Copycats (1): David Copierfield
David Copierfield came to mind when I stumbled upon a social media copycat feeding off Wikipedia articles on proverbs.
Copierfield was a writer by... well, by someone else's trade. He had perfected the "ancient" art of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, wielding it with such finesse that he could claim entire novels rivaling Charles Dickens's as his own—in just a couple of days.
The first time he was caught, the scandal was minor. He had "borrowed" a few lines from a famous poet, thinking no one would notice. When confronted, he chuckled and blamed the alignment of the stars for the oversight. "A simple clerical error," he said with a grin. But then, his posts grew bolder. Whole paragraphs lifted from bestsellers began appearing on his social media, word for word. His followers, at first in awe of his "talent," started to catch on. "Haven't I read this before?" they wondered. Indeed, they had— in a Nobel Prize-winning novel.
Exposure came swiftly, yet Copierfield remained undeterred. Public apologies were beneath him. Instead, he posted a lengthy update—eerily similar to a famous philosopher's essay—explaining that ideas were universal. And words? Well, weren't they meant to be shared? When critics started questioning his moral compass, he calmly seized entire speeches about integrity from history's luminaries and published them with the caption: I AM ALL FOR ORIGINALITY.
For some strange reason, Copierfield remained a hero to a small group of admirers who praised his brazenness. “A gutsy maverick!” they declared. “Who else but Copierfield could plagiarize his way out of the Copyright Bombardment unscathed?”
"Unite, copycats! Let's beat every last literary genius with his/her own words. You have nothing but copyrights to lose!"
Candidate Copierfield is running for Copycat-in-chief.
图文：蓝灵