i didn’t want to have to resort to making this post ’cause i’m the last person on this app who usually exposes situations like this, but there’s genuinely no other way to solve this, and i think it’s really necessary to address this issue once and for all. i was plagiarized, i tried to resolve this directly with the person a month ago, and i’ve simply spent an entire month being ignored. 💗
the screenshots i have as proof of what happened will be linked here to go to google drive throughout this post (’cause tumblr is a bit shitty lately) and i will provide context for what occurred below:
as a tumblr creator for over five years, i’ve dealt with things like this before and i never felt the need to expose people — i’ve always chosen dialogue, and what has been resolved has absolutely no need to be made public. but, this time, as i said, i tried to have a dialogue in the most polite way possible, and i was only disrespected by being ignored for a month. perhaps i should have spoken up sooner? probably, but since the person in question hadn’t posted anything on their blog since i’d tried to contact them on december 12th, i didn’t insist ’cause i thought the obvious: that the person has a life outside the internet and could simply be offline on vacation or going through something more serious that i couldn’t possibly know about.
i was followed by @/slncericidie on october 28th of last year and i followed them back — screenshot was taken after i had already unfollowed them a month ago. we were mutuals for over a month until i noticed (in december) the plagiarism on their blog after they started following me. they plagiarized my theme, which i was using when they followed me and i simply had no idea about that until someone else told me. for timeline: my theme (the one that was plagiarized) was posted by me on october 7th, and around october 13th they also changed their theme to a halloween theme that was different from mine ( ♡ . ♡ ) → on october 29th, i changed my theme, and on november 3rd, they could’ve changed theirs as well — which i presume was when they plagiarized the theme from me.
i could say it was an inspiration without my permission, but being inspired by someone’s work doesn’t involve taking parts of what they made and claim as yours, so... it’s just plagiarism. honestly? i felt pretty upset about it ’cause, besides it being a mutual doing it against me, i didn’t understand what the difficulty was in simply sending me an ask or a text asking if they could get inspired by one of my themes — i’ve never denied this to anyone. if you want to be inspired by my themes, bots or fics or even ask for my help to create your own thing, i’ll be happy to help, i’ve made this clear on my blog a thousand times.
but, even so, that happened and i felt disrespected. i know some people might think this is silly and that i shouldn’t care about something small, but i’m on tumblr ’cause i like being there, i like creating my own themes and surprising myself with what i can do on my own and it’s frustrating to see someone take something i made, modify/cut it to please themselves, and then claim credit for it. i could let it go, but the more you ignore a problem, the bigger it can become in the future, and i don’t want that to happen, i was patient enough. i wasn’t rude, i’d never harass them ’cause of it and i didn’t spread it all around like a gossip, i only politely asked ( ♡ ) them to remove it and not do it again after unfollowing them. i didn’t even block them ’cause i thought they’d have the decency to talk to me. in the end, i was just ignored ’cause they are online again, and the stolen theme is still there.
i’m also bringing this up ’cause i know that many people here have also had their themes plagiarized before, and if this person was capable of plagiarizing me while following me, they could do it to other people. i hope people understand that it’s not okay to do this, and it costs nothing to simply ask if you can use it as inspiration. i don’t think it’s fair to attack someone for this and i don’t want it to happen; this is just to expose the situation and so that i can get some kind of an answer. 🤍
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