(March 2, 2005) — It was another dreary day at school, and I was exercising my freedoms as a social butterfly by fluttering from one clique of robots to another. Suddenly, my vision was eclipsed by a swarm of purposefully sinister-looking androids, all decorated in similar fashion – lots of black clothing, sneakers with writing on them and more metal than what you see in a Pittsburg steel factory. I cringed in utter terror, turned to the totem pole next to me and pondered, “Was there ever a time when it was possible to leave the house without the fear of looking different gnawing at your frontal lobes?” Obviously, what with my buddy being a totem pole and all, the question was given no choice but to be deemed rhetorical. The reality of it all is that no matter how hard we try to be ourselves, there’s always going to be another little person out there who looks and thinks the same way that we do. Oscar Wilde once said, “Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” The tendency to strive for uniqueness has become popular. Everyone shops at the same stores, looking for merchandise to make them look different. And yet they pretend to not see the thousands of others buying replicas of what they just purchased. Stores like Urban Outfitters and Hot Topic attempt to provide our youth with creative solutions to what is sold in department stores. But what is not realized is that the same thing happens in the end, for mass-production gives people no choice but to look the same. Our generation is suffering the greatest trickery of all: we live in a time where the only thing we can rely on for distinction is our minds and level intellect. For after all, nobody pays attention to that!