# The most obscure thing you had "plagiarized" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 22, 2016, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719 "2016-11-22T03:37:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/1 "2016-11-22T03:37:12Z")
Quotations because I don’t genuinely believe it was stolen…though if back in the day SNL writers sifted through the Cecil Adams newsgroup for ideas I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyhoo…i once posted as a joke, “Hey! Carl Weathers should run for governor!. 'I’m Carl Weathers, and I was in Predator too! Vote for me!!” Sure enough it showed up as a skit a while later. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/2 "2016-11-22T09:28:41Z")
The Saudi ambassador to Norway (or probably someone on his staff), in an opinion piece in the paper, plagiarized two sentences from an opinion piece I wrote a few months earlier. They were word for word what I wrote. There were no other google hits on that combination of words. I didn’t find any other close phrases. And the second sentence didn’t really fit into the context. My guess is that someone was told to write a rebuttal, googled for other rebuttals and cut and pasted them together, but I didn’t find any loans from other texts in my quick attempt to confirm the hypothesis. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/3 "2016-11-22T09:51:32Z")
One time my brother’s then-wife was talking about the sun and she called it “A gigantic nuclear furnace”. She hadn’t heard the They Might Be Giants song. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/4 "2016-11-22T10:04:02Z")
Not sure if you can call it plagiarised as such, but [I made this image](http://guanolad.com/stuff/moon_orientation.jpg) for a thread here on the SDMB, and it has shown up since in places like [here](https://www.quora.com/Do-all-countries-read-the-moon-in-the-same-direction), [here](https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/ot-the-evolution-of-craters-on-our-moon--95100/), and rather surprisingly [here](https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=4844.0). ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/5 "2016-11-22T10:48:18Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Not sure if you can call it plagiarised as such, but [I made this image](http://guanolad.com/stuff/moon_orientation.jpg) for a thread here on the SDMB, and it has shown up since in places like [here](https://www.quora.com/Do-all-countries-read-the-moon-in-the-same-direction), [here](https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/ot-the-evolution-of-craters-on-our-moon--95100/), and rather surprisingly [here](https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=4844.0). I was about to speculate on what the flat earth people make of that, then I clicked on your last link. Do you know the scene with the awesome map people on Big Block of Cheese Day? [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eLqC3FNNOaI/hqdefault.jpg "Why are we changing maps? (from The West Wing)") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLqC3FNNOaI) ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/6 "2016-11-22T11:22:52Z")
I had a couple of poems that I posted on a poetry forum turn up on someone’s website as their work. Joke’s on them though, they were crap ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 12:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/7 "2016-11-22T12:01:42Z")
Several of my stories were translated into Spanish and published in an online magazine in Argentina. ---
**Author:** ![Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Harvey\_The\_Heavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harvey_The_Heavy)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/8 "2016-11-22T12:27:25Z")
If you GIS “Van Halen Gene Simmons Demo”, the first result is from [this article](http://www.kissasylum.com/news/2012/01/06/van-halen-debuts-song-77-gene-simmons-demos/) using album art I created. I don’t have much artistic output. ---
**Author:** ![ftg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ftg/32/2801_2.png) [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/9 "2016-11-22T14:07:38Z")
Quasi-plagiarism: Many, _many_ years ago, I thought of and wrote on a office blackboard “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.” About a half year later I heard it on _The Tonight Show_. (I strongly suspect it predates my invention by a decade or two.) Real plagiarism: A textbook took the intro paragraphs of one of my papers and used it with minor changes. E.g., “this paper” became “that paper”. I sent a letter to the authors and to the publisher of my paper. Never heard anything back but the 2nd printing had the text completely redone. Of course I’ve had research results stolen and published without credit. It happens a lot. Some of the most famous people in the field, including one top prize winner, did this on a regular basis. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/10 "2016-11-22T14:27:51Z")
Tangentially, Facebook admitted to using my likeness without permission in advertisements. The class action lawsuit, Fraley v. Facebook, Inc. resulted in a $15 check arriving yesterday! ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/11 "2016-11-22T14:32:15Z")
There’s a topic I’ve written extensively on, over a couple of decades, including a keystone reference book and several papers. It’s not unusual to see my stuff cited (it’s a small field), but I frequently see my unique terms and phrasing in other people’s writings. The ones that crack me up are dry humor or tongue-in-cheek comments that the borrower doesn’t recognize as such… ---
**Author:** ![Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/channing_idaho_banks/32/250_2.png) [@Channing\_Idaho\_Banks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Channing_Idaho_Banks)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/12 "2016-11-22T14:47:25Z")
Does it count if your significant other starts using _ **your** _ go-to lines? ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/13 "2016-11-22T14:49:00Z")
I can’t remember the exact terms I used but I once explained a major power grid outage to my CEO as something like “chance encounter of human error, one man-made force and two natural forces”. The statement was just enough off center that it would have been very unusual for someone else to describe it that way. Days later my exact statement word for word was all over the news feeds. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/14 "2016-11-22T14:53:57Z")
I said that Trumps hair looked like a mutant headcrab that had eaten his brain. Headcrabs are licensed characters from Half-Life / Valve. ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/15 "2016-11-22T15:46:17Z")
In my last pre-retirement job, I used to tell everyone I was a freekin’ ray of sunshine - even had it written across my whiteboard. Imagine my surprise when I saw that phrase on t-shirts for sale! They owe me!!! ---
**Author:** ![Dale\_Sams](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/779978/32.png) [@Dale\_Sams](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dale_Sams)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/16 "2016-11-22T16:17:07Z")
If you see a skit called “Kanye Westworld”…you guys are my witnesses… ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/17 "2016-11-22T17:05:58Z")
On the now-defunct website “Literally, A Web Blog”, I posted something I had heard the announcers say during a football game - [see this link from the Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/web/20061006044556/http://literally.barelyfitz.com/). If you don’t care to click, I posted that one of the announcers had said “the Giants literally put a bullet in the heads of the Eagles”, to which I added “Well, no wonder they won!”. A few weeks later, I got an email from the\* Harvard Crimson\* informing me that someone had plagiarized my comment, among others, in an article they had written. [Here is the _Crimson’s_ statement on the plagiarism.](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/10/26/editors-note-this-past-monday-the/) ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/18 "2016-11-22T17:23:03Z")
I had a limerick reprinted on someone’s personal website. It was attributed, though. They had aggregated a bunch of jokes with supernatural themes and I guess they decided the limerick was close enough to a joke. ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/19 "2016-11-22T17:53:26Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Several of my stories were translated into Spanish and published in an online magazine in Argentina. Whoa!, which one? ---
**Author:** ![NeonMadman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58f4c7/32.png) [@NeonMadman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NeonMadman)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2016, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719/20 "2016-11-22T21:45:21Z")
Not exactly plagiarism, but this story deals with an idea possibly being lifted from my writing - or not, who knows? I’ve been a comic book fan for over half a century now. Back in the 1980s, I didn’t care for the direction the industry was going in. Rather than telling stories in individual comics magazines, as they always had, the stories were being stretched out over multiple issues and subsequently collected into trade paperback volumes - much as is still being done today. Back then, it was a fairly new innovation, though. Continued stories had been common since the 1960s, but the idea of story arcs and later collections is what was new. And I didn’t care for it. I missed - and still miss - the days when you could buy a used comic book at a bookstore or thrift store and be pretty sure that you would get a whole story in the book (or possibly more than one, but they would be complete stories with beginnings, middles and ends). It seemed to me that the comics companies were taking advantage of their readers by, in effect, trying to sell them the same story twice. Also, it seemed to me at the time that there had come to be a new emphasis on fancy, pin-up style artwork with a corresponding de-emphasis on telling good stories, which I also disliked. Anyway, at some point I became concerned enough about the trends to write a letter to the editors of the weekly newspaper, _Comics Buyers’ Guide_, which, at the time, was probably the primary source of news and information for comics fans. The letter was published, the editors responded, and that was that. I had had my say. But in my screed objecting to the new practice of releasing stories in multiple parts in the comics magazines only to later release the same stories complete in single volumes, I said something like the following: “It seems to me that if the writers and artists want to tell a story that will eventually be released as a book, then they ought to skip the magazine serialization and just release it as a book in the first place. After all, when Stephen King writes a new novel, he doesn’t release it in several parts first, and then later as a whole book in one volume.” Now I knew that Stephen King read _CBG_; he had even had letters published in it himself from time to time. And, about a year, maybe a little more, after my letter was published, Stephen King released the novel, _The Green Mile_. In six parts, at first, then later in a single volume. I don’t \*know \*that he got the idea from me, but I’ve certainly wondered about it all these decades. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-most-obscure-thing-you-had-plagiarized/772719.md?page=2)