The Plagiariser

It was so easy. All you have to do is cut and paste.

He sat at his desk, flexing his fingers before delving into the fathomless resource that was the internet. What would he find today in the treasure trove of others' creativity?

He was hoping for a poem or maybe a microfiction.

He envied the writers who gained the plaudits. He couldn't write like that himself, had tried and failed; but then, he didn't have to when, like mining for opals, all you had to do was dig and extract. Easy! And then people would view stories he found, sample them, applaud them and bingo! Rewards would be forthcoming and all for no effort other than the callous idea to pilfer other people's imaginative hard work.

He imagined himself as an entrepreneur, taking a product to the people that would line his pockets but ironically, he was actually a thief, a snotty-nosed, pickpocketing urchin of the street, who dodged around, hiding his face to sneak up and grab what he could off others.

He was the worst.

He would visit Vocal; that was always good for material. He scrolled through the Top Stories and espied one which was from a writer he'd spotted before. Prolific. Writing a story every day! For a microfiction challenge? This was perfect! He didn't bother to read the story other than to scan it. Oh, this writer had put a little personal afterword which would need some tweaking but nothing too serious. Easy pickings really! Wonderful!

Now, where to place it? Medium? Why not? Scrolling through Medium, screwing up his piggy little eyes and twitching his pointy little nose, he espied that this author did not seem to be on here at all under her own name! He had hit the proverbial jackpot!

What a day! Feeling cockily overconfident, he decided to take her picture, her right-up and her background picture and make it his own. He added some nice emojis to make it feel more approachable (which the original writer would abhor for her own profile) and launched it.

Claps galore! Especially with the higher membership.

He sat back and marvelled at his find, and his lack of scruples.

***

366 words

You want to plagiarise me? Take this and plaster it all over your profile and show yourself up for the thief that you are. You want to take my material and pass it off as your own? Then do it but have the guts not to change the afterword that would expose you for the charlatan that you are.

I think this is reprehensible. Not only have you passed my words off as your own but you took my picture and the piece that I wrote about myself and my back ground picture, all of which are personal to me and hid behind them to profit off my ideas.

Shame on you.

I don't know who you are. I don't want to know who you are because I wouldn't want to mix with the likes of you, because you are low on so many levels.

To clarify:

There was a Medium profile which had been created by someone else and was being used to pass off my work so that they could (and probably did) earn from my creativity. I find this just the worst of the worst. There are not really any words to describe them. I've used a picture of a rat to try and convey how despicable I think they are but really, this does a disservice to rats.

129/366