Some Days, You’re Just a Hopeless, Walking Cliché
And it ain't always a bad thing
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It all started with the sound of a typewriter.
The onomatopoetic click of metal, as letters pressed upon paper. Of course, this was 1825 France, so the sound was not “click”, but “cliché”…
Fingers tapped upon keys in busy printing press rooms, like a room full of applause. Devoid of auto-correct, or any kind of intelligent aid to speed up the writing process, writers relied on the machine’s stereotypes: repeated images, words, or phrases that were cast on a steel iron plate.
And with one “cliché”, the word bled its ink onto the metal and locked itself on the paper.
Over, and over again.
As time went by, these expressions and ideas were worn-out onto pages, mechanically and without any sense of variety. Naturally, they became repetitive to the point of sheer dullness. There was nothing new there; no fresh or insightful way of making a point.
Why this tangent on typewriters and 19th-century France?
Because often enough, after a spurt of innovation and novelty, I return to feeling like a helpless, walking cliché.
Anytime anything is exhausted and over-used, it becomes something that we want to avoid. Just like the cliché says, “too much of a good thing can be bad”, but also, relying on only one way of seeing or wording an idea can also be bad.
In French, “cliché” actually means stereotype. More specifically, it is the past participle of the verb “clicher”, which means “to produce or print in stereotype”.
Much like typewriters, stereotypes reproduce automated ideas. There is no reflection involved, they just rely on fixed images and patterns that have already been made from generalizations. Their purpose is functionality, as they simplify and organize our complex world into cognitive schemas, which allow us to process information much more efficiently.
Imagine that every time you saw a dog, you had to construct a notion of what a dog was. Your processing panel would be constantly overloaded. Think of it like being a newborn all the time.
The risk with these schemas that we make, however, is oversimplification, saturation (a.k.a creative ruts), and a lack of openness to new information.
Nothing new here, I’m bored.
The tragedy (and salvation) of repetition is that it numbs the mind. What once felt exciting becomes elevator music.
You stop listening. You scroll. You yawn, cringe, eye roll, or show disdain on your face.
We hear all sorts of proverbs and universal sayings or truths as we grow up. They are part of our socialization and blend into our shared learnings. We hear them in the expressions our grandparents use, and the plays on words in pop culture.
They can come up in writing and language, but they can also be used to describe things that appear to happen time and time again like the way characters end up together in movies or their confessions of undying love for each other, which you never saw coming…
Yet still, clichés are usually taught as things we should avoid, so as not to sound redundant. When we work as creatives, we’re often warned that if we aren’t saying anything new, nobody is going to care.
It’s been heard before. Be new. Be different.
Be original.
Our obsession with being original
For some reason, we act like originality is the final destination, and saying something that’s already been said means we’ve failed as a creator. Whatever creator means at this point.
And God forbid you use a cliché. Or twenty. Then you're just lazy, uncreative, hiding behind the divine tapestries of ChatGPT, and worst of all... basic. In a world full of copy-pasted personas disguised as personalities, sounding like a walking Pinterest board or LinkedIn ad is a cardinal sin.
The irony is beyond me.
In the Western world, or more individualist cultures, we’re practically bottle-fed the idea that being seen as “special” is the whole point of being alive. We resent the idea of not being seen or heard or valued for whatever it is we want to say. Even if we have nothing interesting to contribute.
So naturally, anything remotely derivative makes us spiral into an existential crisis. We don’t just want to stand out—we want to stand out while fitting in, and somehow seem effortlessly authentic while doing it.
Of course, as paradoxes have it, sometimes, being unoriginal is kind of the point. It’s a reminder that we’re made from the same ethereal templates and recycled emotions. That we all cry during the same sad movie, even though it’s predictable and we’ve seen it before.
Commonality is unavoidable
Is it even possible to live a cliché-free existence? I argue that it is not. Our very nature as humans directs us towards living in communities. We are grounded by our shared existence and a sense of belonging to others with whom we can relate.
Without commonalities and predictability, we would be in a constant state of vigilance because everything would be uncertain. And as much as we enjoy novelty, we also enjoy a sense of underlying control.
“I know this sounds cliché, but…”
We are even cliché in the way we avoid clichés. Why do we feel the need to excuse or justify ourselves when we say something that has already been said? Or when we feel something that has already been felt? We all do it at some point or another. We might as well embrace it.
“I know it’s a cliché, but it’s true!”
Just because an idea is overused, doesn’t make it untrue. Actually, the fact that it is so often resorted to may even provide evidence for its veracity. So instead of denying our shared experiences, why don’t we find strength in our commonality?
Is there not after all some comfort to be found in that which is banal, predictable, and familiar?
Fearing unoriginality isn’t necessary
Maybe we shouldn’t be avoiding and repelling that which brings us together.
Even if standing out is more interesting, fearing unoriginality isn't necessary. We are already original by default in that there is only one of each of us.
But still, we stem from the same root.
So how original can we be, when we are all living the human experience?