Copy-paste

31/03/2023 Nilson Lattari

Sometimes, this strategy helps us or makes us stupid people. One day, I was walking on a street and passed in front of a library, it reminded me of my school time and my schoolwork. I had to go to one of them to search for topics I needed to develop. And I lost time reading and checking books, trying to find my subjects in them. Normally, we had information from other older classmates about books and chapters, and then we found the subjects explained in detail. For a long time, I did it, and nowadays I make connections between my time and this expression: copy-paste.
Copy-paste has become the new way to study and search. Is this habit, laziness, or negligence?
Once, I decided no longer to follow this method and tried to search for my questions on my own. I had a test at my University and I wanted to make a difference. I searched for books at the library and I found a thesis written years ago, developing my subject. It was a very interesting and intriguing way to write about my topic.
No surprise I got the maximum score and congratulations from my teacher. Ok, I did a copy-paste, but I made a difference, without tricks, searching for books. And the difference was that I achieved my goal using an old-fashioned way.
Nowadays, we have this behaviour of producing repetitions, basically lessons released by Influencers. Copy-paste is not only for producing articles. But is it possible to repeat formulas to make us richer, to study better, to sleep better, and the best way to achieve our goals? Then, copy-paste is a habit that turns us into robots that don’t think on our own.
We are abandoning our customs of reading original texts of authors to follow the explanations forged by others. If we can read or listen to original information, that’s the best way to study and learn. We will conclude new reflections based on original information and we will understand questions on our own.
I have never imagined performing a task copying, ipsis litteris, tricks from the Internet. But students practise this action of copy-paste, letter by letter.
In my case, when I copied that forgotten thesis in the library, it would not be easy for someone to find it amid many books. On the Internet, the easier way is only a click on a keyboard, and our tasks are over, but at the same time, it’s easier to check it as well.
The best lesson given by the Internet is that originality can be lost, and our sense of reflection as well, because many people don’t care about this habit: they fill in the blanks on Google to find their subjects, and, after that, they copy and paste.
This habit, at the same time, makes us stupid people because we don’t question anything, and we are not being questioned either. We make our tasks without effort, and we imagine that we are gaining more culture.
I stayed there looking at that library, and I thought about how much information there is, and it won’t be accessed. Perhaps a stubborn student or a curious person, one day, decides to break this modern copy-paste and doesn’t want to repeat old new habits and make a difference. This habit, maybe, can seduce someone to create a new and fantastic idea to be copied and pasted on the Internet. Or this idea can be forgotten among books in a library to be accessed by other students wanting to make a difference.