Can Someone Tell Me How To Deal With Plagiarism?

This is not what I was planning to write on today, or ever.

But last night, I was enraged when I saw so many of my quotes copied by different writers on YourQuote app and posted with their own name attached to it. You may see the screenshots yourself.

After I made a post on LinkedIn in the morning, they took action and removed this post from 21 users who had copied. But how many more copied posts do I search and tell them to remove? And though they have removed the post "Faces are never ugly or beautiful" one, it still shows on Google.

I am only pointing out three because these are some of my top-performing posts. I have no clue how many more posts have been copied. They sometimes, extract a single line from a long poem and post it as a 'new piece'.

Here are links to the first time I made these posts:
"Faces are never
ugly or beautiful,
minds are."

You know, even Google shows my name in suggestions for further narrowing down the search!

"When God's reserved a diamond for you,
He'll make other stones reject you."

"it breaks my heart to ask
why did you bring us so far,
if we were destined to
fall apart."

It's not just me, my other Instagram writer friends have got their content stolen too.

These plagiarists pick content from feature pages on Instagram and pass it off as theirs. Of course, they know that since it's featured, it's good content, let's make use of it. We can often spot stolen content on Instagram because that's the platform we're active on. 

How do we spot our stolen content on a whole different app that we haven't even signed up for?

And then there comes those: "we found it uncredited and we edited the photo, so we put our name under the quote." Whatever it is, it is NOT YOURS. Stop shaming art with your stupid excuses. Create it or leave it. If you found it uncredited, mention that you don't know who the author is, or just don't effing share it at all.

They even stole a piece from my poetry book and passed it off as their own. What the...?

If book's content was stolen and posted on Instagram, and I had spotted it, Instagram would have removed that content. I have the copyrights of that content.

But how am I supposed to deal with YourQuote that's claims to be a writing platform? We can't flag content because we are not signed up on the app. We can't keep looking for copied content on Google.

Stop calling yourself writers if you have to copy content from the internet to be called as writers. No, my friend, posting content doesn't make you a writer, writing original content does.

It's a writing app, for God's sake! Have some shame and go there only if you really have to write and post something you've created yourself.

No, photo-editing of a piece of writing doesn't make you its author.

What would you become by posting stolen content and gaining followers? YourQuote influencers? Is that even a thing?

Almost every time a plagiarist is caught, he/she turns out to be an Indian. Why? Why can't we respect art and stop running after numbers?

Why do we have to be called a writer forcefully and by all the wrong means when we can't write? Why can't we just give the damn credits to the creator of the art?

Why can't we seek inspiration in others work and make our own, adding our unique values to a new piece instead?

Find your talent rather than stealing content from others. And if you can't, just do something... anything that you're good at. 

YourQuote ain't giving you money for posting that you are (maybe) in need of money and making it by selling stolen goods.

Please understand that it takes a lot to create something, and a lot to create those one-liners that you easily copy paste.

And there's no extent to the hurt and anger that arise when someone comes and tells us that we fucking copied from YourQuote. Itne bure din nahi aaye (Such terrible days haven't come yet). We have thousands of pieces on our notes, in our notebooks, in our books and future books. We don't need to depend on their already-plagiarised content. (Humara maal humein hi bech rahe hain?)

There was once a guy on Instagram, who stole my quote and posted with his name. When confronted, he asked me for the proof that I posted before him. I sent (I had posted that piece many times but posts were archived). He then sent me a tweet of a person who had copied mine (without adding his name to it but without credits) and the guy said, "I copied from here. It was tweeted before you." I had to scroll through thousands of archived post to find the first time I had made that post. I unarchived it and slapped it on his face, saying, "when you know you own something, you aren't short of proofs." He was speechless and apologised for his behaviour.

Anyway, it's heartbreaking when you have to prove the authenticity of your own content to meaningless people. 

Dear Instagram Content Creators, please never delete your posts. Archive option is the best option any platform can provide and I love Instagram for that. Archive the posts you no longer want on your profile. Chances are, your content has been already saved as a screenshot by many.

Besides, even if I see that my thoughts have 'accidentally' matched someone else's, I remove my post. I have plenty of other content already created to share. One-liners are the hardest to create. You can use only a few words and their combination and thought has to be unique.

Our content matters a lot to us because we put a lot in creating it. Above all, we pour our emotions in our art... can you please respect something all of us feel but a few of us choose to channelise into art?

In the end, I only want to say:

Just stop the freaking plagiarism! If you can't write your own content, NOBODY IS FORCING YOU TO BE A WRITER!