When everyone is special, no one is.

Or so begins the claim that Jacoub Bondre makes over at Big Orange Slide in a post titled You Are Not Digital. The nutshell summary: web development and design have become so commonplace that everyone is essentially obsolete unless they continue to innovate constantly.

Now, I agree with his call-to-action that everyone in the web industry needs to continue innovating and coming up with new, clever, creative ways of doing good work. You’d be daft to disagree with that sort of sentiment. However, some of the arguments made in support of that statement are a bit faulty at best, or deliberately provoking at worst.

Knowing the ins and outs of Facebook is common knowledge for 14-year-olds. Building, skinning, and maintaining CMS systems (like WordPress) is something commonly done by young mothers.

Um, what? Sure, 14-year-olds probably do have a pretty good knowledge of Facebook compared to other age cohorts (I can’t believe I actually used the word “cohorts” in a serious sentence. Damn you, college education!) but to claim that building and maintaining content management systems is something “commonly done by young mothers” is a bit of a bold claim.

Not to say that there aren’t young mothers who do such things. It’s almost guaranteed that there are some. But “commonly done”? Really? That’s the basis of your claim that the rest of us aren’t innovating fast enough?

Yes, go forth and innovate. Please. The industry will die pretty quickly if we don’t. But don’t do it because you’re afraid of young mothers building their own CMS. Do it because you care about the web.