DB

There’s a thing in social media and in other places–there is a culture of not quoting other people. I grew up with a wonderful education system that is for reference, the United States public education system in the lovely state of Hawaii. Which means a lot of things, as a public school in Hawaii is not so hot. Despite not having what is considered by rubrics and benchmarks as a quality education, I’ve learned in my science classes and in my English classes that it is good to tell people where you get your ideas from.

It’s a good idea that if you have an idea that is not original, you should reference that and let people know where you got it. I think this is in the context of a school which is preparing most people for college education; citations are very important in academia. It is valuable, it is encouraged.

It is considered to be noble. It is seen in journalism. Reporters who would like to retain any amount of credibility will cite their sources. On an online news page, this is done usually by providing hyperlinks to any relevant sources, or by mentioning idea originators by name. Despite this reach for legitimacy, people like to plagiarize in the Internet age because it’s so easy to get away with it.

When people are reading information, they don’t necessarily fact check everything that they read, watch, or see. I don’t know why this is–perhaps because it would be slow and you would have to put some effort to do so? It’s a strange thing. People will take ideas from someone else, present them as their own on their own platform, and they will get away with it without consequence. You’ll see it in YouTube videos, on the Twitterverse, and across blogs and webpages. You see it in the tabletop RPG space.

There are people who give out tips about running or playing games–in this case, TTRPGs. I would like to think that they do not quote people because they don’t remember where they got their ideas from. It happens. Someone will be inspired, their subconscious will dig into their soup of ideas, and sometimes it might just pull out a completely complete novel idea–of someone else’s origin. Perhaps it’s just because of negligence, or perhaps because they truly don’t remember. I do hope that people are not claiming ignorance when they truly know where they’re getting their sauce.

Not having sources is just a bit of a burn, as I do like having footnotes to refer to. I enjoy finding additional reading. Like, if there is a solid idea that is quoted in a book that I think is really cool, I love being able to look at where that quip was pulled from later in the future to see what else is there for me to learn. I enjoy learning, so I would love if people just start to quote each other or just start to do it more often.

Speaking of social media, there’s a nice thing that TikTok does. There is a thing where you can collaborate with other people. You can make videos that directly reference and incorporate their videos and it does a split screen sort of thing. I believe you can go to the source video’s channel, as it is watermarked on a bottom corner of that portion of the video. So, you can go to the source channel and see who originally made the video. And I think that having the place where you read and write, the same place where you watch and edit, in the same place is such a wonderful thing and allows people to easily quote others.

And it’s not just social media where referencing others is a tradition. In the world of jazz and hip hop, you reference people all the time to give them respect. Hip hop and rap have a history of sampling music from other artists and each other. A Tribe Called Quest was famous for that. And not just hip hop, but its earlier roots as well. Jazz. And if we’re gonna talk jazz samples, we have to talk about The Jazz Sample. The epitome of jazz memes. The Lick.

“The Lick” is a meme in jazz which is constantly quoted and played by musicians. It became so prevalent that everyone knew what it was, and it was open for anyone to quote. Huh. Maybe there’s something to this meme culture, and maybe there are some things that you can quote. Maybe there are things that are so prevalent that you don’t have to say who you got it from. It is part of the zeitgeist. Everyone knows it.

If quoting others was easy, and also a part of the creation process, we would do it more. And maybe we can get better at it. Next time, if you’re inspired by an idea, bookmark it and file it away for later in an organized space like a playlist, or a bookmark folder. Maybe you’ll remember to reference it and know where to search. Maybe you won’t. But hey, you tried, and that’s what matters to me.