My Full Apology For Plagiarizing And Setting The Record Straight.
Incase you aren't in the recent news, I was pointed out for plagiarizing multiple posts on my account. I was foolish to ever do such a thing and want to tell the entire Steemit community, I am deeply sorry. The main act of plagiarism was me posting a bunch of paintings about two months ago and pretending they were all mine. They were not. The real story is I was inspired by a great artist, Steven Schuman. About 4 years ago, my mom saw one of his paintings at an art gallery somewhere and sent me a picture of it. The painting was of a boxer dog. She was sending me this because we had a boxer in our family for 11 years who passed away from cancer a couple of months before that. She told me how much she loved the painting and asked if I could paint something like it. We both agreed that Mr. Schuman and I had a similar style in painting, a very trippy effect. I used his initial painting as a reference and painted my own version of it, in my opinion to look more like our dog.
Here are the two dogs beside each other. Yes, they are very similar. I loved the color pallet so I stuck pretty close to it but I did make the dogs face longer and look more like our dog. I did not create this painting to make a profit. I painted the entire thing from scratch. I painted it and gave it to my mom for Christmas. This was the only painting I ever painted like this.
Fast forward to two months ago. I posted that same painting along with a bunch of paintings that Mr. Schuman painted and failed to mention his name. It was stupid of me. I got so caught up in building a following that I was posting whatever I could think of. Steemit was young at the time and I was still unsure if it was even a legit thing. I went against everything I learned as a designer and am ashamed for it. I stayed up all night last night thinking about what I had done and how foolish it was. I let down my followers, the Steemit community and most importantly, myself. I plan to make amends with Mr. Schuman and hopefully get him to join Steemit. Please go check out his artwork, he is incredible and truly an inspiration. http://stevenschuman.com/gallery/
Picture from his website http://stevenschuman.com/gallery/
The artist I originally got caught plagiarizing is eggzoo on instagram. https://www.instagram.com/eggzoo/?hl=en I have no excuse for trying to use his artwork. I got lazy and outsourced for content to use in a post. I should have posted his name originally. He is also an incredible artist and you should also go check him out if you haven't yet.
All from his instagram page, I just put them all together in a series. https://www.instagram.com/eggzoo/?hl=en
I have seen multiple people stating that I do not deserve a high reputation because of what I have done. Yes, I mixed in some stolen content with content of my own. I was wrong. However, I have spent countless hours preparing original content for the Steemit community and I have brought many new users to Steemit. I have also created things of my own to help advertise Steemit. I brought @listentojon @spiper20 @ccolvi20 to Steemit. I admit to the plagiarizing, but it is time to set the record straight on who I really am and what is really mine.
I am Jay Piper. I am a graphic designer. This is all work that I have created. www.jaypiperdesigns.com
I am engaged to the love of my life, who I have been dating for over 5 and a half years.
I grew my hair out for over 3 years and donated it to wigs for kids.
I have been wakeboarding, surfing, wakesurfing and snowboarding my entire life.
I love music. I play guitar, drums, sing and rap.
I love going on adventures.
I have two boston terriers who I love dearly.
I am a lover and I am passionate about my work and I take care of the people in my life.
I write songs, poetry and stories. I am in no way bragging about all of these things. They are all topics I have been blogging on and sharing and they really are me.
I invest countless of hours into things to support and advertise Steemit. I spent an entire weekend filming me and my friends wake surfing and made a video just for Steemit out of all of it.
My dad @pipertomcat and I made Steemit shirts and made a cooking tutorial from start to finish.
I have come up with ideas for artwork for Steemit.
I am working on a song currently about Steemit.
I never lied about who I am. I lied about some of the content I shared. This is a wake up call for me and I will never stoop this low again. I love being a designer and I love producing original artwork. I am so sorry, to everyone on here, Mr. Schuman, Eggzoo, my followers and their followers. If the community will forgive me I promise to continue creating original content, I promise to keep helping Steemit grow and most of all I promise to be 100% truthful. Thank you for taking the time to read this and for taking the time to see who I really am.
Thank you for this post. I hope this becomes a very positive, formative moment in your life.
One thing I didn't realize prior to replying on your last post was the full story of how you initially tried to cover up your plagiarism. There's a difference between those who are sorry and those who are sorry for being caught. When you flagged the person who initially pointed out your plagiarism and then tried to pretend the name was there (even though you edited it in, not even linking to the author)... well, to me that's very fraudulent and deceptive behavior. It's behavior from someone who, IMO, can't be trusted. The parts of your brain that fired off those decisions haven't (yet) changed. How can the community know you won't participate in something fraudulent again in the future? Building reputation is really hard. Destroying it only takes a moment.
Though I respect how you've owned this, it saddens me that you were basically forced into it and it appears to be an attempt to save your reputation. Personally, I think your reputation here should be much lower. A 67 of someone who never defrauded anyone should not be right next to someone who did and initially tried to cover it up (IMO).
If you're truly sorry (and not just sorry for being caught), I'd expect you to agree to that perspective. You've earned a lower reputation by your actions. For my part, I hope the Steemit system will reflect that.
I also hope you'll do the work to regain the positive reputation you deserve for all the great things you have done for this community. I want to be able to trust you, but that trust has to be earned.
I agree 100% Luke. If the community cannot collectively lower his reputation, then something is flawed with the current ystem.
great way to rise above all the negativity :)
I wish people didn't upvote this post. I don't see why @jpiper20 should earn rewards not merely for a sincerely apology, but for multiple apologies. This is not even the first apology post. The first apology earned less than $1.00 so far. This one is $63 at this time. How much will @jpiper20 make on his next apology>
Exactly. The first thing I saw from this is 'why is he being paid even more, after confessing to plagiarism'.
Of course, I know why. Its because people upvote it, presumably because self-correction like this, adds value to the platform. They also have every right/capability to do so. But it's still not something I would tip.
Perhaps there should be a way to return/destroy funds, thereby giving value back to the community. I haven't read enough into how Steemit works mechanically, so not sure if its feasible. But if he did something like that, maybe I would tip.
I would venture to guess it is a risk vs reward opportunity for whales such as @ned
What I mean is they can risk some slight community backlash for upvoting and supporting this post and rewarding jpiper20 so it becomes an example to the community of "what could happen" if you do what he did.
Right, wrong or indifferent, Steemit's voting system allows for this to happen.
I will tell you why this is happening @sandeeppatel, Bots need to be stopped. Whales need to start voting with their fingers. @jpiper20 is showing that bots need to stop. aside from him doing wrong. Look at the top vote on this post. It's Ned , one of the creators of steemit. He upvoted this post. Why? Well, he either supports jpiper20 apology, or his bot voted for him because he had him program in the steem.piston bot as one of his favorite posters. sorry to derail your apology on this bot rant. I just see this whole bot thing as a thorn in the Steemit community.
This was an extended apology explaining myself. Why must you continue to point a finger? Does it make you feel better? What do you want? Do you want me to just walk away from Steemit and be done with it? What do I need to do to please YOU?
You can donate what you get from these apology-posts to the @curie, @robinhoodwhale, @steemcleaners or something similar. That would be a reasonable way answering this criticism.
Honestly, I think some people just get fed up seeing bad or plagiarized content raking in money. And then you get even more money for apologizing for the plagiarized content. It makes plagiarism seem like a lucrative business devoid of real consequences.
I'm not here to judge. I'm just telling you how this looks to many people. I do hope your intentions are good and sincere, but it will take time to rebuild your reputation.
I am not only apologizing but also showing who I am and that i care about all of this.
I get that. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and like I said above; I hope your intentions are sincere. I'm just telling you how it will look to a lot of people. You need to understand that and try to be patient. It may take some time for your followers to come around and forgive you.
Seriously? Read what @lukestokes comments above. You have lost trust. I think you should rectify your overinflated 67 reputation somehow. The only way to voluntary do that is start a new account. Why do you think you deserve a 67 reputation?
This is all well and good, but until those who were plagiarized receive all steem dollars and steem power that should rightfully be theirs, i don't feel that simply apologizing is enough. I think you addressed this when you said you'd make ammends and I appreciate the promotion you have done for steemit as well as you as a person.
Hope to see you follow through and show that you deserve the high reputation you possess. Everyone makes mistakes, but it is how we resolve these mistakes that show our true character.
I upvoted the post and I'm still following you but I still have mixed feelings about the situation. We also had boxers growing up and I'm also into outdoor sports such as snowmobiling, skiing, and wakeboarding so I sort of saw myself in you. Now I see this post and saw you grew out your hair for kids with cancer too. This is trippy. I just put up a post about me growing out my hair for Locks of Love a day ago. My post didn't even Earn a dollar but now this post has earned more than my last 4 posts. It is tough on here to make a buck when it boils down to it and I can see how you wanted to speed up the process and have more success on here. Time is a limiting factor for the content creators for sure.
Thanks Brian, I am now following you.
Thanks
Damnit I said get some sleep...... Kids these days.
Well, I slept like a log feeling good about where it was left last night.... so.... I am rested enough for you also I guess.
responding to @jasonstaggers comment... the rep is a number we put too much weight on. It becomes the reason not to open a post ((25) must be crap (60+) must be good) and as a system will be revamped due its flaws.
I also get a little torn on the issue, in a different way. I refused early to remove my support for and of @jpiper20. Would I rather him be able to just move past this and continue to provide quality work without having it impacted by his mistakes, or would I like to see him struggle a bit with regaining trust only to reinforce the lesson?
Honestly, I don't know. If I had to choose one extreme or the other, I would want him to move forward unmarred by this as opposed to being nailed on the cross. It is easy to point to the rewards or rep and be upset that this was a part of it, but it's easy because that is all most will look at right away. I have gotten to know the person behind those and just see someone who did something dumb, not malicious.
Thank you Cleve.
@jpiper20, I commend you for accepting responsibility. Well done. But I do have an issue with your 67 reputation score in light of what's happened. I've recently posted my thoughts on this here. Would you mind having a look and responding?
I read your post and commented my thoughts on it. You have done nothing wrong and I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on everything. I reposted your blog to my page. I hope we can move past this with time and everyone can see that I never lied about who I am as a person. I made mistakes seeking popularity and it got the best of me. Edit: I am now following you as well. I look forward to your future thoughts and posts.
Steemit is the most forgiving community and you are to be commended for owning your mistake. Go with added knowledge and live a good live as I'm sure you will.
I will indeed. Thank you friend.
Im so glad you have posted this story to show us all who you really are! I was following you before and will continue to do so! 😉
I really appreciate that Karen. Thank you for continuing to follow me. I promise not to let you down from here on out.