Caught In The Act of Plagiarizing

We must all be on the alert for story stealers

It wasn’t me that was caught — and nor was it my story that was copied.

A couple of days ago I was checking out the top stories over at Vocal Media — that’s pretty much all I bother to do over there — I recognized the first few lines that appeared on the thumbnail of a featured one.

After clicking and doing a quick scroll through, it was the same story that I had read, loved and commented on here at Medium. So I was puzzled when the name attached to the story was not the same as the author was here.

It was a story masterfully written by the incredible J.J. Pryor and had me hook, line and sinker right to the end.

My curiosity was aroused. Perhaps J.J. used a pseudonym over at Vocal — but the name was not typical of a pen name. I also wondered why a top writer here would bother sending a 6.8K article to Vocal.

It sounded fishy to me. So I sent a private message to J.J on his story, voicing my concern.

Sure enough, it wasn’t him. Some douchebag had copied his story and posted it to another platform. The ‘writer’ changed the title slightly and added different pictures, but otherwise, it was ad verbatim.

Oh, the nerve!

I was seething. Why would anyone even contemplate copy-pasting someone else's work? Don’t they know the consequences? Sheesh, you can get hucked out of University for not citing a sentence.

My thoughts were racing; if he copied one story, then he has likely copied more. So I stalked his work; I screenshot all four pages of it and read a few that sounded atypical of his others. Most of his writing was about food and travel but there were some saucy ones about intimacy and orgasm.

I copy-pasted the Vocal titles into the search bar here on Medium. Although I didn’t come up with hits — he didn’t appear to be a Mediumite, nor have stolen anyone else's work from the random check I did — there was one thing that seemed off.

He had several stories published the same day on numerous occasions which either meant he was a busy bee, was reposting articles from another platform, or he was copying. Whatever this guy was up to, it left a sick feeling in my stomach. I couldn’t be sure if any of his stories were authentically written.

Thankfully, Vocal quickly removed the story from the top spot and deleted his whole profile. I hope they also emptied his Stripe earnings before he withdrew any money.

My point in writing this story is that we must all remain vigilant about plagiarism. If you read a piece and it sounds familiar, investigate further and alert the original author. There is no harm in sending a private message or asking the platform to probe further.

I am surprised that the story sailed past the Vocal team; intermittently — not consistently — I have been sent emails to confirm my ownership of stories that have been published here before being submitted over there. Clearly, their system is not fool-proof.

As for Mr Copy-cat? His downfall was stealing a story that was brilliant. If it hadn’t nabbed top spot over there, he may have gotten away with it. Clearly, there is not much going on in between his ears.

I hope he rots in writing hell.