WEEKEND JOURNAL
The Cut-and-Paste Personality
By Jennifer Saranow
1639 words
15 February 2008
The Wall Street Journal
W1
English
(Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company,
Inc.)
These identity thieves don't want your money.
They want your quirky sense of humor and your cool taste in music.
Among the 125 million people in the U.S. who
visit online dating and social-networking sites are a growing number of
dullards who steal personal profiles, life philosophies, even signature poems.
"Dude u like copied my whole myspace," posts one aggrieved victim.
Copycats use the real-life wit of others to
create cut-and-paste personas, hoping to land dates or just look clever.
Hugh Gallagher, a 36-year-old writer in New York,
is one of the copied. Match.com has more than 50 profiles with parts of
Mr. Gallagher's college entrance essay, which he penned nearly two decades ago
and later appeared in Harper's Magazine. "I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban
refugees" and "I write award-winning operas" are among Mr.
Gallagher's most popular lines.
They worked well enough for Jim Carey, a
38-year-old pharmaceutical salesman in Bothell, Wash. He says he wanted women
to know he was funny but was too lazy to think up anything. So he copied Mr.
Gallagher's essay for his online profile. A year ago, he arranged to meet a
woman for drinks. She asked about his operas. He confessed. "I felt like a
balloon deflating," he says.
Original souls who discover they have been
replicated say it's unethical and creepy. "I came across a guy who
completely STOLE my profile message," posts one woman in Michigan. "I
mean he had to have copied and pasted the whole thing and then just changed
gender specific things to fit his own!!"
Online daters feel pressure to stand out and
believe they must sell themselves like a product, say researchers at
Georgetown, Rutgers and Michigan State universities who are conducting a joint
study of them. "You are not making money off of somebody else's work;
you're just trying to market yourself," says self-confessed copier Jeff
Picazio, a 40-year-old computer-systems manager in Boynton Beach, Fla. After
hunting for some copy-and-paste help -- including borrowing the line "you
will soon learn that I'm a raging egomaniac" -- Mr. Picazio says he's
gotten 20 dates.
A search on MySpace.com brought up more than 700
recent comments that accuse others of stealing headlines, user names, songs,
background designs and entire profiles. In a recent survey of more than 400
online daters commissioned by Engage.com, 9% of respondents said they copied
from another person's profile; 15% suspect their own words were stolen.
A Match.com profile of a man in Redmond,
Wash., includes this postscript: "Shame on the woman who plagiarized my
narrative and stole it for her profile!" And a 34-year-old woman in
Basking Ridge, N.J., tacked this P.S. to her Plentyoffish.com profile: "To
the girl who copied my profile -- and denies it . . . you s-!"
The quest for originality has spawned the
services of online-dating coaches and profile writers. Some of them are
victims, too. Dave Mizrachi, 34, of Miami sells an "Insider Internet
Dating" course for $97. Mr. Mizrachi includes his own dating profile,
advising men to use it as a guide. But at least 25 people on Match.com
have stolen his lines, including: "I get a lot of women emailing me,
(which is great for an ego boost)." One man uses Mr. Mizrachi's photo.
A recent search on Match.com brought up
more than 90 profiles with such lines as: "I want an opposite. A yin to my
yang," or "You know that woman who is the first person on the dance
floor at every party? That's me." They weren't even from real people. They
were cribbed from sample profiles posted online at E-Cyrano.com by dating coach
and profile writer Evan Marc Katz. "It just seems so short-sighted,"
says Mr. Katz, of Los Angeles. "Everybody steals the same lines so they
are not original anymore."
The Internet makes plagiarism anonymous and easy.
Nearly half of high-school students and nearly 40% of college undergrads
confess they copy online sources, according to surveys conducted by Donald
McCabe, a founder of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University in
South Carolina. Stealing for appearance's sake is a new twist. "People are
still trying to develop a sense of how to present themselves online," says
Joseph Walther, a communication professor at Michigan State University.
The book "Online Dating for Dummies"
tells readers not to fret about copying. TheProfileCoach.com, meanwhile, offers
12 "proven" profiles for $4. Sample: "There is a shallowness, a
fakeness to much of the 'singles scene.'" A number of blogs offer free
headlines for social-networking profiles, including, "Ernie's train of
thought has derailed." For $50, weeklyscore.com offers 20 personal essays
and 100 headlines, all updated weekly.
Thierry Khalfa says he had a good excuse to copy:
His English isn't so good. The 44-year-old Frenchman first cobbled a ho-hum
profile that said he liked to cook and enjoyed walks on the beach. Then he
stumbled across the profile of Mike Matteo, 47, a screenwriter in Tampa, Fla.
Mr. Matteo's profile had such nuggets as, "I have a sweet tooth, love my
strawberry twizzlers and cheesecake jelly beans."
Without thinking twice, Mr. Khalfa says, he
copied Mr. Matteo's prose because it also fit him to a tee. "That guy
should be proud," says Mr. Khalfa, of Largo, Fla., who runs an auto-glass
business. "In France, in the fashion business, when you see something that
looks good, you take it and you copy it."
Mr. Khalfa caught the eye of preschool teacher
Marjorie Coon, 48. They exchanged emails, and Ms. Coon wanted to meet Mr.
Khalfa in person. Then she discovered he had copied the profile of Mr. Matteo,
by coincidence her friend. She let Mr. Khalfa know she knew and dumped him.
"I felt he was less than honest, a manipulator and downright stupid,"
says Ms. Coon, of Largo, Fla. Mr. Matteo wasn't too happy, either. "I'm
not Cyrano de Bergerac," he says, referring to the 19th-century play about
a man penning love letters for a rival.
Some copiers are harder to figure out. Cambria
Lovelady, a 31-year-old editor in Austin, Texas, went on two dull dates with a
man and afterward reread his online profile. He had copied her entire
"About Me" paragraph including, "I'm afraid of heights and large
birds." And Dale Sherstobitoff, 42, of British Columbia copied this from
someone else on Plentyoffish.com: "I am the type of person that likes to
think of my glass as half full."
Tracing authorship can be complicated. Chele
Frizell, a 34-year-old nurse in Dayton, Ohio, swiped a MySpace.com headline
from a friend: "Those who believe in telekinesis, raise my hand." She
confessed her theft in a missive to the MySpace page of Holly Payne, 34, of
Hollywood: "I totally copied your headline, but in Spanish. Does that
still count?" Not really. Ms. Payne stole it from the late Kurt Vonnegut.
Chris Garansi, an electrician in Rock Hill, S.C.,
says he has received about 10 emails asking permission to copy his dating
profile, which is headlined, "Wanted outlaw princess." Said princess
is someone who "while climbing a tree can be be all woman, while letting
you know she can climb higher than you would ever dare." Among Mr.
Garansi's requirements: "Chunky is fine but lumpy is how I like my mashed
potatoes, and rolls are only good when served with dinner." He says he
refuses people who ask to copy his work. "Either they lack imagination, or
they just don't know who they are," says Mr. Garansi, 43.
Online administrators say complaints of copied
profiles are rare. If a profile is sufficiently creative, its author could
theoretically sue a copier under copyright law. But lawyers say it would be
expensive. "As a practical matter, what you would probably try to do is
try to get the site to take the copier's profile down," says Jeffrey
Neuburger, of law firm Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner LLP. Some sites
say they do that.
Last year, JDate.com released online dating tips,
including the importance of a strong "About Me" paragraph. "So
make it count. How? Look at what everyone else is saying and then SAY SOMETHING
DIFFERENT," advises the site.
Yahoo
Personals provides two examples with the plea, "Don't copy these profiles
exactly." But a quick search shows plenty have. A favorite among women:
"If you love mushroom ravioli, romantic nights by a fire, and spring
camping trips, please reply!" And for men: "I guarantee I can change
the oil in your car in 10 minutes flat."
Laurie Crane says three men copied her profile,
apparently thinking it would spark her interest. One wrote, "We have a lot
in common." The 43-year-old art director in Chicago didn't date any of
them. "Who knows what these guys are thinking," she says.
Finding her profile stolen angered Lavonna Short,
of Sitka, Alaska. It also gave her pause. The 47-year-old mental-health
professional says the thief used every qualification she'd written about her
perfect mate: financially secure, able to take care of himself, not looking for
a mother. It read like a shopping list, she says: "When I saw myself
through someone else's eyes, I didn't like it." She rewrote her profile --
more mystery, less rigidity -- and found her mate.
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