Feed My Thoughts

^^^ This edition is dedicated to DaqriKay because a. I like her story, b. she just finished aforementioned story and is trying to get it published, c. I have written a whole paragraph about her and, d. her issues with plagiarism inspired me to write the entire segment

-----------------------------------------------

AmbersEatingCake

Edition 13 - Our Copy-Cat Society (Plagiarism)

Plagiarism.

You read this as if it is that poisoned word snipped from slivers of a teacher's lecture on honesty, or that taboo you subconsciously edit from your modified assignment moments before printing it off. Of course these assignments couldn’t possibly be plagiarised, howbeit; the words have been rearranged and replaced by familiar (now digital) pages of a thesaurus. The word could be the lies of the bibliography stapled at the end of your assignment even though all you really wrote was an appropriation of Wikipedia (daresay — a copy-and-paste production). More so, the word could be the verification of a lie of my own — for if any of you read to the end of the last edition, I most certainly promised a new razzle-dazzle edition on vocabulary or something else which I cannot honestly remember. Maybe I could plagiarise that, too.

The claws of technology (and that lovely little copy-and-paste function our computers, tablets, phones and various other, but somehow equally paramount, widgets boast) have given us new freedoms. Freedoms not as such of the Women's Rights movements that bubble to the surface every so-and-so years, where the advocates thrust forward ideas of equity and change. No — these freedoms entail a more dangerous type of options. The freedom (or lack of) originality. And thus plagiarism is born.

Plagiarism gave Helene Hegemann the freedom to collage passages of a lesser known writer, Airen’s, book “Strobo” and receive a $20, 000 award for it. William Shakespeare – debatably the world’s greatest in literature, was suspected to copy-and-paste plots, phrases, lines of verse, and poems from others’ notable works. Plagiarism, in fact, is contagious. It spreads, like an acrid drug that taints the works of those lusty for fame, for popularity, for wealth and prosperity. Just like cocaine, once people taste such the wondrous drug of success, they want more. They need more.

And you, dear readers, may have even experienced this disease yourself. Daqri (DaqriKay on 抖阴社区 at the status quo), has deleted account after account more times than there are craters on the moon over plagiarism of her story (‘When a Girl is Tortured’ – read now). God knows the horror of tracking her down constantly and re-fanning in déjà vu tendencies (I’ve promised an interview, too – and the re-enactment of my long-forgotten interviewing techniques will scramble to life again within the next thing-or-so I post). And you find that, in many other accomplished authors (抖阴社区 considerably more excluded ever since the disabling of CTRL+C), a myriad of desperados clinging for those fifteen glorious minutes of fame will pool beneath the work like the side effects of an oil spill.

I, myself, have been found stuck in the mud of plagiarism. Not – aspiring authors stealing my words (fingers stay crossed at mentions of this notion), but of classmates reusing my old assignments. How they got them, I don’t know. Howbeit, the words – changed slightly via the thesaurus, are screaming murders of hard work, time and effort that have been attributed entirely to a faux friendship.

This leads us, therefore, to the impression that question, many a time, is not of plagiarism’s plantation within society, but of how deep it placed roots. Whether the idea – per chance brilliant and conceptual, is an appropriation or theft of another’s grand notion is certainly debateable. Hegemann’s story implies that the “reinterpretations” (quite often, word-for-word) of a story was well equipped enough for such a notable prize without mere mentions to its humble origins. We are left chewing on our tongue over the out-of-the-window morals that have been imbibed within our society.

That is to say though – it is impossible not to be influenced. Whether it is the fluid words that sprawl across the latest novel that has consumed you (Steven Carroll’s ‘Spirit of Progress’ is well above the renegade muses of the past – gah Twilight), or the ingeniousness of the life of some insignificant other, there are certainly windows into the words you will soon carve onto paper (this – now digital, too). With each and every book I devour, my style changes, ever so slightly, yet it does. It’s not imminent – this fact and another author’s slight quirks will never overtake the words in which I write. It is there, although. Subtle, in the same way you yourself will notice if you’ve grown taller, lost weight, gained weight, sprouted a small-yet-prominent freckle or had a bad hair day, that no one ever manages to notice the change. Life tends to gravitate that way. Until, of course, the old and the new are aligned one against the other, and the difference becomes immediately prominent.

Maybe plagiarism is inevitable – the subtle recycling plagiarism, that is. Without subtle plagiarism (appropriation) I would be failing PD/H/PE. Maybe I would be stumped for content within my story. Maybe I wouldn’t find those two wonderful words that work so beautifully yet already written within that mesmerising newspaper article. But maybe that kind of plagiarism really is merely appropriation. If our ideas are out there, why not let the ideas get unleashed onto the world. But the subtle kind. The sort wherein readers can recognise the influence if it’s not aforementioned. The ideas may be inspirational, but the words should be our own. And with blunted honesty in the same way in which a pencil would need sharpening; there is probably a myriad of other articles raving about plagiarism, sex, character, plot and various other issues that I have neglected within this sentence but nevertheless equally addressed in ‘Feed My Thoughts’. To me, at the least.

Some debate that plagiarism is the copying of every single element. Should that be true, you would only need to find a mirror to frame a culprit. How many shoddy ‘book covers’ are not nearly attributed to its initial photographer(s), or the fan fictions that never reference the initial author? Should we have a large disclaimer on the front page listing each and every single muse that we typed to the beat of, yet never played the same tune? We are left with the ever curious – ever pungent taste on our tongue on whether or not the ideas and the characters we claim, are intrinsically our very own, or they, too, are glimpses into another’s life. Just maybe, that character is the spitting image of a Twilight vampire – his name may deviate from such façade, but the glittering pale vampiric skin holds the plagiarism true.

It could be a fear. A precipitous fear of offense; of a caustic imbalance to society. It propels us to sue over supermarket-spillages on aisle 7 and scream blatant controversy over diminutive irrelevancies. Television, per chance, could be the surreptitious culprit. They worm in notions of ‘get the best deal for your dollar’ and ‘the man who steals five cent coins’. These programs coat themselves in the stickiness of morality, impelling their viewers to scream “that’s not right” and start suing. Of course, we never get the whole picture. The sales at that charmant store might be because now no one will buy unless there is a sale; the man who steals five cents could be given them by others rather than taking them. The media cascades over the brim with perpetual misconceptions and misnomers.

You see, with plagiarism there could be the aspect of inspiration – subtle enough so that it could be just traced back to its origins. Howbeit, there is the blatant cut-and-paste we’ve all used a one point in our lives but is nevertheless morally wrong. We have seen the destruction; the controversies spilling from the lips of everyone famous and not so much. We have grown accustomed to discovering that person is not the actual author and the notable greats are also notable culprits. I ask you, the readers, is this recycling idiosyncrasy inevitable in modern society and, furthermore, are we to blame?