Everything is Copied

On confronting imitators, inside and out.

The other day, I was futzing around the internet, as one does, when I saw something familiar. It looked a lot like an essay I’d written. But the author wasn’t me.

This wasn’t a straight copy-and-paste situation — the language had been changed, some new sentences inserted. But the ideas, structure, even entire quotes, were curiously similar to mine. My mind started an aggravated tap dance, through annoyance and anger and frustration. Did this person intentionally rip me off, or was it subconscious? Should I acknowledge it? Or shrug, let it go, and write it off as the sincerest form of flattery?

My spiral lasted all of a minute when it was interrupted by a mortifying memory. Once upon a time, I copied something, too…