A Rant about Rip-offs

Whatever happened to plain old originality?


I used to hate those people I call "bookish chess players". You know, those people that read all the chess books and memorize all the openings of all the grandmasters. I mean, no offense to the bookish chess players out there; but the reason I play chess is to see how far I can stretch my imagination and get out of the toughest situation. Not simply winning. If I only wanted to win, I'd play with newbies and scam money off of them. seriously. I'm a girl, I can do that very easily.

But I don't know... I guess I just thought that if I wanted to challenge someone's English Opening: King's English. Four Knights Variation Fianchetto Lines; I'd just go see Kasparov myself. And if I wanted to become a grandmaster, I'd work on making my own opening and proudly declaring it mine. Or if I wanted to face the perfect Sicilian Dragon or Sicilian Dragon Slayer I'd go to Sicilly. (To those that aren't laughing, you should probably laugh now because that was a joke right there. Perhaps an unoriginal one I might add, although I've never actually read or heard of this particular joke.)

I googled it and OMG! Sicilian defense IS named after Sicilly. Too lazy to hit backspace and rewrite everything so let's just move one. (Hmmm... It could just be me but I think I'm sounding too much like a nerd with all this chess talk.)



Whatever happened to "your very own"?

Whatever happened to originality?

Has it gone somewhere to an age unreachable by the current trend of internet dependency?

Has it somehow been forgotten?

Lost?

Broken?

Unrecoverable?


I can't say I haven't been unoriginal, especially when it comes to school works and projects (when my lazy side gets the best of me). But I've ALWAYS given credit to the people I've gotten the ideas from or based the design from. Just a courtesy that everyone should try doing every once in a while.


BECAUSE I KNOW THE FEELING of being ripped-off. I see my own work WITHOUT my name on it. I know it's mine because it took me over 2 hours to think of the concept alone and another 3 hours for execution, but my name is nowhere in sight. And what the hell is YOUR SIGNATURE doing on MY ARTWORK? HAVE YOU NO SHAME??!?!?!?!





Okaaaaay... getting a little too personal. Moving on... Again.



Nowadays we see rip-offs... rip-offs and more rip-offs.


Music is no longer about emotion or beautiful lyrics as it was in the past.

Whatever happened to good ol' composition?

Now we just repeat the same word/ words a lot, put beat on it and call it "music" (as bluntly put by Ryan Higa). Or worse, we take someone else's hardwork, tweek it a bit, throw a little lyrics (which we just rip off from some unknown book anyway)-- and the worst part of it is, we have the gall to call it "original".

Half of the "original" new pop songs I've heard are rip-offs from old forgotten love songs with new lyrics. That being said, I give props to the EMO songs... Seriously, they might be a bit gay but at least most of them are still original (with sweat and blood from adolescent boys and their lovers).

Even blogs, where people are supposed to put "their own" thoughts in are invaded by the pretense of originality.

Even television series are based on past movies. At least some of them put the title of the movie, others just pretend it's the writer's own. The twists are either lame or cheating (bringing someone dead to life, introducing an unknown character that wasn't given a sufficient background of, etc).

Even books (which, for me, are supposed to be a higher form of literature opposed to movies and such) just seem too familiar and predictable. Like I've read/ heard of the story line somewhere.

Even school papers. HAHAHAHA. I'm not gonna say any more.

Really? It's YOURS? You're not fooling anybody.



I'm not naming names.

I'm not blaming artists.

I'm not pointing fingers.

I'm not making a list of unoriginal musicians.

I'm not trying to be clean.






I just hope we try to nurture creativity and originality, rather than just skill and craftsmanship.



Or at least STOP STEALING OTHER PEOPLE'S HARDWORK DAMMIT! or MINE for that matter. (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....) PLEASE understand how terribly IRKSOME it is for a person to see her own work with YOUR signature. 

Even if it is a thing of the past, it was still mine and you shouldn't have taken it in the first place.










Hahahaha. Just kidding. ^^ I'm just ranting. You know better than to take me seriously.
Tsk tsk tsk.




P.S. Usually I don't use the same words too many times, but I really couldn't find another word to describe "RIPPING-OFF"...