Hi Frank, this was a lovely early morning read.

An idea hovered my mind when I read that part where you say, “So what did I do? I heroically and geniusly copied and pasted some text.”

More like a connection to this Tom Goodwin quote — “Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.” This quote has been doing the same rounds of rewritten internet media that you mention in your article.

I was thinking maybe the reason why meta-content like your example really hits the right nerve in our generation is because we as human beings have always craved for meaning and order in everything. There is this strange attraction towards order or classification or to find the so-called theory of everything in everything. And like the above-mentioned companies that aggregate entities, maybe the new-age content creator, is the ones who instead of creating words or illustrations from scratch, creates new meaning using existing forms and concepts. Instead of playing with a language or visuals it is connections, classifications, relatability and order that becomes the raw material for such content.