It was quite hard for me to write this post.
I went to school with this girl “Priyam Das” who opened a blog called “Weekend Bites” few days after mine. I felt very happy to see her cooking and blogging so passionately. After a few months, I went to her site to check her work when I found out that her word styles are similar to mine; her life incidents are exact replica of mine. I posted a light status update on my Facebook by stating this fact and I thought she would get some hint from that and stop doing so.
Nothing happened – she kept blogging by copying my words, word styles, recipes – I showed this to a multiple friends of mine. And every single person said the same thing – “She just copies you” however her grammar and spellings are quite pathetic. I still kept mum for months as my parents said “What’s the point of shaming a childhood friend of yours?” And I obeyed our friendship, ignored and moved on. Last week, a friend of mine liked her post and it showed up on my Facebook timeline. I went to check her photo as it was very similar to mine. I still did not believe she processed my picture until my husband ran an image analysis test where it came as 100% match.
She lifted my photo, rotated horizontally, blurred the background, removed the green flag on top, and pasted her logo – this is her photo after editing mine.
She has removed the photo now and edited her ‘chicken burger’ post, where she has used the ‘veg burger’ photo of mine. I was upset more than mad at her. Not only she butchered our 15 years long friendship, she has violated the ethics of an artist.
It takes an average of 8 to 9 hours for me to create, style and shoot a set of photos for a blog post. I ordered special burger bun for this burger shot. I spoke with Bart and researched for a week how to style it. I prepared the patty, styled and shot it. My husband made the organic flag; we worked from 8 to 4 that day. After that I processed the photos for 2-3 hours. I put my heart and sweat into this burger which she did not think twice to lift and use it for her site.
When you see your work is being abused by someone – how do you feel?
P.S (Edited and added) : She has audacity to say I did ‘unethical’.
This is the response I got from her : Dolphia..whatever happed that’s realy bad so lets sort it..nd if u r talking about friendship then let me remind u that whatever u have done also unethical…nd lets not make it public in our respective fb profile and blogs…so i thought of msg u rather posting something bad about u and ur blog in your page..that wll be bad,so plz remove my name and print screen images and blog link if possible from ur blog and also the post from your fb page…still u can wright something against me just go ahead b don”t use my name…if u r hurt then i felt sorry but i am hurt to….keep blogging and posting but don’t use or spoil someones name in public…if u have any issuse just msg me…..i knw we both blocked each other….hope my poor grammer and english make it clear everything…and plz keep this msg between u nd me;don’t make it public..thanks
So sorry to hear this Dolphia. I understand the effort that goes into blogging, and there are people who take things for granted. It is a bad world out there! Stay strong dear!
I got to say Dolphia, thats really clever of her to do that. I wouldnt have thought about it, ever! The time and efforts she put into this could have helped her go forward doing some original work.
Dolphia, If people are copying you, be happy; you have something people want to learn/take (although the unethical way, that being their choice) !! Keep doing ur good work, surround yourself with positive things in life and let go of whats not meant for you. Peace, Hugs !!!
Babe, Checking your page after a long time. It really hurts me to see that there are such people around our community. You are such a lovely person with absolute love and passion for what you do. Just dont let these hurdles affect your passion and keep strong and what you are doing. Lots of Love