Social Media Kills Creativity!
But does it really?
I always see people who express their doubts about social media, claiming that we spend too much time on our phones and disconnecting ourselves from the “real world”. Statements like these piss me off. We human beings tend to be skeptical of everything that is new, unknown, and might pose a threat to ourselves. We prefer our daily routine to be as predictable as possible because it’s safe and we know it works. Some people even knowingly disapprove of everything for their own profit of distinction, which, as Pierre Bourdieu would say, is “[…] the profit that flows from the difference, the gap, that separates us from what is common.” In other words, some people want to stand out of the crowd simply by criticising what is common, even though they might not necessarily be completely unanimous with the point of view they are representing.
Recently, however, Jeremy “Jereminho” Park made a claim about social media in one of his posts that actually sparked my interest. He indirectly criticized that social media was the cause why so many people copy each other’s tricks in our sport (or art form, or whatever you want to name it) called football freestyle. In his most recent post, he further mentions:
The art that is actually produced by someone is immediately taken and set as a trend or something a freestyler wants to learn/do.
To put it differently, the few true creative minds out there are being exploited and their tricks are worn out by the masses, thus discrediting the efforts made by its initial creators. Jereminho, after isolating himself for several months from all social platforms, claims that he restored his true passion for freestyle football by exploring and trying out new things like when he first started to freestyle, unaffected by any other source of influence. I’m neither saying that his approach about social media is right or wrong, I actually believe that it’s a good idea to distance yourself from it every now and then because we’re blinded by the constant stream of input hindering ourselves to come up with innovative creations. It worked for Jereminho so I believe other people might benefit from this approach as well. What I’m trying to highlight, however, is that it is easy, almost tempting to criticise something that might show a few negative aspects. In this very example, however, at least from my point of view, the positive aspects of social media outweigh the negative ones. Let me clarify.
First and foremost, social media gave us exposure. We have several platforms to spread the word about our sport and day after day I see huge engagement and interest in freestyle football — all over the world.
Another positive aspect about social media is emphasized by the fact that everybody can take ideas from as many different people as possible and create their own unique style. It is true for example, as Jereminho claims in his post, that social media makes it easier for everyone to bite each other and I’m also in full agreement that there’s plenty of freestylers who have never even thought about creating their own move or transition. However, you can’t be fully innovative with every trick you create. I believe that, in order to be creative, you need to take from other people. You actually need to get your inspiration from somewhere and this is where I’m in disagreement with Jereminho.
Imagine a hypothetical scenario in which you grew up in a closed room, isolated from every outer influence of freestyle football. You’ve never seen anybody do any tricks with a football — all you’ve seen since your birth would be that room and a football. One day, an omniscient person enters the room and explains, quite briefly, what freestyle football is, and afterwards instructs you to come up with all the tricks that exist in the world outside of your room, by executing them or simply writing them down. Do you think it is possible, even if you’d be sitting there for 10 years straight, to come up even with 10% of the tricks that exist today, all by yourself? I personally think not.
Most of the tricks people come up with in freestyle nowadays are based, in some way or the other, on other tricks that have already been created, or on other art forms, like b-boying, freerunning or gymnastics. Even if you are convinced that you came up with something completely by yourself, you might have been influenced by some other freestyler who has done something similar but you forgot about it afterwards, you might’ve seen Jackie Chan do a cool move in a movie and you’re trying to replicate that move with a football, or it is possible that you’ve seen a picture, painting or even a piece of music that lead you to create a certain move. Everything is a copy of something else, in some shape or the other, in freestyle football just like in technology, music or other art forms.
In the music industry, it’s hard not to see how many artists are “sampling” from other music pieces. Sampling, for those who are not familiar with the term, is the process of taking a segment of a song and implementing it in a new song that you produce. On the Ted Radio Hour called What Is Original? (which I highly recommend that you listen to), Guy Raz mentions the song La Di Da Di by Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh, which was released in 1984. That song is said to be the most sampled song of all time and segments of it were used in hundreds of songs over the years. How crazy is that? Well-known artists like The Beastie Boys, Snoop Dogg, The Notorious B.I.G., Miley Cyrus, Beyoncé, Kanye West and many more have used samples of this particular song in their own creations.
This does not mean, however, that everybody is a copycat and that there’s no originality or creativity. The process of creating simply implicates taking something from somebody else and making it your own by altering it in some shape or the other. In some cases, the “original” piece stays undoubtedly recognisable. If you take many segments from different individuals, however, it might become impossible to spot the original pieces of work, thus making it incredibly difficult to draw the line between what’s innovative and what is considered plagiarism. In order to be original, it’s essential to reshape the initial creation to such extend that it becomes something fresh, something that can stand on its own.
In the world of football freestyle, you could apply this ideology to tricks such as Jordan Stall or Yosuke Stall, both tricks having been created by Jordan Meunier and Yosuke Yokota respectively, but based on which people create something new almost every second day. Strictly considered, these freestylers copy that particular move one-to-one, but they separate themselves from the initial inventors by building on it and reshaping it, thus making it their own. This is the beauty of innovation.
Elon Musk, multibillionaire, CEO and cofounder of Tesla, removed all of Tesla’s patents and joined the open source movement. He basically put Tesla’s technology out there for everyone who desires, in good faith, to use it. But why? Elon Musk simply wanted to spark innovation since he knew it would lead to faster progress in technology, thus benefitting other companies and the entire world in general. I love this concept and I think people in our community should be less selfish about the tricks they have created. It’s easy to get offended. Personally speaking, I’d say that I’m rather flattered if somebody uses my own creation, Sven Atw, for example. When Yosuke was asked by Daniel Dennehy about what he thinks about the fact that so many people nowadays are using his creation, he said that he was honoured. I believe that every freestyler out there, deep inside their mind, knows whether they’ve taken a certain trick from somebody else or not, and they will never be fully satisfied with themselves or find inner peace if they pretend that they’ve come up with that certain tricks that somebody else initially invented.
Then again, I can comprehend why people want to point out that they have created a certain move (when somebody else uploads that trick to social media for example), but I think we should see it from a different perspective. We shouldn’t consider ourselves as victims of theft or plagiarism, quite the contrary. We should be proud that somebody else thought that our creation was worthy enough to be copied and redone! After all, when we innovate, we take something we love and we built on it. Nobody copies an ugly trick or samples a terrible piece of music. People take what they like and respect, because it’s something special, something that they think is unique and beautiful.
Of course, people have different motivations about why they practice football freestyle, some do it solely out of amusement and don’t have any specific goals, others do it to free their heads from an exhausting day at their job — and that’s completely fine. Stop being offended that people chose to practice our art form for different reasons and want to pursue different goals. Everyone who choses to be innovative in our culture, however, actively shapes the world of football freestyle as it is, and if that’s not something that tickles your mind and makes you create something that hasn’t been done before, I don’t know what does. With all the different social media platforms out there, it couldn’t be easier to get inspired and take ideas from other people. From time to time, take a step back, remember where different tricks came from and ask yourself if they are really yours — and if that’s not the case, give credit where credit is due.
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