Tags: creativity | design | plagarism

make extra cash, I work 9 to 6 p.m. weekends as a "tiang-girl." That is, I sell my handmade, personally designed beaded accessories in bazaars around the city.

It all started about two years ago, when I spiritually channeled a fashion-forward Leo da Vinci, and merged him with some Todd Oldham pragmatic flair, and invented a certain beach accessory that wasn't in the market yet.

I actually never meant to sell it; it was born out of a sheer utilitarian and aesthetic necessity to jazz up my own beachwear. I sported my original creation from Singapore to Sydney, where I got more than a few passing thumbs-ups from people who wondered, "Why didn't anyone think of that before?"

Pretty soon, it had evolved into a mini "racket." I started making more of the same for friends and their friends, and it snowballed into a load of orders which translated in to a thriving little business that I have since called Beadnik...

Then one Saturday morning in a bazaar a few weeks back, hung over from the previous night's drinking spree, I got the jolt of my life when I saw, to my utter horror-another girl selling knock-offs of my original creation. The similarities were too obvious to ignore. I had actually seen the chick (whom I call The Cookie Cutter Monster, she who cuts from my dough) and her partner around in the bazaar circuit before. They even befriended me by buying some of my products; I had no idea that this was their backhanded way of ripping me off.

What ate me up more than the fact that they were eating into my profits was my tormented deeper sensibilities and sense of values. There I was, face to face with the worms of crass capitalism, parasites that fed on other people's original ideas. Sure they say, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery," but no one ever told me that flattery felt like muriatic acid being dripped onto the aortic valve.

I had fantasies of smashing her face in, but I managed to rein in my anger ... for about two hours. My fury boiled over when I noticed she was unabashedly copying even the way I displayed my wares! So, I decided to confront the chick and ever so calmly and eloquently asked, "Hey, why you always mimic me?" She dodged my straightforward question, and hit me with: "Have you never heard of free enterprise?"

Ah yes ... the battlecry of Capitalism. In a free market, there exists little sympathy toward naive little creators who believe in the good that their product can do for the world (in my case, the fashion accessory world). In this realm, there is room for everybody with half a mind and a full layer of thick skin.

I felt foolish for expostulating on the metaphysical doctrine of true art, the pleasure of creation, the ethics of business, and the fact that herdid not match her shoes. It was futile. She was right. That's the way the gold coin clinks in the competitive, free world. Damn you, Adam Smith!

The cult

That's when I realized I had to face up to the Cult of the Copycat that pervades all competitive arenas: the "copy-cat" mentality that plagues every entrepreneur's horizon. All of a sudden I felt a comradeship with the dude who first put up his own lucrative shawarma business only to contend with a horde of other people in his neighborhood blatantly flanking his beef flanks. Then there's the ubiquitous pearl shake, now available at every street corner from stalls that bear names so uncannily similar to the original, that consumers have forgotten which came first.

Even in the local entertainment scene, the Xerox psyche rules. When "Dawson's Creek" was at its peak, sure enough followed "Tabing Ilog." "Sesame Street" once morphed into the knockoff "Sesame," and "Sex and the City" found a local counterpart in "Atta Girl."

When "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" proved to be a profitable, highly entertaining venture, facsimiles of the formula mushroomed on primetime television. It's not just irritating, it's utterly embarrassing, this lifetime subscription to the impostor mentality. Has originality become obsolete?

Metis vs. mediocrity

In the book BoBos (Bourgeois Bohemians) in Paradise by David Brooks, "Metis" is defined as a person's capability to develop creative skills in response to a changing environment and various market forces (i.e., wormy competitors). Where the mettle of Metis comes to play, the true challenge then lies in never ceasing to be a disciple of the Idea, a believer in Originality.

The subject memo is simply; keep on creating. The world is moved by Big Ideas. If true innovators simply grew cynical and let this world be run by throngs of Cookie Cutter Monsters, we'd be stuck with endless reruns of "Baywatch Hawaii."

I guess this means I just have to come up with something else, something new and useful, like eyedrops that cure hangovers, umbrellas that fold up like a credit card, or shoes with retractable heels. I'll be praying to the Spirit of Creation, repeating the mantra that the xerox copy is never as good as the original thing.