You’re a teenage girl,
confused by life, I am sure.
Aren’t we all?
And so you grope for some kind of
approval.
You make friends on message boards.
And you seek to impress them.
So you lift poetry from others,
and post it as your own.
You take bits of people’s souls,
pieces of their hearts,
and you call those pieces yours.
You take the girl at the train station, the empty tire swing, the late movie,
and what else Selene?
What else of my soul and my heart
have you taken and called your own?
On a hunch and a whim, I googled “the girl at the train station†and found our thief Selene. The Underground Man has accurately described my initial feelings. For Chrissakes, she even stole a response on her site to my “empty tire swing†and posted it under my thread here (under the name of “dollâ€). When I responded to doll, she stole my response and posted it under her thread to the person who made the original response!
On the other hand, I have at least now determined my demographic audience. Teenage girls apparently. Hmm…that might have been useful back when I was a teenage boy…
Can anything be done? Indeed. I don’t see what. I suppose this is the risk when one posts a piece of one’s writing openly on the internet. Probably it happens all the time. It makes one stop and think about whether this is the best way to convey one’s stuff. Maybe not. The experience has forced me to reconsider posting my poetry here in a forum like this.
I suppose if there was one thing I could do, it would be to try to appeal to Selene and all the potential Selenes out there. We know she visits here obviously. I would have something to say to her, something helpful, I think, it she wanted to hear it…if she wanted to contact me here, either publicly or via PM. If she had the courage to come clean, and contact me, I think she’d get something out of the experience. Maybe something of some value. She might even find some forgiveness. If she would just do that.
I can understand your being reluctant to post further work here, rainey. To be honest, I’m not sure what I would do if I was in your situation. It’s a terrible dilemma…
Have you tried to post anything on this girlie forum? We could have a group of us ILPers join it and assert your authorship (or anyone else’s) in the event of further thefts.
One piece of advice I would offer is to not waste any time trying to “reform” this person. The fact that she (if it’s a she) is capable of blatantly and brazenly plagiarising with no apparent regret or guilt shows that she is, at least in part, fucked in the head (to use a technical term). Chances are she’ll come a cropper in RL soon enough, and I for one won’t feel sorry for her when she does.
Edit: you’re right about the element of flattery, DEB, but I don’t think that’s any consolation…
Ah! I love it CS. I think I’ll start using it around and see how far I can take it. “Come a cropper.” Nice.
Fellas, I don’t think banning is the answer. She could come clean over there and confess to the members the origin of the poems. I think that would do her more good. She has the opportunity to do that even now. She has the opportunity to do the right thing. It wouldn’t be an easy thing for her to do, but it would make her stronger in the long run and she could begin owning more of herself and her life. And borrowing bits and pieces from somebody else’s life would become more and more unattractive to her. It would also help rid her of the guilt that I know she must - on some level - surely be feeling.
Yep, confession is good for the soul. That’s what I would recommend, if I was going to recommend something for our friend Selene.
I am reminded of the horse whisperer who claimed he could train mules just by whispering in their ears. A fellow who was finding it impossible to deal with his mule decided to let the horse whisperer try to train it. So he brought his beloved mule to the horse whisperer who took the mule into his barn where he grapped a baseball bat and hit the mule, THWACK, right between the eyes.
“What are you doing?” cried the horrified owner, “I thought you said you could train him by whisperering in his ear”.
“I can”, said the horse whisperer calmly, “but I have to get his attention first”.
Sorry to disagree with you rainey. I think this one should be hit right between the eyes with a ban. I’d be willing to negotiate a threatened ban providing she post a written apology to the ILP creative writing forum.
Write to the chief admin of the site, outlining (with links) how your work has been plagiarised/stolen. Ask for the admin to threaten to ban the thief unless ‘she’ admits both here and there that she stole the pieces and that they are not her own work. If that doesn’t work, then expose ‘her’ as a fraud. I’d be happy to help you, because this is fucking pathetic.
It’s not a cry for help. It’s a form of narcism where she is in so much need for acceptance - possibly looking not only for acceptance from the wider community but probably from someone specific. In her case, it doesn’t seem to matter that her ‘poetry’ is not her own, but she seems to feed off the positive affirmation she receives from her ‘peers’.
She doesn’t want help. She wants adoration.
Actually we all do it to a far lesser degree.
Leave her be. She will see this thread when she comes back to source more…if she would be so inclined, her conscience will be awakened. She doesn’t need to own up to anything…she simply needs to take the lesson with her.
I was hoping you’d weigh in on this angel. Thanks. That it’s not a conscious one doesn’t make it any less a cry for help. There’s a level somewhere where this confused girl is seeking assistance. One needs to realize the sheer weight of fear and insecurity that is burdening her to understand why she would go to such lengths to try to capture the affirmation you mention. She’ll become consciously aware of this the moment she begins thinking through her actions and starts to see what she’s really been doing, and why. Hopefully coming back and seeing this thread will allow that to begin to happen.
I agree with leaving her be. I hold out hope that her conscience will, in fact, become awakened. But owning up to her actions goes hand in hand with this I think, a natural consequence, something that will become obvious in her mind to do, albeit difficult. She doesn’t need to own up to me, but she’s deceived the people at teenink.com, a wrong that she has the power to make right. If she takes that power she’ll begin owning a little more of herself.
Who knows? Maybe when she owns enough of herself and begins to live a more authentic life, she’ll decide to put some of that life in her own words and post an original poem or two.
Rainey… I know you may feel you can bring yourself to forgive this person, but without feeling the karma of their actions, how can they change for the better? Causality is a beautiful thing and I say here and now, if you have not already or choose not to engage in the utmost measure of revenge possible, I will personally do it myself. People who do this shit make me sick and as a physical response I would desire to beat the living daylights out of one who so does such a thing. What really lights my fire is not just that this person had the stupidity to steal your beautiful work (and it is remarkably beautiful), but that people on that site reply with adoration and reverence. Such a person should not deserve such attention, unless it is the absolute most negative.
So… my proposition is… I will personally become a member of that forum and expose the bitch within the thread itself and everyone on the site will see what a hack this person is. Such is this a justifiable punishment for one who does such a thing.
