Why Trying to Differentiate Makes You More Alike

Introduction: Why Differentiation Does Not Take

How to differentiate, and how to find your distinctive strength, are already well documented. What this article takes up is why that differentiation does not take as intended. Why does publishing in a given field become harder to tell apart with each passing year?

Methods are discussed endlessly, and one question is rarely raised: whether the act of trying to differentiate is itself producing the uniformity.

Here is the conclusion first. Optimise against the same criterion and, however different the starting points, the exits converge on one. Differentiation fails not because you are doing it badly but because everyone is holding the same ruler.

Optimisation Brings Uniformity, Not Differentiation

Start with what actually happens.

At first you write what you genuinely want to convey. But each time you publish, a number comes back. Naturally you begin reviewing which posts drew response. At a glance this is entirely sound. Look at the response, apply what worked — the improvement cycle recommended in every field.

So you analyse the angles that performed and apply them next time. A flat opening statement performs. An unexpected framing lifts reach. Touching the dissatisfactions readers carry increases comments. Once the winning patterns come into view, of course you want to use them again. And the response does steady.

Then one day you reread your own work and notice something odd. Your posts have become difficult to tell apart from those of everyone else publishing in the same field. The same angles. The same phrasings. The same way of framing questions. What was supposed to be writing only you could produce has become, without your noticing, a reproduction of “the format that performs in this field”, made jointly with every other publisher.

Here is the paradox that gets overlooked. Optimisation brings uniformity, not differentiation.

Why the Exits Converge

The reason is simple. The question what gets a response has broadly common answers.

The formats that catch human attention — provoke strong feeling, offer surprise, touch anxiety or grievance — end up similar whoever applies them. So the more diligently each person optimises, the more everyone converges on the same small set of winning patterns.

Line up several pieces of publishing in one field and the convergence is immediately visible. The opening line is, as if stamped, a flat assertion, a number-driven alarm, or an actually, it turns out… reveal. The middle carries bullet points and an appeal to the reader’s anxiety. The close carries a prompt to act. Hide the names and it is nearly impossible to say which piece belongs to whom.

They were not imitating one another. Each optimised independently, in their own place, for what drew response. The result is that without conferring, everyone arrived at the same shape.

This is not what happens when people without individuality gather. Optimise against the same criterion and, however different the starting points, the exits converge on one — that is a structural property of optimisation itself.

Which is what makes it difficult. The more diligently, sincerely and skilfully you optimise, the more you stop being yourself and approach the common mould.

A Double Blow

For a writer this lands twice.

First, what only you could write disappears. You optimised in order to differentiate, and the source of differentiation is what was lost.

Second, what you get in exchange is not “a strong differentiated writer” but “one of countless similar writers, indistinguishable from the rest”. The more optimisation accumulates, the more you lose any reason it has to be you.

Differentiating a worldview and optimising for response do not face the same direction. They face opposite ones. The first deepens an origin unlike anyone else’s; the second moves towards a common format that performs for anyone. Stay faithful to optimisation and differentiation recedes.

The Brief Called “Broad Appeal”

This structure is not confined to publishing. In creative work it appears in an older form.

Suppose a music brief reads: bright, upbeat, broadly appealing background music. Technically it can be met. Choose a bright key, assemble an agreeable progression, round off every corner so nothing catches any ear. The more thoroughly you do it, the more satisfied the client and the better the reception.

But the word broad is the trap. The “broad” of a brief is not anyone in particular. It is an averaged listener with no face, no name, no life, abstracted on the sole condition of not sticking out and not catching.

And approaching an average means, in practice, shaving off whatever protrudes. The one note that might reach deep into someone’s chest is the note that catches someone else. So the notes with a chance of landing are the first to be rounded away. To optimise for everyone is to make something that touches no one strongly.

The “format that performs” in publishing has the same structure. Moving towards the shape that reaches the largest number is traded against the shape that reaches someone most deeply.

One difference is worth naming. A music brief is visible. You can recognise it as an external demand and find a foothold for resistance. Publishing has no visible brief. No one tells you what to write. And because no one commanded it, people experience the movement as their own choice. So no resistance forms — there is no one to resist.

Technique Will Not Get You Out

The way out of this structure, then, is not to sharpen your differentiation technique.

The sharper the technique, the better you conform to the same criterion. Studying methodologies of differentiation in pursuit of singularity, in a place where everyone is studying the same methodologies, accelerates the convergence.

The way out opens only when you move to a place where the criterion itself is different. On a path that reaches readers directly — where arrival is not decided by the volume of response — the reason to bend towards a shared winning pattern structurally disappears.

Only there does writing from a worldview become possible. A way of seeing the world and an ordering of what matters cannot be shared as a winning pattern. Attempt to imitate them and at the moment of imitation they become borrowed. So someone writing from a worldview is, by definition, irreplaceable.

One qualification. Singularity alone is not value. On borrowed ground, however singular the work, it is buried in a competition that amplifies uniform formats — singularity is a disadvantage there. It converts into value when you stand on a path where readers who already resonate are connected to you directly.

Conclusion: Change the Ruler or the Exit Stays the Same

That differentiation makes you more alike is not a sign that your distinctiveness is insufficient. It is that you are optimising against a ruler everyone else is being measured by, in a place where everyone is measured by it.

And the convergence runs deepest in those who work at it most seriously. The better you fit, the closer you come to the shape you fitted.

The question is not how do I differentiate but whose ruler am I being measured by?

The whole picture is gathered in why blogging longer leaves less of your own voice. On where that ruler comes from, see whose objective function is engagement?; on what it means to fit yourself to it, the more you master the algorithm, the more it corrects you.

References

Academic papers and theory

• Simon, H. A. “Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World” in Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest (1971) Johns Hopkins University Press, pp. 37–72
• Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. “A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation” Psychological Bulletin, 125(6) (1999)

Books

• Wu, T. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads (2016) Knopf