Hey, babes! I have some bad news to share with all of you. Last night while checking my blog traffic sources, I found out that I was plagiarized. I was shocked! At first, I was stunned. My blog doesn't have a large following and I'm incredibly grateful to have each and every one of you supporting me. I'm not exactly sure how to go about this because I never thought I'd have to deal with this, but here it goes!
The post is question has been deleted by the blogger Bedizzle. (The blog is deleted now.)
First, I came across this in my traffic sources. I thought it was a bit strange to find a line from one of my posts in my sources.
I copied the line "cozy up to me is a beautiful cool nude with a super creamy formula" and entered it into Google. I then found these results.
Well, that's a little odd, isn't it? I thought it might just be a coincidence. Nope. Not at all. Bedizzle stole nearly all of the text from my post! She took my intro talking about MY feelings this time of year, my description and review for Cozy Up To Me and Tillie, and my blurb about the promo code for 15% off. Here are screenshots that I took from my phone last night. They're easier to read than the screenshots from my laptop. Keep in mind that my
original post is from December 6th while hers was from the 10th.
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| Click on me to make me bigger! |
Bedizzle also took my descriptions and used them on Instagram. Keep in mind that she has over 114K followers on Instagram. Yes, over 114K followers. Insane, right?
All of that sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? This is not okay. She stole my words, my hard work, and my personal thoughts. Her review was NOT honest; it was MINE. Plagiarizing can never be justified.
I emailed Tillie Polish first and then fowarded the message to Bedizzle. She responded shortly after. (I'm still waiting to hear back from Tillie. It's not their fault at all. They're just an innocent bystander in this and I hate that this happened with their product in the post. They're such great ladies!) I haven't responded to Bedizzle again because I'm SO furious right now. I'm sharing the email because her email address was on her PUBLIC blog that has been removed.
A friend of mine sent her a KIK message to ask her about it before I received the email response. Her response made me roll my eyes. It really isn't acceptable. If she was so tired, she could have waited to post the review the next day. Or, just post the pictures and add in the text the next day. Is it really that hard?
I'm not sure about you, but that excuse never would have worked in college and it surely isn't going to work with me. Bedizzle posted an apology on Instagram last night, but I was sleeping. A friend was nice enough to grab these screenshots for me. Bedizzle deleted the post and made her account private. (Which doesn't really do anything for a user with 114K followers.) Here's the apology and some comments (the usernames have been blocked out) from her followers. I'm still in shock that some people thought it was okay!
I wasn't the only one she stole written material from. I have screenshots of a few other instances, but it's not my place to post about them here. I'll leave that to the other bloggers. Unfortunately, if you're a fellow blogger, you won't be able to tell if she's stolen anything from you as she's deleted her entire blog. I think that speaks pretty loudly about this issue. Also, how can anyone dismiss this and think it's okay?
I put a lot of work into this blog. I try to bring you worthwhile content that is put together in a concise, easy to read, and enjoyable format. Like I said before, I never thought this would happen to me. A private apology and a halfhearted and short-lived post on a private Instagram account is not enough. This needs to be shared so that others know about it. If you're a company who is looking for someone to swatch or review for you, please think twice before using someone who would blatantly take the thoughts of someone else and play them off as their own. There are plenty of hard working and honest bloggers out there. This is just one bad egg out of hundreds it not thousands of great bloggers like myself. (Just a shameless pat on the back!)
Feel free to share this post. I want all of her followers to know about this. There's absolutely no way to justify this.
I'll update this as I get more information. Please excuse any typos as I'm currently seeing red.
Edited to Add: December 18, 2013 11:20 AM EST
Bedizzle is still ignoring my emails. Yesterday afternoon, she deleted her Twitter account. (I have screenshots of that, too.) She also lost over 1,000 followers on Instagram and went from over 1,000 pictures down to about 700 before deleting her account. As of right now, she's in hiding. She was also featured on Nail It's website in October. I shared my post with them and her article has been removed until further notice. It's really great to see everyone stepping up and taking action to stop this.
I can't thank you all enough! I never thought I'd get such an overwhelming response of love and support. It's great to know that people from the nail polish community and beyond and come together and support such a small blog like mine. Yesterday was pretty turbulent, but I felt so much better as the day went on. So thank you to everyone who read, shared, or commented on this post, to all my new followers and fans on here,
Facebook, and
Instagram, and to all of you who reached out to me on email. I truly appreciate all of you! You've been the silver lining in this otherwise stormy situation!
