[laybak]

Author here. Wow this got a lot more attention than I had expected. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts, including critical ones.

The point about not being superficial/artificial and instead "just being yourself" sounds fair. To clarify, the copying/imitating I was referring to was much closer to the "imitate, then innovate" sense. That is, even if you make the best attempt to copy someone you admire, you end up with a mutated copy that is uniquely yours (because of your biases and life experience).

And to the point about it being shallow and simplistic — I agree, and the brevity was intentional. I treat this a mental model that is not universally correct, but is sometimes useful. To make sense of the world, I would use an ensemble of these models.

And I love the quotes in the comments!

[tonymet]

who is yourself ? are you much more than amalgamation of those around you ?