Copycat

Some time around the end of March, a series of events took place on a certain Taiwanese blog that I visit from time to time. Basically, Kelly, a writer for TV shows and movies, who also blog as a hobby, found out that someone, let's call her Stephanie, had taken an article from Kelly's blog, posted on her own blog with a few minor changes, as if she wrote it. Her changes included making Kelly's husband, Daniel, into her friend, Daniel.



Stephanie's blog wasn't on the same platform as Kelly's, and Kelly, being a busy writer and a mom of a toddler, had no time to register for an account at that platform just to leave a message for Stephanie. Therefore, a reader of Kelly's blog took it upon herself and left a message for Stephanie, kindly reminding her that she had plagiarized and to please remove the said at once.

At the same time, Kelly wrote about the plagiarism on her blog, citing her original article and the link to Stephanie's blog. She also wrote about her thoughts on the incident, and such. At one point, Kelly wrote "if this is your first time plagiarizing, that's OK. Perhaps you really liked the article and wanted it for yourself, and that's understandable. I'm not upset; rather, I feel somewhat sorry for you. If you're a law professional, then you should know that your plagiarizing is wrong."

She went on to write "if you're a repeat offender of plagiarism, or often copy others' life and experiences as your own, because of your longing to become that person, then I would be worried. If that's the case, then you should probably seek professional psychological treatment. "

I guess her statements pissed off Stephanie, because Stephanie started a rampage of repeated comments telling Kelly how horrible her writing is and such. Also, whoever left a comment at Kelly's blog, Stephanie threatened to sue, most likely because she didn't want others to think that she was a bad person.

The truth is, she plagiarized, and got caught. She was lucky enough that Kelly decided not to press charges, and honestly, I think she should be thankful. However, she believed that she did no wrong, since she simply "borrowed one article and already deleted it after getting caught." So to her, it was offensive that Kelly had written an article exposing her.

When I first saw the whole thing, I went on Stephanie's blog, and left her a comment. Basically telling her that it was courageous to admit her wrong doing and that the whole thing would blow over soon. I mean, seriously, with things constantly going on around the world, people normally don't keep their interest on one issue too long, unless it continues to be exposed, but even with constant exposure (say...like certain celebrity's public drunken behavior), people get tired of it and move onto something else.

However, Stephanie seemed to like the attention, albeit negative, so she continued to write comments on Kelly's blog, telling other readers off. Heck, she wanted attention, she got it. She certainly got mine, because she wrote an article partially directing at me, titling it "There's a Girl named Pearl", in which she threatened to sue me.

When a friend of mine gave me the link to that article, I read it, and busted out laughing. Wow, I honestly had no idea how the hell she would sue me, and on what ground. First of all, I'm in the US, and she's in Taiwan; and secondly, I didn't do anything illegal.

After weeks of leaving comments, being blasted by other readers (including me) on her own guestbook, on her alleged alter-ego's blog, she seems to have finally gone into hiding. Honestly, she sucked at role-playing. Each of her alter-egos wrote in the exact same fashion as she did, no matter how old and what gender the alter-ego was supposed to be. Other readers and I found her ridiculous yet entertaining. I've gotta admit that she provided quite a bit of entertainment to relieve my stress during the busy tax season.

Did I mention that her real identity was almost discovered? Well, it hasn't been confirmed, but we're 90% sure that the person we found is the copycat.

A lot happened, and I have tons of screen shots, but I honestly don't feel like writing more than one post about her. And now she seems to have gone away, I just hope that she has learned her lessons that you can't do something and expect to get away with it. There's karma, which is part of the law of nature.