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“It’s legal, I guess. More power to them.” Yeah, well sucking dick for money in the state of Nevada is also legal, but that doesn’t mean it’s a respectable line of work.
One of our freelance writers pitched me the idea for a column recently. It was actually an interview he had in mind. He informed me that he recently established a dialogue with the creator of a very popular Twitter account, one that currently sits at 1.18 million followers, and ran the idea by me of a Q&A to be hosted on our site in exchange for promoting his account. He insisted that insight from the owner of such an influential parody account would be a compelling read. I don’t disagree.
Me: “Which account are you referring to?”
Him: “@TweetLikeAGirI, it’s a really funny account and the dude who runs seems like a standup guy.”
Me: “Fuck that low-life scumbag. He can interview my asshole.”
I didn’t overreact. The owner of that account, along with any others like it, is a sordid scumbag. I countered his pitch with an idea of my own. I told him we’d do the interview on the condition that I got to write the questions, and the only way we’d publish the interview is if he answered every single one of them earnestly. He didn’t go for it–although that would have been a hell of an interview–because he’s either a scared little bitch or he knows my questions will expose him for the shameless, scummy thief that he is.
His material is stolen. He steals from me. He steals from you. That witty one-liner you saw come across your timeline was ripped, word-for-word, so are all the others he uses to gain such a massive following. You re-tweeted it. So did 25,000 other people. You are all putting money into his pockets. These accounts are able to monetize with affiliate networking and by directing web traffic to shitty clickbait sites that funnel advertising cash right back to them. The creator (a term completely unbefitting) behind @TweetLikeAGirI has essentially turned his account into a virtual billboard that sees 1.18 million daily passersby. That is some valuable, yet unethical, internet real estate.
It’s a smart, easy way to make a buck–once your account is established, which, admittedly, is a very difficult feat–but it also makes you a low-life scumbag.
You want proof that they’re stealing your shit. I gotchu. Rachel Page is a writer for us. Good kid, that Rachel. Funny, too. Strong Twitter game. She is the originator of a tweet that I’m guessing you’ve seen by now: the 2007 Britney Stress Level one.
If I had to rate my stress, I’d say I’m pretty close to 2007 Britney pic.twitter.com/M5UrPacD7X
— Rachel Page (@rachelpage_) September 22, 2014
Nearly 1,700 RTs. Nice job, Rachel. Then it was ripped, verbatim, by our friend @TweetLikeAGirI, and he pulled in an absurd 28,000 RTs. This shitbag passed Rachel’s joke off as his own. Several others stole the tweet, as well, each pulling in crazy RT numbers.
Another example comes from the Twitter account of yours truly. I made a decent joke, pulled in close to 200 RTs, then it was ripped by a couple assholes, one of them being @CauseWereGuys, who boasts an absurd 1.68 million followers.
You both changed “shit” to “it” and it reminds me of the Billy Madison flaming shit scene. P.S. Fuck you. pic.twitter.com/3cVSiteApm
— Roger Dorn (@RogerJDorn) September 24, 2014
This is like a famous comedian going to Open Mic Night at the local watering hole with a recording device and using the material of some no-name schmuck in his HBO Standup show. Simply put, it’s fucked up.
I guess my only real point in writing this is as a public service announcement, to let you know people are using your creativity to get paid. And to let everyone who steals tweets know this: you’re an asshole..
Respond
Dillon Cheverere
Dillon Cheverere is the Vice President of Media for Grandex, Inc. Email: dillon@grandex.co
@dcheverere
@dcheverere
RogerJDorn
God I completely agree with this.
I understand they can’t make thousand-RT-able content on their own every day. But if you take a tweet verbatim from someone else, say h/t to the original person that made the joke. How they just copy and paste and get away with it, every single fucking day, pisses me off so much. No different than comedians ripping jokes off each other, but they do it as anonymous pussies.
This was fucking poetic.
Didn’t the Oatmeal (Matthew Inman) win a big case against FunnyJunk for doing the same thing? http://theoatmeal.com/blog/funnyjunk
Yea, he did. They were shamelessly ripping his content for ad traffic. The issue is that gets murkier on Twitter and Facebook. I don’t think anyone has tried to sue over this kind of stuff yet.
That’s some real Carlos Mencia shit.
PGP’s Twitter account uses content from this website’s wall for some of their tweets. The website’s wall credits a username but the tweets do not. Any thoughts?
The people who post on The Wall understand the stipulations behind it.
It’s gotten to the point now where they are ripping off tweets that aren’t even funny as well.
…because 75% of what you guys put on TFM now wasn’t posted on reddit first
Kind of like when you registered for this site and I already had that username first, right?
Yeah, because I’m sure your first instinct when making your username an actual person’s name was to make it without the spaces. You tried to make it with spaces, the site told you couldn’t, so you made it without them. Sorry to ruin it for you, boss.
Swing and a miss, imposter. I registered without spaces, on TFM in April 2012. When PGP launched, you just beat me to it here, by about a week from the looks of it.
And you don’t get rights to that name since you don’t contribute anything to the site anyway. One post from 9 months ago? Start adding to the site or go back to Aaron Karo’s failed attempt at ruminations.
I think I’ve written more than once, buddy. If you don’t know who I am you haven’t been around long enough. I owned 2013
That was for the other Roger (with only one post), not you. If you notice I replied to his comment, not yours.
Despite your confusion right now, Roger, I still look forward to your posts. Also, 2013 (and this year, too) have been pretty good for my posts as well.
Word. My apologies.
Do you really not understand the difference between plagiarizing someone’s work and covering material from a website while citing them as your source? Is this your first day on the internet?
giving a couple sentences of commentary with a link to the reddit post is hardly a “column”.
And most of the time it comes under “News”. It’s not promoted as a column. Don’t be a dick about this.
Basically what most of us are saying is that this site is turning into buzzfeed….moral of the story, don’t turn into buzzfeed.
TFM isn’t claiming they make half the videos they post to. They post the video and provide commentary, normally with a link to the original story.
Completely different than what these twitter douches do.