“Even Chanel gets copied”….. the legitimizing of plagiarism and its devastating effects on the moral fabric of our society.

Plagiarism has become common with the advent of social media. Or may be it has become easier to catch. One of the two. Either way, it is very difficult to understand the reasoning behind it and how otherwise morally upright people consider this a legitimate form of stealing.

Some of you might be enraged at the word “stealing”. But when you copy people’s thoughts and ideas you are stealing. It is fraudulent. It is illegal.

Imagine a mom blogger who preaches about how she is raising men who respect women. Then imagine the same woman stealing the aforementioned speech from somewhere. That lecture on raising accountable sons would’ve been more effective if she didn’t have to steal someone else’s writing. Do you think she can raise accountable sons?

Imagine a food blogger who makes a living by making vegan dishes. Imagine this person going to the super market every Sunday and spending a good amount of money on ingredients so they can experiment with new dishes. Imagine them spending many weekends like this to come up with a perfectly nutritious recipe. Imagine someone liking it so much that they copy/paste it and take credit. Do you think this thief can ever be trusted with making our food?

Imagine a social activist who lives to write, starts campaigns on social media, encourages people and takes them on a journey. Imagine this person dedicating their entire cognitive trust to coming up with catchy hashtags and comprehensive one liners that can simply and effectively deliver the message. Imagine their work copied and propagated the next day. Do you think the person who copied it would ever be the kind of person we’d trust our fate with?

It’s easy to say “Why’re you so sad if your content got copied? Imitation is the highest form of flattery. Even Chanel gets copied”. But it’s hard to watch our hard work duplicated and owned without any consideration. It’s hard to watch it. May be it’s easier to comfort in the above-mentioned words when we haven’t created something ourselves. But it’s not easy when your content is your labor of purest love.

Chanel does get copied but we all know the people who copy them. They’re called plagiarists in sophisticated society. I call them boot leggers.