It's amazing what people think they can get away with.
Back in January I found my new favourite poem (Night of the Living, Night of the Dead) ripped off at http://nickg.com/writing/living_dead.html. I couldn't believe it. It's not so much that he printed it, but the fact that he just changed some of the words and the title and claimed it as his own. The only reason I found it was because I was doing a google search on a barely remembered phrase.

Thankfully, the page has been taken down since.

I can't get my head around this kind of thing. I don't say so lightly—there is this particular kind of petty lying, which plagiarism is one (not that I mean to minimize the sin of plagiarism), that I really, really don't understand. I can't understand the motive. Well, yeah, to make people think better of the liar. But this is so far from how I think about myself that I never can understand—and consequently don't expect—it when people do this.

I can understand the kind of self-aggrandizing personal dishonesty that is a lie of omission, a "shading" of the truth, and that sort of thing. I am guilty of that, now and then. But part of the reason I think I am guilty of this kind of dishonesty occasionally, both in why I will do it and why I feel shame about it, is because really lying seems hugely risky to me. The down-side is much greater than the up-side in almost all examples I can think of.

People will marginally think better of you based upon some claimed accomplishment or credential or whatever. But they will hugely think worse of you when caught in this sort of lie.

Which, now that I'm writing about it, makes me think about something. It may well be the case that most of the people that do this kind of thing want to get caught, for various reasons. That's why they're doing something so incredibly stupid.

This probably doesn't include people like dhoyt, though. Lying your ass off on the Internet probably doesn't have much risk for most people, practical or with regard to social comfort. Yet I still can't get my head around this kind of thing, either, and I'm always very surprised by it.

With a little introspection, I think that part of what's going on with me is that I surely do want approval from other people...but I want approval that allows me to think well of myself, that validates a positive self-image. So people's erroneous positive opinions about me don't do this at all, because I know better than anyone else that it's not true.

Isn't this the way most people are?

So what is it in some people that brushes aside real meaning behind self-esteem and builds upon mere appearance? And more disturbingly: are they wrong to do so, in terms of purely pragmatic (not moral) terms? It might be very effective.

plagiarism.
interesting.

Here's my favorite part, from the plagerizer's Threadless.com blog:

My brother has once again submitted a copyrighted image to threadless in hopes of destroying me, in yet another way.

My question is, "Why the fuck do you let your brother know your passwords???"

My brother, Cain, and I never seem to get along....

That's why I don't believe him, myself. Implausible, especially if it has supposedly happened more than once.

la. zy.

I can't get my head around this kind of thing. I don't say so lightly—there is this particular kind of petty lying, which plagiarism is one (not that I mean to minimize the sin of plagiarism), that I really, really don't understand. I can't understand the motive. Well, yeah, to make people think better of the liar. But this is so far from how I think about myself that I never can understand—and consequently don't expect—it when people do this.

Err, the $2,000 prize probably didn't hurt.

Oh. Yeah, I can see that.