They say that lightning doesn't strike twice in the same spot...that may not be completely accurate.
I like to play with Photoshop, an while I am no expert, I
am creative and imaginative.
One late night back in October 2010, I was sitting around, slightly bored, when I decided to go figure out how to use my new Photoshop softeare.
I found the graphic online, and a word popped into my mind...looking over the Obama cabinet, all I could see was inept, mediocre people in charge of our nation. Theirs wasn't a democracy, as they so often liked to say, their was an...I needed a word, a word...an “ineptocracy”!
I set off to find out if such a word existed, thinking that I had coined a new term but alas, the word already existed, listed in The Urban Dictionary:
ineptocracy
A system of government by the incompetent.
South Africa under the ANC is an example of an ineptocracy.
That definition SUCKED, so I decided to come up with my own, and came up with what you see in the poster above.
I put the poster up on facebook on November 1st, 2010, an sent it out to a few friends and acquaintances. Two people commented on it in fb.
I forgot about it, except on that rare occasion when someone would ask them if they could use it.
One day, some political radio host with a facebook page (Paula Priesse) puts up a poster titled “Ineptocracy”. Not the same picture I used, but the exact same definition.
I asked her where she got it, and she said “in an email” but she had changed the graphic for fears of copyright issues.
So I Googled the word to see if I could find out who was using my work,
AND IT WAS EVERYWHERE!
The Urban Dictionary had been expanded to include my definition. Syndicated columnist Andres Oppenheimer had <a href="
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/24/2710372/latin-americans-complain-of-ineptocracies.html'>used it in an OpEd[/url], so had
the Ron Paul campaign.
The definition was being used to sell t-shirts and coffee mugs online!All instances of the definition that I found online had ONE thing in common…they were all dated AFTER November 1st, 2010. Months after November 1st 2010 in fact.
Now, a poster that I had Oceander clean up for me, has come back to me as part of a viral email making its rounds.
Lightning does strike twice I guess.
I need to figure out how to turn this into money.