I got a story forward from wifey a few days ago on Whatsapp. The story was titled, “Story of a girl – “I Married a Stranger”” (you can read the story by following the any of the links below). It was a long and well written one which made me wonder who the author was. So, I decided to look it up.
The day I got the forward, 4th January to be precise, I did a quick google search and found the first result link to be a share on Linkedin Pulse. At the end of the post, it was attributed to the facebook wall of a person. That facebook post has about 101k likes, 66 comments, 35k shares at the time of writing this article.
A few days later, that reference to the facebook post was removed by the sharer on Linkedin. So, I started wondering who the actual author of the story was. On further googling, I found that story had cropped up on a few more sites. But none in the first few SERPs of google pointed to the author thereby, by omission, the site / author claimed the story to be his.
I wondered who was the real author was. So, started looking for some more info and here are a few sites that I found… [Note I rearranged the results based on posting date & time]
| Date / Time of post | Site / Page Link | Attributed? |
| Dec 26, 2015 at 06:44 | The Delittante Author Community on Facebook post | Attributes to Tenzin Cheda |
| Dec 27, 2015 at 05:57
|
Facebook post | No. But someone asked if he can share and the poster says ‘okey’ which in some sense is claiming ownership. |
| Dec 27, 2015 at 18:28 | Blogspot – theshahnawaz | Attributes to Tenzin Cheda but links to this facebook wall |
| Dec 29, 2015 | Publishing site – Experience project | Credits Sb0730 |
| Dec 29, 2015 | Custom blog – iiumc | Credits ‘ghauri’ at the end |
| Dec 29, 2015 | WordPress – redpolkadots | No |
| Dec 30, 2015 | Custom blog – Ikumar.in | No – Just says copied from facebook |
| Dec 30 2015 at 21:46 | Discussion forum – andhrafriends | No |
| Dec 30, 2015 | Publishing site – The logical story | Attributes to Tenzin Cheda via facebook community The Dilettante Author
|
| Dec 30, 2015 | Education advise site – The times of education | |
| Dec 30, 2015 | News site – The logical Indian | |
| Dec 30, 2015 | Story site – The Indian Breeze | Attributes to facebook Profile of CLM |
| Dec 31, 2015 | Linkedin pulse | No. I think he did at first to CLM (without link) and then edited it off |
| Dec 31, 2015 | Wedding site – The Wed Knock | Attributes to facebook Profile of CLM though not linked |
| Dec, 2015 | Blogspot – fashionlack | Posted by Vivekanand Sharma |
| Jan 01, 2016 at 01:19 | Blogspot – Just Entertainment daily | No |
| Jan 01, 2016 at 07:00 | Blogspot – Cyberog | Says, credits ‘Chitra’ |
| Jan 01, 2016 | The punwadi | Attributes to Tenzin Cheda via facebook community The Dilettante Author |
| Jan 5, 2016 | Story site – 7tint | Posted by and attributed to Sadhna Sharma as a self-written composition |
| Jan 5, 2016 | Story site – The Good Feed | Attributes to Tenzin Cheda via facebook community The Dilettante Author |
| Jan 5, 2016 | Story site – The Scrap Board | |
| NA | Entertainment site – The Comedy flavors | Credits ‘originally published by TDA’ |
| ? | Tumblr – Punjabi gabru | Credits linkedin pulse post shared above |
So the one I thought was the author isn’t really the author. I am sure there are a lot of others on facebook who have simply copied and pasted this story on their walls and passed it off as their own.
It’s mostly written by an anonymous – Tenzin Cheda (probably this guy) – who has been writing similar stories (1,2,3) for some time now. In fact, the original post on facebook has a far fewer likes (15k ) and shares (5.2k) but a lot more comments (1.9k) at the time of writing this article.
Internet can really give you great fame from plagiarised content!
BTW, I used Google itself, Copyleaks and Plagium for checking copies of the article.
