And the only thing they can’t bury is your brain.
Chasing The End Of The Rainbow
You did the research. Borrowed a framework from a book you read. Pulled a few data points from the internet. It became your content pillar.
It gained traction — because the content genuinely helped people. You enjoyed the spike in views. People on the internet started following you for your sharp, educational takes.
Then reality hits.
Someone on the other end of the timeline starts posting the same kind of content. Sounds like you. Framework looks familiar, but not quite recognizable as yours anymore. Your bubble bursts.
Yes — this is the internet, baby. The nightmare you wake up to, after the dream where you thought your content and ideas were original enough that nobody could copy them. Where you thought your brand was strong enough to stand against the wave of copycats.
This happened to me too. In 2021, a Facebook post I wrote went viral. It landed me a client. And for a moment, I thought I’d found the formula.
So I did what everyone does when something works. I tried to replicate it. Studied the format. Tried to reverse-engineer the feeling. Did the carousels when everyone said carousels were the answer.
And I chased. And chased. And chased.
You know the feeling of chasing the end of the rainbow? You can see the colours. You know it’s there. But no matter how fast you run, you never reach it. The end keeps moving. Always visible. Always just beyond.
That’s what chasing virality feels like from the inside. Draining. Disorienting. And quietly humiliating — because you can see other people seemingly reaching it, which makes you run faster.
Until one day you stop. And you look around. And you realise — nobody ever reached it. They just looked like they did from a distance.
The Graveyard Nobody Talks About
Spend enough time on any social platform and you start seeing the pattern.
Someone posts something that connects. It spreads. The numbers climb.
Then — within days — you see it again. Same structure. Same hook. Different account. Different face. Same post.
Then again. And again. Until the original is buried under a thousand copies that all look identical.
The internet doesn’t preserve ideas. It recycles them until they’re unrecognisable. Until the original signal is completely lost in the noise of its own copies.
That’s the graveyard. Not where ideas go to rest. Where they go to be stripped, duplicated, and forgotten — usually within the same news cycle.
I saw someone ranting about this recently — content copied within hours of posting, word for word, format for format. His frustration was real. But the frustration itself is proof of how common this graveyard actually is. It’s not a rare betrayal. It’s the default weather of the internet.
Why The Platforms Finally Admitted It
Here’s what’s interesting.
Instagram now actively penalizes reposted content and rewards original creators. Accounts posting 10 or more reposts within 30 days get excluded from all recommendations entirely — Explore, Reels tab, Suggested Posts.
Aggregator accounts saw 60-80% reach drops after this change, while original creators saw 40-60% reach increases.
And on December 31, 2025, Meta’s head of Instagram announced the platform would prioritize “raw, real human content” over AI-generated material throughout 2026.
The platforms themselves are now admitting what anyone paying attention already knew: the copying got so bad it broke the feed.
This isn’t a moral statement about originality. It’s a distribution policy. Instagram is saying it wants to reward creators who make something of their own, give smaller accounts a fairer shot at discovery, and reduce recommendation space for accounts that mainly recycle other people’s posts.
The internet built the graveyard. Now it’s trying to build a fence around it.
What The Dopamine Was Actually Doing
Here’s my hypothesis — purely from observation, not research.
Every social platform rewards new users with early engagement. High views. Likes that come easily. The first post that lands.
It’s a gateway drug. Designed to make you feel like you’ve found the formula, so you stay. So you post again. So you chase the next hit.
And when the formula stops working — which it always does — you don’t question the formula. You look for a better version of it. You scroll. You find something that’s working for someone else. You copy it.
And the cycle continues. The platform wins. Your original thinking loses.
What They Can Never Copy
Here’s the thing about the graveyard: they can copy your format. Your hook. Your structure. Your posting time.
They cannot copy your brain.
They cannot copy the 2021 Facebook post that came from my specific observation at my specific moment in my specific life.
They cannot copy 30 years of pattern recognition brought into a single sentence.
They cannot copy the night I stood in a record store in Felda, looking at a Metallica album I couldn’t afford, and felt something shift inside me.
They can copy one post. Maybe two. But a body of work — a library of thought accumulated over years, written from the inside out — that cannot be copied. Because to copy it completely, they’d have to become you.
And they can’t.
This Is Why The Library Matters
Not as a content strategy. Not as a growth hack. Not as a way to beat the algorithm.
As the only honest answer to a graveyard.
While everyone else is recycling, you’re building.
While everyone else is chasing the end of the rainbow, you’re staying exactly where you are, writing what you actually think, for the person who will stumble upon it five years from now and feel completely seen.
That’s not virality.
That’s permanence.
And permanence is the only thing the graveyard can’t touch.
Clarity is the most underrated business investment. Briefings on human experience, UX, and business psychology — drawn from 30 years across airlines, banking, design, and the field.
— Lokman S.