"If you're gonna be original, you can count on being copied"

Porter's piece takes a look at how there are no original ideas or creations, especially in the arts.  All pieces of artwork and literature have been influenced in some way that had previously been created or written.

"Texts not only refer to but in fact contain other texts."

For a moment, I thought about disagreeing with this statement because Creative writing is not influenced by any other texts, but then I had to stop myself.  Everything is influenced by something, or else how would the thought have come into existence in the first place.

The idea of originality, or the perception of originality, is created when someone masterfully (or onlookers don't look too closely) revise a piece of information or quote and conform it to fit whatever context they need. Just like the example of the boy and his dog in the Pepsi commercial, they are in a desolate area (with tumbleweeds rolling by, of course) and out of nowhere appears a spaceship.  Like Porter explains, all of the visuals had been seen separately, but never within the same context, making a *new* and *original* commercial setting.