#soFail:
Derek Low, plagiariser, wins the hearts of re-posters
Originally published on 02 October 2014
Updated 6 October, 2014:
Quartz has updated their “Editor’s note” on their repost to read the following:
Editors’ note: This piece was originally published on the author’s personal blog, and then republished by several sites, including Quartz, with the author’s permission. Subsequently, other bloggers accused him of copying pieces of text, photo captions, and a photo from their travel reports. We have no tolerance for plagiarism, and this piece has been updated to reflect the author’s corrections. We have left the piece in place because the overwhelming majority nonetheless appears to have been original material. In an email, he guarantees that “everything you see now it’s an actual account written and documented by me.”
The edited statement above (see the original posting, located towards the end of this article) only proves that Quartz is aware of the noise surrounding this illegitimate article.
What it also continues to prove, and reinforces, is how Quartz has a far-greater interest in generating site traffic, and maintains its perspective on the reposted material’s value — while conveniently forgetting how the original piece was a work containing plagiarism.
If ethics means squat to a news site owned by Atlantic Media, what kind of an example does it set for any writer drafting up original works? Not only are their actions condescending to the greater community, but it also poses questions to the value or worth of writing when a shady individual can simply come along and get away by editing away his/her plagiarised bits of work and still manage to call it a day.
Also, Singapore Airlines has also made an official statement (via mothership.sg) with regards to their position on the overall matter:
We did not commission the blog and did not sponsor the travel.
I’m not going to link to the article (Google it if you so wish).
So what’s this all about?
A recent Singapore Airlines Suites passenger, going by the name of Derek Low, allegedly wrote about his pre-flight and on-board experiences — to much fanfare, apparently, thanks to a mixture of very-expressive slabs of text and photos numbering in the double-digits.
When the article first crossed my Twitter timeline, I took a quick scan and was quickly left unimpressed by his style of writing. My eyes didn’t even make it past the description of his meal after check-in.
Over time, more people began to share the article. “To each of their own”, I thought — where I personally prefer descriptive and informative long-reads over exaggerative rhetoric.
And not long after that, I got shown this:
“Plagiarise”?
Wow, really?
(But, somehow, part of me was not all that surprised.)
Further investigation of the Reddit page uncovered some other facts:
This guy stole my content and writing for his article (including the thumbnail, which is a boarding sign in Frankfurt Airport, not Singapore like he implies).
I have no doubt he actually flew on the flight, but his plagiarism is infuriating.
I bet.
He stole from three articles, including captions from pictures, changing 2–3 words of a paragraph and claiming it as his own. He even steals from my Cathay Pacific post to describe his check-in experience.
http://bit.ly/1nFBGTo http://bit.ly/1ouWYhp http://bit.ly/10kuOQu
Unfortunately, Mr. Low has been busy editing out the offending material, making his incriminating post seem more genuine, while it is looking more like a clusterfuck-of-a-piece.
“This guy” is also supposedly a respected Berkeley engineering student. And if you read the other comments (like this one and a few others), he’s apparently a big douchebag and also a repeat offender trying to cover up his tracks.
And now he’s getting undeserved fame and coverage from UK tabloids and Australian publications, etc (his article also got plenty of shares on social media; it actually popped up on my personal feed 4–5 days before it got posted on Reddit), from copying YOUR and that Rebecca blogger’s content.
I suggest you report him to academic dishonesty and see what his school thinks of all this. It’s funny how he got into Berkeley in the first place… doesn’t it make you wonder if he wrote his entrance/qualification essay and personal statement himself.
Evidence and proof? (since he’s taken some of the offending content down, but some people have screenshots) Just google “derek low plagiarism” and take your pick. This currently seems to be the most comprehensive link of the bunch
A Berkeley student. Plagiarising to no end? An earth-shattering development!
There’s much more food for thought on the Reddit post. In this case, Derek Low should feel proud he has garnered such attention, albeit in one of the worst ways possible…
On social media, the heat has caused Low to react in the most typical of ways (also from the Reddit page):
Here is his FB post. He deleted all the comments from people calling him out.
(Sadly, all those whose comments still remain, specifically those of praise, are probably seen as complete morons supporting such a narcissistic cause.)
As for his Twitter account:
Such class.
But if you’re going to be the baddest, meanest plagiariser of them all, such shady measures are the only means to a very appropriate end — as proven by the number of web sites and news publications which have chosen to re-publish his original creation.
The post originally appeared on his own web site, and then on Medium. From here, it got picked up by different news outlets and influential web sites from around the world, including (but not limited to):
- The Daily Mail (UK);
- Perth Now (Australia);
- Daring Fireball;
- Kottke.org; and
- Quartz (a subsidiary of Atlantic Media).
(Again, I am not going to link to the pages specifically — a Google search will more than suffice in finding what you need.)
A special mention is deserving of Quartz, a new-age digital news outlet that manages to come up with very relevant and up-to-the-minute content — but, on this occasion, failing miserably in seeing the ethics (or lack of) of re-posting Low’s piece.
Preceding the post, they justify their decision with this explanation:
Editors’ note: This piece was originally published on the author’s personal blog, and then republished by several sites, including Quartz, with the author’s permission. Subsequently, questions were raised about the origin of some of his photos and text, which appear to have been compiled from other travel reports. We have no tolerance for plagiarism, and this piece has been updated to reflect the author’s corrections. In an email, he guarantees that “everything you see now it’s an actual account written and documented by me.”
Translation: Other sites have re-published irrespective of possible plagiarism, for which we do not tolerate. Because we want to, too, it’s been updated to the author’s guarantee of originality, and served for your reading pleasure.
By this point, if you — Mr. Editor of Quartz — still take the author’s word as truth, you must either be a blundering idiot, or simply place far-greater importance on the huge amount of traffic that’s coming in (because choosing between positive site numbers that’ll make management happy and discarding an article bearing no ethical originality is a no-brainer).
My friend, Jason Rabinowitz, puts it most succinct:
Greed does not right any wrongs. If you’re willing to sacrifice your ethics to achieve a goal, then you’re clearly doing it wrong — very wrong.
Kinny tweets aviation, social media and technology on Twitter.
