Why People Plagiarize and How to Deal With It

Have you ever heard the saying that satire is a form of flattery?

When people start to make fun of you, that’s when you have enough influence to be made fun of.

I have a similar saying:

‘Plagiarism is a form of flattery.’

When people steal from you, that means your content is so good that others need to have it.

It stings though.

Just like satire hurts our feelings, so does getting stolen from.

We worked so hard to get the final product done.

We thought we were going to get all the recognition and money for it.

Then suddenly, a clown comes in at the last minute and takes credit for all our hard work.

They get the recognition that should’ve been ours.

Why People Plagiarize

There are different reasons people plagiarize.

If you can compartmentalize the people correctly, then you will be less reactive.

1. They Are Fearful

A lot of kids plagiarize in school because they are afraid of failing.

They have no clue what the answers are, so they copy from the smart kids.

Likewise, a lot of content creators are born from a fearful state.

With content creation, you are never done.

You always need to publish content, otherwise, you will be yesterday’s news.

These thieves are running out of ideas…

2. They Like to Remix Things

I once heard this guy say that whenever he threw an event, there was another guy who would copy the same event but do it better.

The originator of the event eventually confronted the guy.

He asked:

‘How come you always copy what I do?’

The guy who copied said:

‘I don’t do what you do. I do what you do, better.’

This new guy didn’t view himself as a thief.

He saw himself as simply getting inspiration.

There will be times when you view someone as a thief, but they don’t view themselves as a thief.

3. They Aren’t Plagiarizing

I remember a long time ago; I was writing a thread on emotional intelligence on my Twitter.

Whenever a tweet did well, I would turn it into a thread by expanding on it.

A person commented:

‘Wow, I never heard emotional intelligence from this angle!’

Then another person commented:

‘Yes, it’s because ArmaniTalks is stealing from me.’

Huh??

I looked at the account that accused me of this blatant lie.

I had never seen him before.

Once I clicked his profile, I saw that he blocked me.

A lot of creators overestimate their importance.

They think they are the only ones on the planet having a certain idea at a specific time.

Not true.

A lot of people can have a similar idea because they processed their experiences similar to you.

Avoid being the person who always thinks the world is out to get them.

How to Deal with Plagiarism

I have a polarized strategy for dealing with plagiarism.

The strategy is:

• Deal with it.

On the internet, it’s impossible to stop getting plagiarized.

There are always new accounts popping up and stealing, remixing, and bootlegging your products.

I tried to stop the plagiarism a while back.

An account that I was cool with was stealing my tweets, word for word.

I confronted him.

He removed the stolen tweets.

The next year, there was another guy who did the same thing.

Constantly redirecting my focus to the content thieves was not worth it.

I know people are stealing my content, but I still create anyway.

The best fix for dealing with plagiarism is to become prolific.

Getting Your Revenge

Nowadays, there are new services that offer to take down your pirated content.

I get approached by these services every now and then.

These people will submit appeals to get the stolen content removed.

I believe these services will be more popular in the future.

However, they are expensive.

When your content business is barely making any money, you have to make money!

You may not have the funds to afford these services for the time being.

In the future though, when you are printing cash, you can invest in these services to report accounts who plagiarize.

It’s easier to get revenge on the thieves when you have a team working alongside you.

The Spiritual Pain of Getting Stolen From

My most popular tweet of all time is my pinned tweet.

One day, I copied and pasted the tweet on Twitter to see if anyone plagiarized it.

I saw a boatload of people stealing the tweet, word for word!!

Most of the accounts were tiny accounts.

Eh, whatever.

As I was scrolling through the timeline, I saw a gargantuan account plagiarizing the tweet too.

To avoid getting caught, he put dashes in front of each line.

He got way more engagement than I did for that tweet.

The guy had over 200K followers.

I was pissed that this guy stole my stuff.

I’m hesitant to call someone out for stealing.

That day, I was going to.

But then, I decided not to.

The tough part of getting stolen from is that you now have to answer the question:

• What do I do next?

You have no clue.

There’s no blueprint to this.

Let’s say you do call them out.

Then what?

They take it down.

Then it happens again.

Then what?

It’s a rat race that you don’t want to be a part of.

The bigger your account gets; the more people are going to steal from you.

It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.

When that time comes, you need to learn how to deal with it.

Theft is Theft

Ever since creating content, I realized how much I hate thieves.

I always knew thieves were bad.

But I think we really understand how bad theft is when it directly impacts us.

People make light of plagiarism because it feels less tangible.

If someone steals a TV, the world will shame the thief.

If someone steals a blog, the world will say:

‘Eh, what’s the big deal? It’s just a few words.’

Yes.

It is just a few words…

But the words represent ideas, concepts, and intellect.

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– ArmaniTalks