If you type the words ‘hoka fruit’ in Google, chances are high that the first result would be a travel blog post by me from 2016. Even before the Wikipedia result.
How do I even know this random piece of weird information?
Well, a couple of months back, I noticed that the 4 year old post showed up in my ‘top posts’ section. And that was just weird. Since it was such an old entry. Usually, my top posts comprise of recently published stuff.
Out of curiosity, I just googled a relevant keyword and found out that someone in the Trip Advisor community had copy-pasted my post and passed it off as his own. The post had some 800+ likes. My own blog post – a measly 17 likes I guess.
I was amused and irritated. Not only did I report the post to the Trip Adviser community, I also sent a message to the dude. Told him it was not cool to steal content. I mean, except for changing pictures, he hadn’t even rehashed my post.
Never really followed up after that, but I think the dude deleted the content. This incident came flooding back to me yesterday, after someone who follows me on twitter plagiarized my tweet.
“Should I be offended or flattered?” I asked my friend.
“Imitation is the best form of flattery,” my friend said. And both of us laughed.
Has something like this ever happened to you?