“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent.”
Is the internet killing off originality? There’s a fine line between stealing and gaining inspiration, and sometimes it seems as though the internet really treads on this line. For example, the other night I stumbled across something called “content spinning”. Someone on the Twitterverse had touted about a supposed new service that could increase a business’s profits and save it plenty of time. Curious, I Googled what “spinning” meant, and I was shocked!
Content spinning is a content rewriter program that purports to be able to transform an existing article “with a click of a button”. These programs claim that they produce completely legible, grammatically correct syntax to generate a brand new article that you can claim as your own.
First of all, insult to writers, much? It’s a universal fact that if you want to be successful, you need to put in work. Using a content spinner is essentially stealing from other writers; you are manipulating material that is not yours, which is legally copyright infringement. Second, if you want to kill off your credibility as a business, by all means go ahead and spin content. And third, if you really care about your business at all, know that search engines do have sophisticated algorithms that will pick up on spam content, and will consequently de-index your website if they pick up on it (which they will!).
I don’t have to demo a content spinner to know that its results will yield complete gibberish. If you ask me, using a content spinner is just as bad as hiring an overseas “copywriter” in India for $5. Be original—write your own material! Or at least hire a professional to do it.
