The Creative Abundance Paradox

We might be the luckiest generation of creators ever.

 Why?

 It is because we can wake up with an idea and, before breakfast, turn it into a video, a song, an illustration, a newsletter, or a film. And these days, we don’t need a studio. We don’t need a publisher. We don’t even need to know how to do half of it anymore.

 

 Because the tools are easily accessible, because the tools are everywhere. And somehow, we are all starting to look a little too similar, too familiar.

 Think about it.

 We open Instagram for “just five minutes” and see twenty creators. Different faces. Different lives. Different countries. But the same hook. The same jump cuts. The same music. The same “Tonight, V stepped into the crowd…” or how “Japan is turning footsteps into electricity….”

 

Never has a generation had access to as much creative freedom as ours But, then why does so much of what we make feel ubiquitously familiar? Abundance has a side effect nobody warned us about?

 

The more possibilities we have, the harder it becomes to know which one is ours.

 See, for most of history, creativity came with limitations. A photographer had a limited number of shots. A filmmaker had limited film. A writer had to convince someone to print the book. An artist had a canvas, some paint and whatever was in their head.

 

Today? We have 67 editing apps. We have every font ever made. We have millions of songs to put behind a video. We have AI that can give us ten ideas before we have finished thinking of one.

 

We have solved the problem of “I don’t have the tools.” But accidentally created a new one: “Which tool? Which idea? Which direction? Which version of us?”

Psychology has been warning us about this for years. Having choices is good, it makes you feel free. But having too many choices, at some point, stops feeling like freedom.

 

 Imagine being offered three ice cream flavours.

 

Three ice cream flavours.

Easy.

 Now imagine 37.

 

An array of ice creams.

 

Hmm… “What should I pick?” , “What if this is better than that?” , “Shall I try this new flavour or should i just stick to my regulars?”

 

You see, suddenly, choosing one means wondering about all the others we’re leaving behind. Here creativity has become a 37-flavour ice-cream shop. We stop following what pulls us in and start second guessing every possibility.

 

And when choosing becomes uncomfortable, we look for shortcuts. The easiest shortcut? : Look at what everyone else is doing.

 

 This is where things get interesting. Humans are exceptionally good at learning from other humans. We watch, copy, adapt and improve. It is one of the reasons culture exists at all. A child doesn’t need to be taught everything from scratch. They watch someone tie their shoelaces and eventually do it themselves.

 

The same thing happens with creativity. Except now to knot a tie, the demonstrations come from an Instagram reel, and there are 50,000 people demonstrating how to tie them.

 

Every day, we are shown what “good” looks like. And the problem with seeing so much good work is that it starts becoming our reference point.

 

We see a certain kind of photograph often enough, and suddenly that is what a “beautiful photograph” looks like. We hear the same kind of storytelling often enough, and suddenly that is what “good writing” sounds like. We watch enough successful creators and, without noticing, we begin borrowing their instincts.

 

                                                 Subconsciously borrowing social identity.

 

Not their ideas. But their sense of what an idea should look like. And then the algorithm enters. This is where creativity gets really messy and weird. Because the internet doesn’t just show us what people created. It shows us what worked. That distinction matters.

 

If we see a beautiful film, we might think, “I want to make something like that.” If we see that the film got 14 million views, our brain learns something else: “People like this.”

 

Now we aren’t just looking at someone’s creativity. We’re looking at a proven formula. And as humans, we love proven formulas. Because, why invent a new opening when we already know which opening gets people to stop scrolling? Why risk an idea when a trend is currently viral?

 

So we reproduce. Not because we are lazy. Not because we have run out of ideas. But because familiarity feels safe.

 

                                                    Being consumed by what we consume

 

Psychologists have known for a long time that repeated exposure can make things feel more familiar, and familiarity often makes them more appealing. Which creates a beautiful little trap: We consume what feels familiar. Creators notice what gets consumed. Creators make more of it. We consume that too.

 

And after a while, we call the resulting sameness a trend.

 

And I believe that’s why something can be completely new and still feel like something we’ve seen before. The person who made it may have never copied anyone. But they were surrounded by the same references as everyone else.

 

And perhaps that is the real problem with creative abundance. We thought giving everyone more tools would give us more voices. Instead, it may sometimes give millions of voices access to the same vocabulary. The same tools. The same references. The same metrics. The same examples of success.

 

So the challenge isn’t simply to create. We are ridiculously good at creating. The challenge is:

 

Can we still hear our own ideas after listening to everyone else’s?

 

Because our originality doesn’t begin with having a better tool. It begins with having enough distance from everything else to notice what we would have thought of without it.

~ Hriday Prasad

BJMC 1st Semester