Around a year ago, I opened the TikTok app and was served a video of Maalvika discussing an essay she’d just published. ‘It’s my most well-researched Substack,’ she announced proudly, before diving into the ideas and evidence she’d supposedly compiled.
Only they weren’t her ideas.
And they weren’t her words.
And it wasn’t her research — it was mine.
For a second there, I genuinely thought I was losing it. Am I about to morph into a cockroach? Is this some nightmare loosely based on Yellowface by R.F. Kuang? Had I only hallucinated writing this piece altogether, and this woman was the rightful author all along?
I quickly pulled up my essay, published on February 9th, and then hers, published March 13th. The title was different, though it conveyed the same idea; however, the body was a near copy-paste job, with a few bits removed or changed and some words swapped out, I guess to make it seem ‘different’ enough. But it wasn’t. My observations, metaphors, italicised emphasis (!), and the research I’d gathered stared back at me from her page, and I wanted to scream MINE! over and over again, like the seagulls in Finding Nemo.
I got angry then angrier and angrier. Her video was racking up thousands of views and likes, and ‘her’ Substack post was gaining traction, too. I then checked out her other work and — surprise, surprise — there it was again: entire paragraphs lifted from other writers, including Noah Smith. I reported her profile and the article. Multiple times. She eventually did remove it, but I never heard a word from Substack.
Still fuming, but desperate to protect my sanity (and blood pressure), I blocked her; at least she won’t be able to steal from me again, I thought. But then I started seeing ‘her’ articles popping up all over my Substack feed.
And guess what?
She’s now listed as the #1 New Bestseller here.