Susan's Place Transgender Resources

The web is a terrifying place sometimes...

Think you've come up with a great idea? Google it, and there are a hundred versions of your idea, already done, better, faster, more creative. It's depressing and disarming...

Got a good bandname? think again, it's probably taken! I've been searching for a name for my band since 3 years, and it's terrible... When you think you're smart, and grab a greek, latin, or any weird ancient language dictionary and think you've found something unique, you're wrong. It's taken. 100% sure. Even if you reverse it, and swap letters and then translate it into Swahili, It's taken. Arrrgh!

As a joke, a moment ago I just sang some random words and strung them together into: "Hey, Mr. Rainbow" and guess what, I did a google search for it and it's already sung by two girls... moreover, it sounds exactly (https://soundcloud.com/nayla-gomes-1/hey-mr-rainbow) as I sang it as a joke.  :o the web is terrifying...

Too many people... that all have similar ideas. It's really hard to be unique...

Quotevemödalen (http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/59306080288/vem%C3%B6dalen)

n. the frustration of photographing something amazing when thousands of identical photos already exist—the same sunset, the same waterfall, the same curve of a hip, the same closeup of an eye—which can turn a unique subject into something hollow and pulpy and cheap, like a mass-produced piece of furniture you happen to have assembled yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ftDjebw8aA

I've run into many of the same problems you've mentioned. Instead of trying to be unique I often settle for being uncommon. Semira is not unique, but in the US it is uncommon, and that is good enough for me. And in today's age, uncommon is the new unique!

Ha this made me think of my username. I thought of "significantlysilent" as my username for stuff back in middle school, shortened it to "sigsi" a few years ago. Type either of those names into google, 10+ pages worth of not my stuff. Scary. :o

And to an extent, although everything can be practically the same, it is probably in some way different. Be it the angle or coloring of something, it's different but yet all the same. At least that is my perspective from art classes :P

Nothing's new under the sun...

Forget about trying to come up with a name nobody's ever heard of.

But if you were writing a story or something it's not difficult to come up with a collection of names, ideas or concepts when put together than nobody has imitated too closely. Although as they say there's only really 7 types of stories in the mainstream.

I came up with a band name back in the 90's. As far as I can tell, no one else has used it. To be honest, it was a slight rip off of an old film. My band mates went with it and I haven't seen it taken anywhere else. "Shocking mr. Pilgrim."
The movie was "the shocking Mrs pilgrim"
Nobody in the band knew of the original title and I never saw a reason to tell them.

As a writer I've had to consistently check the web to make sure I'm not taking any names of bands/tv shows/etc that already exist. It gets tiresome after awhile.

It's almost impossible to play original music anymore. Every time I come up with a cool progression, it seems that after a few minutes, I realize what song it sounds like. And with the internet, there is an infinite amount of similar things.
To be original is truly rare.

This is a fascinating post and I've never had this fear. If you think about the things that have been repeated before they were repeated someone originally thought of them and we may never know where they originated, but when whatever that was first started it was new and unique. So just because most things have been done/said before doesn't mean there will never be anything new known to mankind.

Life does have patterns of things that repeat themselves and sometimes it can be a comfort and way of figuring things out but it's hard for me to believe there will never be any new patterns made.

Increase the complexity and you'll have a better chance at coming up with something unique. Using the band name example, sure you could look for one particular word for a band and come up with all the bands that already use it. Every band out there could have already exhausted the English dictionary. But start adding words together and you'll have a much better chance at coming up with something unique and available.

I often think things are unique and new like music or TV shows, or even games,  until someone shows me it's unoriginal and derivative.

Try those username generators where you type several words you like and it shows you usernames with the words you chose in different order. I always liked playing with those.

Quote from: Cin on July 03, 2016, 04:54:48 PM
I often think things are unique and new like music or TV shows, or even games,  until someone shows me it's unoriginal and derivative.

I like to think about how new ideas stem from old ones and build on each other.

It's similar to gmail or twitter... try to think of a new username. It's as easy as rocket science. With gmail, sometimes I think: it's impossible that someone already has this username, truly impossible, but then you realize that about half the planet owns an account. Google said that it has 1 billion active users on gmail. Those numbers are impossible to imagine for me...