Stich Bitch

In her short essay, Stitch Bitch, author Shelly Jackson struck me with the sentence, “Every new form will inspire mediocre works as well as great ones, and while even mediocrity can be interesting when the form is new, it doesn’t remain so.”  To me, this perfectly describes many of the creative movements that I have followed in my lifetime: the creation of something new, the hype, and the subsequent drop (seemingly out of nowhere) in popularity.  I, and everyone in my generation, have been born into a time where movements are created and destroyed daily, where technology is evolving so fast that everything as we know it now will soon become obsolete, where the ebb and flow of culture is too rapid to find any sturdy ground.  My generation subsequently is in a constant search for meaning, something “real”, with which to define us to the others around us.  We find something popular, quirky, or relatively unheard of, attach it to our own identity, and drop it once the purpose is served (Please try not to think of me as preaching or putting others down, I am no different.).  The quintessential example is found in Internet technology, where people all over the world attempt to broadcast a persona of themselves based on trends.  We find something that inspires us, and thanks to the ease of access to high quality photos on our cell phones and powerful creative programs downloadable to our laptops, this inspiration becomes a muse to what Shelly would describe as mediocre, mostly.  Once this has been created and broadcast to the world, it will be well-received if the timing of the final product mirrors current trends.  Too early, and popular culture will not get it.  Too late, and the trend has faded, leaving behind a trite example of truly useless creation.  Get it just right, and shallow praise may be received by others following suit.  Regardless of the timing, this mediocrity will fade into the every-quickly moving vortex of popular culture.

Shelly says, “What results isn’t necessarily worth the trip, but some of it will be.”  This sort of behavior is emulation; a previously created construct has inspired us to act out on its behalf.  This construct is what makes hypertext worth it.  Someone in the vast ocean of the Internet has done something that has inspired a movement, and while what may be created on its behalf will be mostly mediocre, the final product(s) isn’t necessarily as important as the inspiration and following creation(s). The journey, the fact that so many are creating the mediocre at all is a revolution of self-expression and the celebration of individual spirit unprecedented in human history.  I don’t pretend to know where it is going but I am excited to find out.