Who do plagiarists hurt?

MANILA, Philippines - Plagiarism is strangely rampant in the Philippines, despite its disgusting reputation. You’d think it’s the kind of thing you could only expect from senators who make dimwitted remarks about maternal death, or jejes who want to make themselves more interesting on social media — in short, the people who really seem to need it. But then you hear of respected writers, masteral students who plagiarized their entire theses, and supposedly decorated people from the country’s top university in the habit of submitting other people’s photographs, and you just don’t know what to think anymore.

A favorite excuse of the intelligentsia when caught red-handed is the so-called “lapse” in judgment or morality. Personally, I think this defense inspires a corresponding “lapse” in compassion. I don’t know how people get off making it sound almost like an unintentional accident or mental malfunction when they knew exactly what they were doing.

The most tackled angle when it comes to plagiarism is, of course, that of theft and claiming another person’s hard work as your own. And while it indeed needs to be addressed, the injustices resolved, this article won’t dwell on the aspects that are already the first to be stressed.

Especially in the age of the Internet, more often than not, it is a plagiarist’s own (cyber-hate) funeral. When you live in a time of accessibility and of constantly checking and being checked out, the burden of being aware of your own work doesn’t fall solely on you. From personal experience, all the times I’ve been plagiarized, it was always someone else sending me the fateful link. At times they didn’t even work anymore because the perpetrator had already been shamed into taking it down. And all that was left for me to do was feel a bit sad that I missed my own party. It’s ridiculously easy to get caught these days, so I wonder why some still insist on doing it. See, the people who would gladly scream, “Magnanakaw!” on the streets are on the interwebs, too.

And for a person who is in the habit of creating his own work and putting it out there, there is always more where that came from. Between the source of the creativity and the person who is trying to steal the scraps from said source, it is the latter who is in an unsustainable, pitiful and risky position. Frankly, I don’t get why they put themselves there at all. But if I had to worry about someone, I’d see more cause to be concerned about the guy who can’t produce his own sh*t.

DO YOUR OWN THING

My biggest beef with plagiarism is how it violates the basic assumption that you’re here to do your own thing. This is why a university agrees to take you under its wing. Why organizations allow you to work with them. Why publications give you space. Why people take the time to read or listen to you. This is why people go out of their way to visit galleries, watch movies, go through magazines, photo blogs, or even albums on Facebook. We’re interested in what other people have to offer — in all the things we didn’t think of ourselves, things that could possibly enrich us and expand our appreciation and understanding of the world.

We expect people to contribute. So when someone tries to pass off someone else’s work as his own, it becomes a question of, “What are you even doing here?” The person who produced the work that you submitted already exists. So what’s your point? It’s a harsh way to put it, but that’s where it’s at. That’s why plagiarism has the effect of people suddenly looking at you like you’re an empty husk who is wasting oxygen and whatever position he has come to occupy.

Granted that coming up with something of your own is a lot more difficult than copying. There’s a lot of rejection and being ignored. A lot of frustration. A lot of trying to stand out and only coming off as weird and overly eager. A lot of trying to keep yourself fed. A lot of self-criticism and refining your work — and then after all that, making a huge mistake anyway and getting a lot of flak for it. And then learning all over again. It’s hard, at times heartbreaking, and maybe a lot of us are mad for doing it. But that’s the thing. We actually want to contribute something of our own. We want to continue giving birth to our thoughts, our ideas, our art, our projects, our analyses, our snarky comments on current events, and whatever else we have to share until the day we shrivel up and die. It’s a huge chunk of what it means to be alive. We submit ourselves to effort because it’s worth it; because easy isn’t always what cuts it.

Maybe it’s overly optimistic to expect everybody to recognize this value. That you get something out of putting yourself out there and giving the world what you have to give — something I can’t quite put my finger on, but I know it’s not something you can hack. That stealing other people’s fire is an empty box. And that more than fulfillment, there’s an organic abundance that you tap into when you bother to use yourself. And I guess that’s why the theft that plagiarists commit against other people didn’t earn the central focus of this particular article. Ultimately they rob themselves. They are their own tragedy.

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