Not Copying Word-for-Word Just to Appear Like You Did Not Steal is Still Stealing.
Someone stole my work and got over 30,000 views on the day they posted it & I’m Pissed.
Stealing from a creative who is just starting or has a small following is not clever.
Watching someone’s content, intentionally choosing not to follow them, and then taking their work to make it appear as though you didn’t copy is not clever; it’s still stealing.
Waiting to release work you stole from someone, hoping enough time will pass for it to go unnoticed, is not clever; it’s still stealing.
I regularly share the work of other people whose content I believe in. I recently shared a video from someone whose work centers anti-racism. My creative work does not center anti-racism, but it is one of my bodies of work. Shortly after, she came onto my page and went through my stories. She doesn’t follow me, and to be clear, no one owes anyone a follow. People are allowed to browse a page and decide for themselves whether they want to support someone’s work.
What I do have a problem with is what happened afterward.
About two weeks later, she posted a video on the same exact educational topic as the last video I had posted. And talking about the same topic is not the issue. I don’t own a subject. The issue was that she followed essentially the same order and structure I had used to explain it, condensed it into a shorter video, changed the wording, slapped on a different title, and added a statistic that I hadn’t included. And yes, I noticed. So did people close to me who had seen my original work.
Mine is titled: Integration or Segregation? | Create Separate Spaces, Unity, White Supremacy, Gatekeeping, Racism
This video is specifically a response to a question I received from a viewer from the previous video and references the all-white community in Arkansas as an example of white supremacist ideology.
Previous video titled: White Gatekeeping Must Stop | Spaces that remain overwhelmingly white & unwelcoming
In light of how many white creatives have been publicly called out for stealing work, and while stealing work is obviously not exclusive to white people, there is a prevalence of this happening. The girl who stole my work is white, and she stole from my lived experience regarding racism. That makes it even more insulting to me in a way, and it contradicts the work she is doing if she is going to cause harm around the very things she supposedly advocates for. Sigh.
Not copying someone “word for word” doesn’t mean you didn’t steal their work. Creative work is not just the words you say. Sometimes the work is in figuring out what information to include, what order to put it in, how to build the argument, researching, what point to introduce first, what point comes next, editing, and how to make the entire thing understandable to another person. That is work, and it takes time, thought, research, and creativity.
Coincidences are possible, but when someone has already visited your page, seen your work, and then shortly afterward produces something that follows that same framework, I’m going to say, “That doesn’t sit right with me.” She could have simply followed my page to support my work or reposted the video she found interesting. She could have even given me credit for mine and added additional information to what I already made. But to steal the work is just plain sneaky, pathetic, and desperate.
I can spend hours researching, writing, filming and editing something, only for it to barely reach anyone. Then someone with a much larger audience can take the same basic framework, make it shorter, and benefit by getting thousands of likes, views, and engagement for something that was not hers. Quite simply put, it’s fucked up. Especially when you’re not making money from your work, you’re trying to grow your audience, and you’re putting hours and days of labor into creating something.
I’m not going to publicly name this person. And not because I’m unsure of what I saw, but because I genuinely do not have the time or energy to turn my page into a courtroom where hundreds of strangers can debate whether something is “technically” copying because the wording was changed. I know what I created, I know the work that went into it, I know what I saw, and I know how it made me feel.
I also know that if I publicly called her out, there would inevitably be people rushing to defend her with whatever justifications they want to use.
Quite frankly, I’m not interested. My close supporters encouraged me to block her, and I couldn’t have agreed more. I am fully aware that people will take inspiration from one another, talk about the same subjects, or have overlapping ideas. None of that is new. And this is not the first time a popular person or someone with a large following has taken from my work or ideas. But knowing that people copy does not make being copied feel any less shitty. And the bottom line is, it is not okay to benefit from someone else’s creative labor without acknowledging where the idea or framework came from.
Those who have smaller audiences do not mean our work is less valuable.
I’m still going to create. I’m still going to talk about the things I care about. And I know people will be people, so it’s not going to stop. With AI rising, it will likely amplify. I can only do my best to take precautions or protective measures while also having to take the risk of putting my work out there to grow an audience.
But that shit really pisses me off. And the fact that people will go to more extreme measures to steal work just so they don’t have an obvious copy/paste is on a whole other level. I feel bad for all the other creatives who experience this, but I am glad some people are getting publicly called out for it.