“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

– Oscar Wilde

Since I can remember, I’ve always loved “collecting” quotes. If I was reading a particular passage in a book and it made me feel a certain way or consider something from a different perspective, or just sounded pretty cool, I’d write it down in a notebook. There wasn’t really any reason to save them; it was just my own personal memento for keepsakes…and then the internet, and in particular Facebook, ruined everything.

I hate the fact that quotes have now become some sort of motivational, feel good bullshit. Just take a sprinkle of happiness, add some pretty flowers, and write something that makes even a poodle want to throw up and now you have the perfect quote to post on your wall. Another popular one seems to be the whole “fall in love with yourself”…no, no, no, no, no. Please don’t. This sounds so terrible to me. I love me so now you should too is hardly a ringing endorsement to anyone’s ears. This kind of thinking leads to crying and shit smearing (I’ll explain later) when no one loves you or your stupid fucking quote.

I’ve also lost track of the number of times I’ve seen,

“But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”

Oh yeah, really? What exactly is the definition of worst here? If it’s running around the house after me with a knife because I ate the last yogurt, or crying and smearing shit on the walls because I said your left ankle looked kind of fat, I’m not sure there is a “best” good enough to convince me handling your worst is a good idea. That quote also neatly ties in with another reason why I hate what the internet did to quotes. It’s often attributed to Marilyn Monroe, except there’s no source to say this is actually true. That’s the problem when people don’t find the quotes for themselves, there’s no way to know who said it, if they said it, and if they said exactly that. For instance, my favourite quote is “I gasp, and all the muscles deep in my belly clench. My inner goddess is doing the dance of the seven veils.” which comes from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It’s when Harry finds out he’s been chosen for the Gryffindor house. Honestly. I swear.

So really what we’re left with is everyone trying to bask in the glory of a cleverly crafted piece of writing, hoping that our reposts creates the illusion that we possess even a glimmer of the wisdom shown by the original author. I don’t see why we can’t take Oscar Wilde’s advice of “…Be yourself; everyone else is already t….” wait what? What do you mean he never actually said that? Oh internet, you motherfu-

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