EVERYTHING IS COPY but Maalvika's work ain't worth copying

Week 30: Experimenting with Absurdism

Two things happened recently that brought about this conclusion:

1. The Maalvika Scandal

2. I read a copywriting book.

So naturally, I’m seeing the word “copy” everywhere. It’s true - copy is everywhere.

Are there even any original ideas left? I don’t want to get into an ontological debate here (copy doesn’t do ontology), but I suspect there are very few universals:

We’re not talking absolutes… universal-ish - it’s a spectrum

The universals that exist get replicated with tiny variations - like flair in the movie Office Space.

Self-expression is particular, but the need for self-expression is universal

This is nothing new. Everything has always been “copy”. DNA is literally the same 4 nucleotides in a different orders. The Iliad was passed down for millennia to show humans what virtue looks like. King James’ Bible-copy scaled Christianity at the dawn of the printing press. And the Kardashians stay collecting royalties on products that promise to carbon copy their asses.

Every sUcCesSfUL piece of media that you consume is copywritten - intentionally or otherwise. But why do we instinctively reject so much copy?

Because while everything is copy, not everything is worth copying.

Here’s an example. Scroll across the popular intellectual internet spaces and you’re likely to run across Maalvicka, a cutesy brown girl with shellac’d nails and lukewarm takes that go down a little too easy. If you’ve been in academia - or even Substackademia - for more than a minute, her takes sound oddly familiar.

In the TikTok I refuse to link above, Maalvika claims to have figured out the perfect metaphor for…like research:

All human knowledge is contained in… like, a circle. As you learn to read and write, you kinda like fill in a dot. High school makes the dot - like bigger Getting a Ph.D creates new knowledge, poking out a tiny dent in the massive circle’s edge.

Imagine him saying “BRUH”

It’s a blatant copy-paste of Matt Might’s semi-famous graphic. If you earned a Ph.D in the last decade or so, you’ve seen it. Several other writers have accused Maalvika of lifting their work word-for-word, but Substackers and TikTokers are shocked. How could one of Substack’s leading writers be lifting entire essays?

Simple. Everything is copy. We’re so used to it, we barely notice.

Maalvika packages other people’s good ideas in a COPYWRITTEN format. She’s visually appealing, fits a popular aesthetic, and makes things helpful and easy to digest. She’s harnessed the Kardashians’ secret:

Everything is copy, and some things are actually worth copying.

There’s still a lot of ass out there now, so the hard part is knowing which ass to copy. Seneca wrote about this. Not asses, but he said you’ll be able to tell the real philosophers from the fake “because the thighs don’t match”. Thighs being actions… their words don’t match their deeds. Sorry, I just couldn’t get that song out of my head. Having a teenager keeps me immersed in pop culture. But it also helps me re-learn things. My kid recently started back-to-school, reviving our tradition of reading The Daily Stoic in the car. Two days ago, as I’m struggling with this very issue, she read this passage:

Seneca has a word for fake asses like Maalvika, “squatters”. He says:

Certain of them come to hear and not to learn, just as we are attracted to the theatre to satisfy the pleasures of the ear, whether by a speech, or by a song, or by a play. This class… constitutes a large part of the listeners,—who regard the philosopher’s lecture-room merely as a sort of lounging-place for their leisure.

They do not set about to lay aside any faults there, or to receive a rule of life, by which they may test their characters; they merely wish to enjoy to the full the delights of the ear. And yet some arrive even with notebooks, not to take down the matter, but only the words,^[4] that they may presently repeat them to others with as little profit to these as they themselves received when they heard them. ^7.

So, Maalvika is doing a Ph.D on AI at Northwesten. Don’t get me started - I suspect this story will get darker. For now, I doubt her work is that of a good philosopher. More that of a performer - one working for the CIA on the downfall of man for her own gain.

If Maalvika has any universal ideas, I doubt they’re worth copying because her actions don’t match her words. She says a Ph.D should make a dent in the circle of human knowledge, but her work just makes duplicates in the center. She’s a copyist, not a philosopher or a scientist.

Have you not noticed how the theatre re-echoes whenever any words are spoken whose truth we appreciate generally and confirm unanimously?

Why yes, Seneca, I have. And that’s why I try to write about universal (original) ideas and match my actions with my words. The action of a good philosopher bounces back through copy, echoing in eternity, like Kim K’s ass before she hit copy and paste.

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I had fun writing this. Next week, I’ll say more about detecting copy and maybe even making it. Because if you’re gonna have good ideas, might as well figure out how to print them on stickers and slap them on street signs.

What do you think about the universal/particular distinction? Do you have any universal ideas?