Shia LaBeouf’s Weird Plagiarism Case

On December 17, 2014 Shia LaBeouf released his short film Howard Cantour.com. It did not take long for sharp eyes to detect the uncanny resemblance to a comic strip by famous creator Daniel Clowes.

LaBeouf took to Twitter to apologize for the mishap. Funny enough, even his mea culpa tweet seems to be plagiarized!

LaBeouf obviously does not know how to apologize. His tweet “[getting] lost in the creative process” doesn’t justify ripping off Daniel Clowes, especially considering the amount of time and work Clowes put into it.

LeBeouf also answered numerous questions about the origins of the short movie without pointing out that he adapted it from the comic strip,

Funny enough, even his apology about his plagiarism seems to be plagiarized! Andrew Hake noticed on Twitter that LaBeouf has already been caught once before in plagiarizing an apology. It seems that LaBeouf prefers trolling the Internet to find "his" apology instead of writing it himself.

According to Andrew S. Allen “We were led to believe by Shia and the filmmaking team that the story and script for HowardCantour.com was completely original,. There is a global outcry about the uncredited use of Daniel Clowes’ work. That didn’t come until it hit online. If it wasn’t for the legions of online Clowes fans, this may never have come to light.

As curators of a powerful but under-appreciated medium like short film where filmmakers spend years of work to make little or no money, the recognition you get from your work, and therefore attribution, is often all you have, so we take it seriously. Until Clowes grants permission and is credited in the work, we’ve pulled the film offline.”

Meanwhile on Twitter, users came together with the tongue-in-cheek hashtag #shialaboeuffilms to offer some suggestions for future projects LaBoeuf could create that would also be “inspired by someone else’s idea”:

Shia LaBeouf tried to close the unpleasant incident by stating that his behavior, tweets, plagiarism and public apologies were all part of his "performance art" for a project called #stopcreating. Guess what? He got the idea from Joaquin Phoenix.

Curious minds want to know - was that LaBoeuf's final act of plagiarism?

The Vatican’s Painful Typo – How Jesus became Lesus

The Vatican wanted to commemorate Pope Francis’ first year of reign with a medal.

The Italian State Mint created and minted a few thousand medals in gold, silver and bronze for purchase.

The medals feature the Pontiff’s coat of arms and motto and went on sale on October8, 2013. Soon after, it was noticed that “Jesus” was misspelled as “Lesus” in Pope Francis’ motto.

His official motto is Vidit ergo Jesus publicanum, et quia miserando atque eligendo vidit, ait illi, “Sequere me” [Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he sees by having mercy and by choosing, he says to him, “follow me”]

Once the typo was detected, Vatican officials quickly recalled thousands of medals slated for sale to collectors. However, four of the “flawed” medals were already snapped up by collectors before the embarrassing mistake was detected, which makes their value soar.

According to Francesco Santarossa, a coin and stamp shop owner close to St. Peter’s Square, no such a mistake has ever happened before in the 600-year-long history of papal medals.

In the current social media age, puns like “Lesus” Christ. “I blame the Lesuits” quickly made the rounds on Twitter.

Moral of the story: also the Vatican needs a good proofreader! Quod est demonstrandum!

Social Media Spinning Out of Control in Sweden – The Sonja Abrahamsson Case

The Swedish government wanted to promote Sweden as a vacation destination, and came up with an innovative idea: let a citizen tweet on the official @sweden account for one week.

It all went well until the account was handed over to Sonja Abrahamsson. She can only be described as a train rack. May be she is channeling Chelsea Handler, but whatever the reason, it went sadly wrong. She tweeted about a lot of issues (most of them anti-Semitic and anti-gay), which made the whole well-intended social media experiment an international laughing stock.

She happily tweeted the following on behalf of the Swedish Nation:

“What’s the fuzz with Jews? You can't even see if a person is a Jew, unless you see their penises, and even if you do, you can't be sure!?”

“In Nazi German they even had to sew stars on their sleeves. If they didn't, they could never now who was a Jew and who was not a Jew.”

“Where I come from there are no Jews. I guess it’s a religion. But why were the Nazis talking about races? Was it a blood-thing (for them)?”

After bashing Jews, our Sonja went on to tweet (under the influence of vodka or illegal substances?):

“Oh strawberries… dripping with milk and urine. So tasty… “

“I found some pics I've shopped on da computer. This pic I call "hungry gay with aids"

It seems that Ms. Sonja Abrahamsson (Twitter name Sonja Abraham) is a mother. (Social Services anyone? Please save her kids!). She tweeted on the official Sweden twitter account about her kids: “Sometimes I just look at my children and think about the time when they had my vagina round their neck.”

And when she did tweet something positive about her native country, it went like this:

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“I seriously need to get some eggs before I starve like an African child. Even if it’s not possible. In Sweden we have great social security.”

Ms. Abrahamsson (Judasson would be a better name!) describes herself as a “27-year old womanlike human being from Northern Sweden. . . In the autumn we had to pick up potatoes, in the winter we shoveled snow, in the spring we were confused and the summer forced us into growing thick skin and made us the bad motherf*ckers we are. Because of the big swarms of mosquitoes [sic] that will drain you on blood until death unless you can take it.”  Charming.Reminds me of a person I once met from Luleå.

She claims to be a columnist at Nyheter24. Nyheter24.se describes itself as “a modern news site with relevant news coverage for a target audience of 15 - 39 years of age”.  If so, I strongly advise them to fire her on the spot. There is no excuse for this kind of hate tweets.

Lesson to be learned: never let anyone tweet on your behalf without supervision!

Sonata Twitterata

It’s no secret that I love social media, like most writers. I am on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

(Feel free to contact to me on any of these social platforms!) I gave MySpace a pass – I test drove it, and didn’t like the spam I got.

Twitter is the latest Hot Thing – until something else comes around. It seems that everyone is tweeting to some extend: individuals like you and me, celebrities, and companies.

The tricky part with Twitter is that your “mini-blog posting” must be limited to 140 characters. This poses a huge challenge to the best of us. Tweeting about simple things is easy “going on vacation”, “still stuck in traffic”. If needed, a link or a shortened link (TinyURL) can be added in case you read a great article you want to share (or, as in my case, entice Twitterati to go to my recently published short story "Revenge will come....."– hint, hint!)

In case you wonder, yes, you can follow anyone you want to your heart’s content without being a stalker….hurray for cyberspace!

But I would never have thought that Twitterati could be such a source of amusement! (The word Twitterati is my invention; sounds a heck of a lot better than “twits” – ask any Brit for that connotation! The singular form is Twitterarus (m) or Twitterata (f) – Julius Caesar would have been proud of this. Come to think of it, he probably would have tweeted about his good-for-nothing relatives and of course about De Bello Gallico from the Forum Romanum, during senate meetings, and from the battle fields).

US politicians (already an ongoing source of media fodder for global comic relief) have embraced Twitter as well. It should come as no surprise that the two most prominent political Twitterati are…..Sarah Palin and Arnold Schwarzenegger!
Let’s start with our “I’ve gone fishing” Alaskan huntress. She twittered: “& mamma bear doesn’t look 2 anyone else 2 hand her anything; biologist say she works harder than males, is provide/protector for the future”.

In response, Durer’s rhino promptly quipped: “We have learned today that: bears are Real Americans that don't ask for or take handouts; and male bears are deadbeats and just sit around the forest in their boxers eating salmon and drinking berry juice.”

OK, her tweet might be a bit simple, but at least she is clever enough not the address major issues – or is she? Think again: our favorite pit bull with lipstick decided to respond to a new report on ethics charges against her on Twitter. She happily tweeted: “Re inaccurate story floating re:ethics violation/Legal Defense Fund;matter is still pending;new info was just requested even;no final report.”

My dear Saraleh, please listen to your legal team and don’t tweet about such sensitive topics! You should have stuck to your original statement calling any allegation that the defense fund accepted any inappropriate donations "misguided and factually in error." (That’s my advice as a lawyer – free of charge!)

She is not alone in her twitter blundering – our Ahnold is not far behind. Under his watch, the California deficit is a staggering $26 billion (try to figure out how you would spend that kind of dough to enhance your lifestyle!)
After negotiating a deal that will (hopefully) close the gap, Schwarzenegger posted a puzzling video message on his Twitter page. In it, the governor is wielding a huge knife, talking about selling state cars signed by the "celebrity governor." Even Aaron McLear, the governor's press secretary, couldn't explain the knife: "I don't know why he is holding a knife. The message is in what he is saying, not what he is holding in his hand."

L.A. residents were heavily underwhelmed by both A.S. and his prop, as illustrated by the comment of local Giovanni Matallane: "he should be focusing on other things besides signing cars and holding a knife ... and being on Twitter."

Matt Littman , a political speech writer and blogger, was even more explicit: “7.3 billion in education cuts ... Kindergarten through college teachers are getting laid off and he wants to talk about signing cars at an auction ... Why doesn't he sign their pink slips?" and ended with the suggestion that the best way for our Arnoldus Twitteratus to proceed, would be to quit – Sarah Palin-style.

Wiser politicians stick to distributing press releases and friendly editorials on their Twitter account. Clever and proper, but hey, what would be the fun of that?! Don't we all love a mishap that could "launch a thousand" tweets?