Burglary!
At first, I didn’t know if I should be flattered or angered by this, but I recently found out that another blogger has been copying and pasting my posts, almost verbatim, into his website. Who is this person that’s been ripping me off? Why it’s no other than Christopher Peek, a standup comic/magician who lives in Birmingham, Alabama. That’s right, a fucking magician. Christopher, I know you are reading this. You’ve been coming to my site almost everyday since late December, looking for material to pass off as your own.
Actually, Christopher, when I discovered you were a magician “slash” standup comic who works the Birmingham, Alabama bar circuit, I was slightly embarrassed that you were stealing from me. Then I went back through your site and found all the other comedians, bloggers, and magazines that you’ve been habitually robbing over the past year or so. A partial list includes Elephant Larry’s Group Blog, My Blog is Poop, The Best Week Ever Blog, and New York Magazine. Pretty nice company to be in, if you ask me. I mean, I can see trying to steal from me. My website gets less than a hundred visitors on an average day. But New York Magazine? Jesus Christ, what were you thinking?
Keep reading for the full story on how we found this guy, screenshots of his site, an almost-complete list of the people he ripped off.
On Monday, I noticed I was getting a lot of hits from some livejournal pages. I didn’t really know what live journal was, so I clicked on over. I couldn’t find any links to my site, but then I noticed somebody had posted one of my latest entries under the heading “End of the Week Funny.” That’s nice, I thought, someone has included me in his end of the week wrap-up of funny things he found online. Then I realized, no, it’s not a wrap-up of things he found that are funny, it’s a bunch of funny things he supposedly wrote. I scrolled down some more and found some more of my posts. Then I found some from Elephant Larry’s site. I also noticed that Christopher Peek, had been slightly altering some of them, changing people’s names and phrases. Here’s some screenshots:
From my site.
From His Site. Thief!
Here’s one he took from Elephant Larry:
From Elephant Larry, delightful men of honor.
From Chris Peek, bastard of the apocalypse.
The weird thing about the above post, is that he stole a personal story from somebody. That’s more than thievery, that’s borderline personality disorder. Most of the stuff he stole from other people were sort of feature-type content. Such as this, from My Blog is Poop.
Excellent Stuff, My Blog Is Poop.
So excellent, that Chris Peek paid you the compliment of passing it off as his own.
Chris also changed his post to read “My buddy Ty,” instead of “My roommate Eric.” Excellent handiwork, there, Chris. I’m personally amazed that I was able to crack that case.
I was absolutely amazed that he tried to get away with this one:
Damn, Chris! That is a good idea. Where in the world did you come up with that?
Oh, right.
Chris, I’m no expert on the showbiz industry, but I’d hazard a guess that it’s not a good idea to try to rip off material that can be seen on Comedy Central. Or on Nick Kroll’s website.
I have about 20 more screen captures of stuff he took, but it’s way too much to post. Here’s the partial list, in order that I, along with the help of friends, discovered them, of people he ripped stuff off from.
Me
Elephant Larry
My Blog is Poop
The Best Week Ever Blog
I Love The 30’s
New York Magazine
Toothpaste For Dinner
I’m sure there are a lot more, but I haven’t gone far enough back in his archives to check. So if I’ve left anybody off, I’m sorry, and feel free to contact me and let me know.
Oh, and I found this original Chris post particularly ironic.
Where, indeed, Chris? Where, indeed?
Update: The above Chapelle joke was also from The Best Week Ever Blog, and it was written by Bob from My Blog Is Poop. My head is spinning.
And if you would like to book Chris for a comedy gig or children’s birthday party, he was kind enough to post his new business card online. Scroll through his posts to find it.
Like I said, there’s way too much stuff on his page for me to post here. So if you’re a comic, a blogger, a writer, know any people that fit those descriptions, or have ever posted something online in the past two years, I suggest you head on over to Chris’ livejournal page and tell him how much love his stuff. And be sure to tell him how much you loved it when you wrote it/saw it on someone else’s site. And make sure to check out his comments section, where he graciously accepts thanks for the stuff he’s written. That’s probably my favorite part.
I’ll be putting links to all of Chris’ sites later on today or tomorrow. Never Mind, I won’t.
And thanks to whoever linked to my site through your livejournal page. I couldn’t figure out who it was, but somebody must have found out what Chris was doing, and linked to me. So thank you, shadowy figure. You are the Deep Throat to my “Woodstein,” except, unlike Watergate, this scandal is probably only interesting to about 50 people.
UPDATE: Well, that was fast. After we posted a few comments on this guy’s site, he immediately removed all the stuff he had stolen, which appears to have been about 75 percent of his blog. I decided against linking to his site. No need to give him any more attention.
I sincerely hope this will be my first and last internet fight. Unless I find someone talking shit about “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” Then, it’s on.
