If you want to link to this rant, please use this URL.
Hi.
I'm annoyed.
And apparently, you're an art thief.
*evil grin*
No, wait. I bet you aren't.
You're probably just an absurd person who for some bizarre reason thought there was something fun or interesting on this page.
Well, sorry, but I'm afraid you'll be disappointed.
There is nothing even remotely fun on this page.
Just this sadistic rant.
See, people love to steal things on the Internet.
Dunno why.
It's not like all of them steal in real life.
I hope not, at least.
The thing is, it's very annoying when you're an artist of some sort and regularly get reports (or find out on your own) that some random idiot is going around using your art.
Maybe even claiming he made it himself.
Or entering it in contests.
And it's really not fun.
It's depressing.
You know, sitting there and watching somebody get all the credit for your work.
And actually, there are more than just art thieves.
There are people who plagiarize fanfiction.
There are people who copy and paste sections of websites because they can't be bothered to write their own.
There are people who think they're cool if they make their own sites using some unique features from other sites.
You know, it's funny.
I made a style switcher.
And lo and behold - suddenly half of the Pokémon sites on the net have style switchers.
Before I made mine, I had never seen a feature like that on a website - just on a couple of forums.
Funny coincidence that everybody gets the idea just after I did. Hmm.
(I'm not trying to copyright the idea of style switchers or telling people to stop using them at all; I'm just pointing out that people suddenly started doing that after I made one, which I find rather funny.)
And then for this page itself...
There's a password you need to enter at the end [of the alert version], you see.
Or well, it used to be a password; then Internet Explorer introduced some funky security thing which blocked that.
So now, instead of a password, you need to answer a few prompts with OK or Cancel.
(You should write this down somewhere or make sure you remember it) They should be answered, in order, OK OK Cancel OK Cancel OK. If you get it wrong, this rant will loop!
But either way, after I first put a password on this page, people suddenly started making their alert Do Not Click Here pages (which this is kind of based on) require a password at the end.
Hmm, wonder how they thought of that.
The problem is, some of them put a twist on it so it wouldn't be an exact copy.
By NEVER TELLING THE USER THE PASSWORD.
And then they have to sit there and guess...
Or the password is the answer to a question posed in the Do Not Click Here, and the answer is at some other page of the site.
Basically making people stuck unless they end task their browser or happened to remember the answer to the question from the other page.
Makes me beat my head against my desk.
You know, once I had my fic stolen.
By some ten-year-old.
She didn't steal the fic word-for-word (except for some bits)... she just copied the storyline and some dialogue.
Sometimes loosely and sometimes blatantly.
And then she MANGLED the characters.
She randomly decided that Mitch was evil, made everybody's motives paper-thin, mixed the Mew Hunter with a Gym leader...
And she cut out the philosophical conversations, probably because she didn't understand them...
Et cetera.
Ugh.
I can't stand thinking about it.
Another guy stole the fic later, but that wasn't as bad because at least he kept it fully intact.
(Except for adding credit to himself below the title.)
And then some guy also once stole my one-shot Mew... except for the first paragraph.
He posted it somewhere, and it was completely impossible to understand the situation because the first paragraph was missing.
Ridiculous...
Meh.
Then of course there are all the people who steal my sprites.
The worst thing about that is that often they steal some old, really bad sprites.
I mean, haven't they got any sense of quality?
Those things are rubbish!
I'm ashamed to tell people I made them!
Thankfully they seem to do less of that now that the worst ones have been removed from my gallery.
And people do a bit less of putting them everywhere without credit after I made the Terms of Use mandatory reading before you can even see the sprites.
There is also the other kind of thief which is much worse...
Once some moron stole my sprites and entered them in a contest.
And he was caught.
But instead of just admitting that the sprites were stolen, he went with excusing himself:
'Oh, but see, I taught Dragonfree how to sprite and we were working together on a project. I let her put some of my sprites on her site.'
-__-;
You didn't teach me how to sprite, you moron. And I, unlike you, have the decency not to place another person's sprites into a gallery with a giant heading that says 'DRAGONFREE'S SPRITES'.
That really got to me about that guy - it was essentially accusing me of stealing them from him.
I've had that one other time, too.
That was at PokémonElite2000.
Some guy called Pitbull posted a bunch of fake Pokémon, some of which were mine, to a fan-game project.
And people recognized them.
But he wasn't about to admit he had stolen them, so instead he went, 'Oh, I posted those to Dragonfree's site. I'd never steal from anyone, people have stolen from me :('
Well, except I DON'T PUT OTHER PEOPLE'S SPRITES INTO MY GALLERY.
And then I posted myself and sent him an angry PM because I happen to believe that person/rotten piece of filth was about at the bottom of the pit of immorality.
But he still persisted, both posting in the thread and replying to my PM with angry, grammatically incoherent lies and threats.
Actual quote from the end of the post he made in the thread: 'oh and dragonfree, you better be glad this is only childish pokemon crap or else you would be in trouble for this lying b.s.'
Look who's talking. -_-;
And in the PM to me, he actually attempted to convince me that I didn't make my sprites.
Hmm, that's likely to succeed.
Actual quote from the end of his reply to my PM: 'p.s. i am a cristian and know that stealing art even if it is stupid pokemon is stupid and i'm not a little imature kid(which you probably are) so you know what keep being immature until you get the **** beat out of you one day you little pest.'
The fact people like that exist scares me.
Almost as much as that time when some guy's supposedly nineteen-year-old sister tried to tell me that I couldn't have an opinion on the War in Iraq because I wasn't an American.
I mean, does he REALLY think he made my sprites? o_O
If he doesn't, why the hell would he bother trying to convince the original artist in a PM that they're really his?
I mean, it's not like it makes his case any more convincing to the forum authority or something.
Meh.
Oh, and have I mentioned the Stop the Flaming incident?
I made the club Stop the Flaming.
And then all of a sudden, webmasters all over went 'I've had enough with the constant flaming between Pokémon fans and Pokémon haters! If you agree with me, join my 'Stop Flaming' club!'.
-_-
Why don't you just join mine instead of making your own?
It would be fine if it happened with people just getting similar ideas somewhere...
But this is happening at sites whose webmasters I know visit my site regularly.
And it's happening just after I make mine...
And it's not adding anything to mine or tweaking it.
Just 'Oh, this is a cool idea! I'm going to make a rip-off!'
There is never a reason to borrow anybody else's idea unless you put some new twist to it.
If you'd just be doing the exact same thing, don't bother.
You know, I've seen the Do Not Click Here alerts that Mewkitty created on at least two other websites.
Exact same ones.
Nope, no credit.
It even talks about her personal characters.
And people think they can just go, view the source and copy it...
-_-
Aaaaand so on.
Bleh.
Too many thieves out there...
If you do stuff like that... any of that... please just stop it.
Get original.
Make your own stuff.
Okay?
It's much more fun, anyway.
Bye, and hope you liked the alert-rant.
At least that would somewhat make up for the disappointment of discovering there is no other prize for reading it.
Page last modified August 04 2008 at 17:45 GMT
