The Village Voice "Plagiarized" My Homework

By Karl Moats

It’s the first time a homework assignment landed me national press.

Last week I wrote a homework blog about the Bros Icing Bros campaign. I wrote the homework blog late Thursday night and then copied it to a blog I tag-team with my buddy: the esteemedly-named ProseBeforeHos.com. I posted it on Facebook, Twitter, and Digg and went to sleep. 4 days later, 14 luke-warm Smirnoff Ices, and 63,000+ hits later, I hate Smirnoff Ice with a passion and the blog went viral.

Some of my peers traded stocks before school. Others bundled CDOs. I dealt in Internet traffic. And in the age of the incredibly shrinking media, Internet traffic is as good as gold. A whole cottage industry has sprung up around boosting your Google page rank and search engine optimization. I have been on the front lines, armed—not with bullets and missiles—but Facebook statuses and tweets.

My blog blew up on Digg.com first (the #121 most visited website in the world according to Alexa.com). From there it snowballed. The population of Annapolis, Maryland (circa 40,000) read my blog within 8 hours. Then came the national press. Enter The Village Voice.

The "Village Voice" dubbed me the Anonymous Banker and quoted heavily from the blog. Perhaps a bit too much. My dad says half-jokingly the "Village Voice" essentially plagiarized my blog. (You can judge for yourself here.) I don't seriously believe they did. But even if "Village Voice" stray over the lines, I would take it as a compliment. Plagiarism, as the saying goes, is the sincerest form of flattery.

So I'm still waiting on Hollywood to call. In the meantime, I’ve been in touch with the "Village Voice" editors to possibly write for them in the future. I may be meeting with a Smirnoff Ice rep this week. (I’ll keep my true thoughts about their libation… on ice.)

My biggest regret is I promoted the ProseBeforeHos.com version of the blog. If the class blog version went viral instead, I could have contributed to our end-of-year class pizza party. Maybe even a whole pie. My frustration is best epitomized by the old Youtube gem of a reporter after a massive bug flew into his mouth: