Some questions I had before I revise:

1. What's wrong with "[writing] a bunch of stuff using words made out of his name"? Whether it was marketed by the "system" or generated by fans, "Linsanity" and generating words made out of his name were part of the phenomenon that was Jeremy Lin this past spring.

2. Why isn't an extended metaphor an idea? What is your definition of an idea? Surely you don't mean something completely original. A metaphor is a comparison, and I think making a comparison (however trite or extended) is still an idea. Please clarify. It's one thing to hate platitudes. It's another to say that platitudes are not ideas. In fact, in the very next paragraph you say that "the idea inside all the packaging is just platitudes." So is the problem that I don't have an (original) idea? Or that my idea, although extant, is just unoriginal (trite)? Those are two very separate things, and I think that you are conflating them.