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| I'll just go Ctr+C, Ctr+V and bam! Two plates of pasta! I'm a genius! I get a Pulitzer Prize for this one, right? Right? |
There's a super annoying trend of very lazy bloggers that don't actually write anything and just copy/paste interviews and act like they're quoting them in their posts.
Hey, guess what?
When you do that, you're not quoting or paraphrasing or whatever you cray cray kids call it nowadays. You're not adding your own words to those posts or your own thoughts for that matter. You're copypasta-ing and then linking to the "full article" at the bottom of the page.
That isn't writing. That isn't composing a post. That's nothing more than sheer laziness and an inability to add your own thoughts to the discussion.
Half the time, I find that they've quoted almost, if not all, of the entire interview and then put a link at the end to the original post.
That's not how citations work, that's not how quotations work. That's pretty much plagiarism. *gasp* Oh noes! Not the big "P" word! Oh yes, yes indeedy I done did use it. Because it's the damn truth.
Case in point:
This is a recent post I came across:
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That was the entire post. A paraphrased opening paragraph, two paragraphs of quotes (taken from one paragraph from the original post) taken from an interview on Collider that was three paragraphs long.
Number of original sentences in that post? Three.
Who does that?
Oh wait, that's right.
That guy.
Here's the first two paragraphs of the Collider Article:
But, he talks about horror animation and that other dude talks about 2-D vs. 3-D animation. So it's different, right?
Not really.
The author didn't even bother to come up with their own opening paragraph topic, as it has the same exact one as the Collider article, and then uses some of the same words that the interviewee used.
Really?
Paraphrasing an interview paragraph and then using the same paragraph as a quote?
UGH! LAZY! Bad writer! Bad!
Maybe if they used that as the opener to the post, and then went on to talk about good hand-drawn animated horror films (Such as oh, I don't know, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust?), and other CGI type animated horror films that would've been better with the old school art treatment, then they would've had their own original content. But they didn't. Because that's too hard. For them... I guess...
Now, it would've been a bit different if the title of the post was "Collider's Matt Goldberg Interviewed Brad Bird about Making More Traditional Animated Movies and Wants Them to be Horror and it's Amazeballs!"
But it wasn't. It's this:
Here's the Collider title:
Soooo, the website in question just swapped a few words and added horror movie to the Collider Title.
Hmmm...
Suddenly, overnight (OK, not literally overnight, more like over a period of about 6 months or so) this type of "reporting" or post "writing" has become prevalent on a lot of websites. Not just horror websites, but a lot of places.
I'm talking about it here because recently I've seen a hell of a lot of it on horror sites, and it's so freaking sad. By sad, I mean pathetic. Yup... I'm not a mean person at all. Really. I'm super nice. When I feel like it... sometimes.
I'd like to point out that this is just one of many, many examples that I've come across over the past three months. Next time someone posts an interview, look to see if they link to it, or if the author is the one that conducted the interview for that website. Odds are, the person that wrote the post had absolutely NOTHING to do with the interview process, at all.
So, if lots of people are doing it, what is so wrong about it?
The author is basically taking credit for all the leg work that the author did to get the interview and write the post for their website. And that is a HUGE NO NO for anyone that works in the media as a member of the press.
Who are those people?
Gosh, well any blogger, post writer, Tumblr addict, or anyone that writes a post that reports the news, you silly goose!
I'm not going to define the news for you. If you don't know what it is, you're a potato that's been living in a cave for your entire existence and you don't know how to read.
If you're one of those types of people who compose posts in such a matter you're either doing it because:
1. You don't want to do the work.
OR
2. You don't care and you want to take hits away from the original sources where the article was posted.
It's like taking credit for doing your homework after you steal a paper out of a fellow classmate's hands, scribble your name on the top and then hand it in to the teacher and say that it's your own work.
It's unprofessional and just makes you and your website look really, really bad.
This is unacceptable behavior and it's highly unprofessional. There, I said it. Because someone had to.
You know who you are. Cut it out.
Sincerely,
Your Internet Den Mother.
Play nice out there kids!
OK, I know I said that I wasn't going to post on here anymore... I lied. Tee-hee!
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