Earnest/Lum/Waddle/Eggie - he/him - 24 - posts every once in a blue moon - please don't reblog personal posts I make unless they have an "okay to reblog" tag on them but then again i hardly make personal posts anymore anyway lmao - mobile/dashboard header credit to swordknight - icon by miniiinebulaee
I think a lot about the fact that the real genius of Hbomberguy’s plagiarism video was not just the exposé aspect of it but the fact that it so effectively demonstrated WHY plagiarism is bad.
When teachers warned against plagiarism in school, they made it seem like the reason it was bad was because it got you out of doing work. Plagiarism was bad because it was lazy. And that is (1) not a very strong deterrent to students who are only taking this class and writing this paper because they’re forced to and therefore don’t care about the work, and (2) missing the real harm behind the action.
On some level, yeah, plagiarism is bad because it will prevent you from learning how to write well on your own. There’s a real fear that a generation of kids won’t know how to write (which means they won’t know how to think) because they’ll be so used to having an “AI” machine do it for them that they’ll be helpless without it. That is very much a concern. But it’s far from the only issue. Harry laid out the other problems really well:
1. Plagiarism is enshittification. When you have to reword stuff to hide that you’re stealing it, the writing will be clunkier, wordier, more awkward, and less natural-sounding. This makes the piece worse, which isn’t good for anyone. Who needs more bad writing in the world?
2. Plagiarism spreads misinformation. Again, stealing stuff usually requires having to reword things to get around plagiarism checkers. That can make it very easy to (accidentally or purposely) rewrite a sentence to now be false instead of true. This is made worse by the fact that hiding the source of the information makes fact-checking impossible.
3. Plagiarism is anti-educational. If the audience doesn’t know where something came from, they can’t go visit that source to learn more about the topic. They’re prevented from finding any additional knowledge, which makes research—and therefore progress—difficult.
4. Plagiarism makes it impossible for creators to earn a living, thereby making it impossible to create. Funnily enough, this means less material for plagiarists to steal from, so the whole scam is really just a snake eating its own tail. Like all scams, it can’t last long. When plagiarists can make huge profits by stealing and putting out content faster because they’re stealing, the real creators who actually do the work have no chance. They can’t compete because they can’t create as fast as a plagiarist can steal. So they don’t make as much money, which means they can’t live off their work, which in turn means they can’t create anymore. This keeps going until all that’s left is stolen garbage.
There’s a lot to love about that video, but this part in particular is my favorite by far.
i go to the shop and I ask if they have any raspberries. they say no, they used to sell raspberries, but they haven’t had any in stock in the last 15 years. I ask if there’s somewhere else I can go to buy raspberries. They say no, with confidence and pride, they’re the only shop around who has ever sold or will ever sell raspberries. Other shops might sell other fruit, sure, but they have a monopoly on all raspberries forever. I ask if they’re possibly planning on them selling them again in future? they say they can’t tell me that.
on the way home, I encounter someone eating raspberries. I ask and they tell me that they grow their own, they got some seeds from the shop back in The Raspberry Days and kept them. They take me to a field of many beautiful raspberry plants and invite me to pick my own, they’re free for all the town to pick whenever they’d like.
someone comes up behind us. It’s the shop manager, President of Nintendo Shuntaro Furukawa. he hatefully throws a bob-omb that blows up and kills both of us instantly for stealing 200 trillion dollars worth of potential Raspberry Shop That Doesn’t Do Raspberries Anymore profits that they weren’t making and then he turns around to the camera with a big thumbs up and says don’t do piracy or something ok please
“parents rights” folk are some of the most insidiously evil slimeballs imaginable but everyone gives them a pass because of some delusional cultural belief that there’s an inherent nobility in popping some poor bastard into the world that gives one carte blanche to treat them like property for a decade or two
sorry, it’s a GOOD thing if cishet people use non-conforming pronouns or dress in non-conforming ways or whatever else. for one, that person may not be cishet. but more importantly, living in a society where more people feel comfortable exploring their relationship to gender and sexuality is an undoubtedly GOOD thing
”He’s queer baiting! He’s in a skirt!” I thought clothes weren’t gendered? What does a skirt have to do with gender and sexuality? Are you, perhaps, just a little bit bigoted?
“Girls with short hair are never straight.” Yes they are. It’s a haircut. I thought hair didn’t define gender? I thought we were allowed to do whatever we want with our hair? Why does she have to have long hair to be considered straight?
“you can’t use neopronouns, you’re not even non-binary!” I thought pronouns didn’t equal gender. I thought we could use whatever pronouns feels most correct. Why are you gendering these pronoun sets that were literally created to be used by anyone of any identity? Are you possibly trying to govern how other people express or experience gender?
Why are these things inherently queer? Are you stereotyping queer people? Are you trying to say that a specific type of person has to be queer? Why? Are you homophobic and transphobic? No? Then stop being a fucking prick and let people do whatever the fuck they want. Let cishet men wear skirts. Let straight woman have short hair. Let binary people use whatever pronouns they want. Stop pushing gender norms, it’s not progressive.
Stop being a fucking cop about how other people live. It’s free.
Enough of the trope where memory loss undoes the damage or the corruption or whatever. More content where removing memories just removes the context.
The tragedy of needing to grieve and not knowing what or who you lost or why. The angst of having trauma and being denied the awareness that it’s trauma. The suspense of being different somehow and left to wonder how and when. The tension of knowing that something is off and you can’t find where it hurts. The Adventure Zone gets it. Kingdom Hearts gets it.
There is an aching inside you and you don’t know how it got there.
