Last month, I wrote an article about being adopted by a British couple during the era of China’s one-child policy. Three days after the story ran in a national newspaper, my phone buzzed with a flurry of messages from a friend who had sent me a TikTok post by an influencer telling her life story to camera. Twenty seconds into her video, my jaw plummeted. She had recited entire sections of my article, word for word, to her 20,000 followers. She didn’t even have the courtesy to give me a credit.
When I wrote that piece, the idea of exposing personal details of my life to scrutiny or criticism was terrifying. Even so, it felt right to share this story in the hope that others might find comfort if they too had had similar experiences. What I wasn’t expecting was for someone to take my words and claim them as their own.
The influencer spoke of her adoption but she took sections of the article in which I discussed my intimate thoughts and feelings, and passed these off as her own. She recited how “in my early twenties, I measured my self-worth in how many matches I got on Tinder or how many boys I was texting”, and having “imagined a childhood in China and being raised by my biological parents”. Taking the exact phrases I had written, she reposted them to her followers, and then thanked users in the comments when they complimented her. I understand that imitation is the highest form of flattery but this was blatant stealing.
I commented on the video: “Have you heard of plagiarism?” Soon afterwards, her husband appeared in my DMs on Instagram. He told me I wasn’t “the only Asian in the world adopted in that time frame”, dismissed me as “not that special” and even claimed I had copied his wife’s original videos. I called them both crazy and immediately blocked him.
After this, I felt I had to set the record straight. So the next morning I made a video arguing that the influencer was plagiarising my work and included clips of her video alongside my article as proof. In response to my TikTok, she and her husband posted a video, insisting: “Her story and experience is also my story and experience … I did not steal her story.” Hours later she posted another video, apologising for using my words and saying she was sorry for any hurt feelings, and that her intent was not “malicious”. She also messaged me privately to apologise.
Plagiarism – passing off someone else’s words or ideas as your own without sourcing or credit – is a career-ending offence in most industries. At university, it was drilled into me that you could be expelled if your essay included too much text that borrowed from existing work without giving it credit. The message was explicit: you do not plagiarise.
Yet on social media the message is far more ambiguous. While TikTok explains that copyright protects “original works of authorship” and bans users from posting content that infringes anyone else’s intellectual property, it also states that copyright does not extend to underlying ideas: “For example, a person may own the copyright to a film, but not the underlying plot or themes that are expressed in the film.” With Instagram, the platform encourages creators to post original content, but in practice plagiarism and infringement often go unnoticed unless a creator spots and reports it themselves. YouTube, at least, has built-in systems that can scan videos and let rights holders set the rules, but there is little to protect smaller creators whose ideas are stolen, or when work is lifted from across the internet.
Platforms thrive on mimicry. Originality is rare. So much so that when someone creates something new, it’s often copied by thousands of others in a matter of hours, with little or no credit given to the original creator.
The media critic and gaming YouTuber Harry Brewis, also known as Hbomberguy, made a video on plagiarism in 2023 which became a surprise hit (it has clocked up some 38m views to date). He gave 17 examples where YouTube creators had stolen words, content and ideas from smaller creators or online forums, observing that “plagiarists seem to have this belief that they are better than their targets…: ‘Your ideas are wasted on you. They’d be much better served in my videos.’”
Aspiring creators need content to help them gain followers, and established creators reliant on advertising revenue need to churn out content at pace. Any work, be it a piece of writing or a video, requires time and effort, but the incentive is to make a lot of work, quickly. In theory, audiences prize originality and fresh, exciting content – but for creators who post every day, publishing new content so often is unrealistic, leading some to copy and imitate others.
The line between inspiration and theft can easily become blurred. An original idea trends when people are able to take a concept and make it their own, allowing memes and in-jokes to develop. Once enough people replicate an idea, it transforms into a trend and the source often disappears entirely. Take, for example, the Nothing beats a Jet2 holiday trend, which has inspired some 2.9m videos. Creators have taken the sound from the Jet2holidays advert and overlaid it on clips of things going spectacularly wrong – a tent catching fire, someone flying off a boat – turning the original ad into something entirely new.
The flip side of this is that once an idea exists online, it’s regarded as fair game to copy without credit. My video went viral, with thousands of users in the comments supporting me and debating online plagiarism. My story then gained another life. Other creators posted “drama” and explainer videos of the situation I had already outlined in my video. I was delighted to see the situation sparking a wider debate, but I couldn’t help but be sceptical of their motivations. Were the people now weighing in on the story doing so to shed light on plagiarism or to chase views?
At its best the internet can be a space where people share stories and ideas, and where creativity inspires more creativity. Giving credit is non negotiable. It creates a positive cycle where new ideas build on old ones, and where the time and effort someone has put into their work is recognised. In giving credit where it’s due, creators may feel incentivised to create rather than race to produce quick shareable content in the fear that their work might be stolen. Originality deserves celebration – and not to be reduced to simply content mined for virality.
Esme Hewitt is a freelance journalist
