you have a hard time greeting people.

Like when you see someone you know out and about, you feel awkward going and saying hi. But then one day you're with your friend and your friend handles that type of situation gracefully. You watch them, they go up to someone and they just say, oh, hey, good to see you. Like, what are you doing here? And you're like, ooh, that's cool.

I like the way that they did that. And the next time you get into a situation where you need to go greet somebody, maybe you see someone you know out and about, or you're at a party and you see somebody you know walk in, and you know you need to say hi, but you're like, I don't really know how. Well, now you can copy the way that your friend did it.

That's valuable as well. What would we do without copying the people that we admire socially in social situations? That's how we learn and develop our social skills. We need to copy each other in the beginning, and then eventually we can put our own spin on it. So going back to that example, it's like, let's say the first few times you

have to go and greet somebody and say, what's up? You copy your friend that did it so gracefully. So the first few times, you copy exactly what they did. But then you start to get comfortable with it and you're like, oh, I'm going to do my own spin on it, you know? And then it becomes your own. But I think innocent copying is the type of copying that helps you learn, copying somebody's outfit so that you can start to get comfortable maybe dressing in a different way. And then eventually branching out and doing more things that are kind of out of your comfort zone. But it started with copying somebody who you think did it right, did that outfit right. And then after playing around, you know, kind of copying that person, you're like, hey, now I feel more

comfortable experimenting with my style because I felt safe copying that person because when they wore this outfit, they looked cool. And I would have never chosen that outfit myself because it is out of my comfort zone or it's something I never even thought of. But now that I copied them a little bit, now I feel comfortable going and branching out and doing my own thing and taking my own spin on it. I think copying is valuable as long as you're using it to learn something.

And also you're not claiming to anyone that it's your idea. Like if somebody were to come up to you when you're playing a Taiman Paula song on the guitar, okay, if somebody were to come up to you while you're playing a Mac Domaco song on the guitar, whatever, a Beatles song even, and they're like, oh my God, is that like your song? Did you write that?

If you said yes, like, even though you're not profiting off of it or anything, that's still bad, don't do that. But if you're like, oh no, this is this Beatles song, and I'm learning how to play guitar, so I'm trying to learn that song. And they're like, oh cool, that's awesome. That's when copying is good. I don't know if anything I just said made sense,

but it felt really, really good for me. But now let's talk about the difference between copying and taking inspiration. Innocent copying doesn't include profiting off of anything, right? Nobody's making money, pretending that an idea that was somebody else's was theirs. It's just an attempt to learn more about you.

You know, it's not, no one's getting hurt. Everything's fine. Nobody's being stolen from, it's just innocent. But it gets complicated. When we start talking about taking inspiration, because taking inspiration from something is not copying, but it's very close. Taking inspiration is taking something

and adding your own spin to it. In theory, taking your own spin on something, looking at something, taking it as inspiration, and then adding to it and changing it enough to make it fully your own should, in theory, create something that's unrecognizable to the original. Like, if you were to put them next to each other, they look pretty fucking different. You're not like, oh, is this a spot the difference game

where I'm trying to figure out if one of them has a different zipper or something? Like, no, they should look different. Because if they look the same, then that's copying. But we're talking about taking inspiration, which means that you have to change it enough that it doesn't look like a slightly different version of the inspiration object itself, right?

Whatever that thing is. Taking inspiration and creating something new from that inspiration and then selling it or profiting from it is totally fair. In fact, if we couldn't do that, we wouldn't have anything. Pretty much all things were created with an inspiration of some sort in the back of somebody else's head. Like, it's very rare that somebody just comes up with an idea out of their head that has no inspiration that just came from nowhere.

Like, that doesn't happen ever. I don't actually know if that ever happens. People might think that it's happened to them, but it doesn't. Like in order to have an idea, you have to have a starting point of some sort. All things that are created have some sort of inspiration. It had to, like the idea had to start somewhere. No art, no clothing, no technology, furniture, no recipes, no jokes, nothing would exist without inspiration from somewhere. Taking inspiration from things is crucial.

And if you are somebody who profits off of creating things, you know, whether that's an object or it's a TV show or it's a podcast, whatever it is, anyone who profits from creating something has to make sure that they're either copying and giving full credit or they're taking inspiration in a way that is respectful to the original person that they took the idea from. Do you know what I mean? You either have to give full credit or you have to change it enough where it's different from the original,

like very different from the original. The problem is is that it's just such a fine line. Taking inspiration and evil copying, if you will, they're so close to each other. Like they are constantly on the verge of being the same thing. But also, they're not. One can so quickly become the other. So let's look at what we have here.

Okay, we have evil copying, innocent copying, and taking inspiration. Let's dig a little bit deeper into innocent copying and taking inspiration. Let's dig a little bit deeper into innocent copying because even though it is innocent, it can still sometimes be fucking annoying. For example, let's say every day when you show up to school, you wear an outfit, okay? And it's cool and it's chic and you spent like

an hour picking it out and it's like, so you, you know, it's like your thing, it's like your expression, right? And then the next day, your friend comes to school and copies that outfit that you wore the day before. At first, this might be flattering, but let's say they start doing it every day, you know, you wear an outfit one day, the next day they show up to school, they're wearing that outfit, like they copy it. And this continues to happen over and over and over and over again, and they never branch off

and start doing their own thing. It wasn't like a few times they copied you just to kinda play around with what you're doing because they're inspired by it. It becomes something a little bit deeper than that. It's like they're not even trying to maybe learn from the cool stuff that you're doing, but instead they just want to be you in a way. Like they just like what you're doing so much that they just kinda wanna be you

and just do what you're doing because it's easier than maybe branching off and doing their own thing. Now listen, is this innocent? Absolutely, it's innocent. Is anyone getting hurt? No, I mean, you might be frustrated about it, but no one's getting hurt,

but at the same time, it is kind of upsetting because you're like, I feel like my identity is being stolen, you know? But also, what can I do about it? Because it is kind of flattering that they're copying me all the time and, you know, they admire what I'm doing and that's sweet, but at the same time, I'm frustrated. That can become an issue. Or maybe your friend starts copying all of your sayings.

Like, let's say, you know, you have cute little one-liners That can become an issue, or maybe your friend starts copying all of your sayings. Like let's say, you know, you have cute little one-liners that you like throwing around. Like, all right, see ya, like that becomes your thing. That's your new thing. Your new thing is like, whenever you're saying goodbye to a group of people, you're like, all right, see ya.

That becomes your thing. And then your friend comes in and starts being like, all right, see ya. And at first you're like, okay, it's fine. They just stole that one thing and I get it because it's kind of a contagious little saying. But then a week later, you start telling all of your friends, I'm obsessed with navy blue right now.

Navy blue is the color of the season. All of the clothing I'm buying is navy blue. And then your friend is like, wait me too. I've only been wearing navy blue. And it just starts to become something where it's like, my friend is copying all of my opinions, all of my little sayings. They're socially imitating me in every way.

This happens sometimes. That can be awful as well. Again, it's innocent, but it's uncomfortable. I would characterize this sort of copying as uncomfortable yet innocent copying, okay? It's innocent and it's sweet because it's like whoever is doing this really admires you

and wants to be like you, but at the same time, it can still be frustrating for the person who's being copied because they're like, I wanna have my own thing. I want this to be my thing. I don't want this person to be stealing all of these original or personal ideas that I have or opinions that I have or sayings that I have or fashion choices that I make, whatever, we like to feel

like individuals. And so when people start to copy us too much, it can become uncomfortable. And all of it can be fixed through a conversation. You can just say, listen, I feel weird. I feel like you're kind of cropping everything. That's a hard conversation. I don't even know how I'd have that conversation to be honest. I mean, I guess you could be like, this is like one of the first times I've ever been stumped

about how I would approach a conversation like that. You know what I would do? I might not even have a conversation about it with the person. I might just distance myself in a way and just step back from the friendship a little bit. Now let's talk about when we copy people, okay? Because that happens, I think it's really good to be aware of whether or not we're taking it too far, you know. As I said earlier, copying other people can be an incredible way to learn and grow and evolve. But at the same time, you have to be doing mental checkups with yourself.

Like, okay, am I taking this too far? You know, is this getting out of control? Even though, you know, I might be innocent copying here. Like, am I bothering anyone in the process? Am I giving credit where it's due when necessary, you know? Is this making anyone uncomfortable? credit where it's due when necessary, you know, is this making anyone uncomfortable, et cetera, et cetera. I've copied people on accident before. As I mentioned earlier, that one weird time

when I accidentally wore the same outfit as that girl on Instagram. And it was kind of a specific outfit too, which was kind of weird. I don't know how it happened. I don't know to this day it bothers me, because I really, really do my best to not copy anyone. So it bothered me because I was like,

I didn't mean to, and I don't want anyone to think that I was trying to steal this girl's vibe, you know, like I, because whatever. But this shit happens, you know. But I think it is about how you react to it. What do you do about it? That is my deep dive on copying. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the gray areas. Let me know what you guys think. As always, send me a DM on Instagram and anything goes or tweet me at a G podcast. What's your opinion on copying? How do you feel about it?

Have you ever copied somebody and then felt weird about it? Have you ever been copied and it pissed you off? Spill the beans. And thank you guys for listening. As always, I appreciate you all so much. And just keep being awesome, and I'll talk to you next week. Love you.