Category: Merit Crusade

Social Networking May Still Redeem Itself as an Instrument of Commercial Quality Control


 YelpToday, our minds automatically go to facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. when someone uses the words "social network." The Rudin/Sorkin/Fincher team made a movie about Mark "I-violate-your-constitutional-rights"  Zuckerberg and used those words as a title!  

And it's absolutely ridiculous, because establishing and maintaining connections with friends and "the right people" have been vital for the human species since, like, forever.  Folks have always built their settlements, villages, towns, and cities with designated places for meetings.  Back in the day (and I don't mean the 1980s), households accepted visitors on certain days of the week; and even on a random day one could come by and leave a calling card with the family's help.  And who can deny that, ever since the first Industrial Revolution, the patterns of commercial and financial developments were determined by the who-knows-who principle.  It's just that the outreach was far more limited.   

Of course, the magnitude of Internet networking is breathtaking.  In the early 1990s, when the Internet has connected all seven continents, the miracle of instant world-wide access to knowledge, culture, entertainment, or people was the most important and alluring aspect of this new technology for me.  I still experience a thrill every time I look at this blog's dashboard and see that during the last 24 hours my posts have been read not just at home, but also in Denmark, Canada, Germany, South Africa, UK, Vietnam, Australia, Portugal, Spain, India, France, and Taiwan.  I love it.

Yet, I hate facebook and Twitter.  Okay, push your eyebrows back down and let me explain. I don't hate social networking per se: It's convenient to receive updates on your favorite artists and it's important for business: I've been on LinkedIn since the times it operated exclusively on the basis of professional invitations.  But I abhor the contemporary "social network" phenomenon and what it represents: the unrestrained hunger for attention, the vile combination of pathological exhibitionism and a sickly kind of voyeurism; the violation of privacy and the desire to be violated.  I cannot stand the stalking by exes, the spying by employers, the snooping by the government agencies – all that shit.

That said, there are some companies with one or another form of social networking at their cores, which I consider not only healthy, but also greatly important due to their positive impact on the commercial environment, especially the consumer sector.  I'm not naive and I don't think that any of the entrepreneurs behind these businesses consciously elected to influence the quality of goods and services.  Most likely they simply shaped their business models utilizing the exploding patterns of collective participation in the Internet experience, but in the process they unwittingly created an influential force that has a power of strengthening and weakening businesses.       

In 1979, Tim and Nina Zagat started imploring their friends into scoring restaurants they visited, eventually turning their social pastime into a ranking business, which was bought by Google in 2011 for a reported $151 million.  Being an old-fashioned medium from the start, however, it remained the same under the new high-tech ownership: It's still unclear how the rankings are formulated.

It was Pierre Omidyar's hobby-project turned international conglomerate with an annual revenue of $14 billion, aka eBay that pioneered the concept of building market-place reputations based on the fully-disclosed opinions of the "community members," i.e. users of the eBay services.  While everyone was screaming (understandably so) that people will cheat, lie and steal, eBay founders stuck to the most fundamental of the commercial principles: in order to succeed you need to keep your ratings high, because one unresolved accusation of unsavory practices may kill your future transactions for good.  It's like what G.W. Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me – you can't get fooled again."

Today, thanks to rating algorithms utilized by various online businesses, we came to rely on communal ratings and individual opinions whenever we buy electronics, computers, household appliances, books, or select entertainment on Netflix, or order food delivery on Seamless, or pick a hotel on TripAdvisor, or make decisions about telecommunications providers.  Many of us not only peruse the viewpoints of others, but also actively participate in the polling process by sharing our own thoughts about this or that product, service, establishment, thus affecting a new system of commercial quality control.     

It is safe to say, in my opinion, that Yelp has become a flagship of the communal marketing model.  Again, not because the ideas of commercial quality control and merit-based rewards are so important to them, but for the sake of the advertising income ($138 million in 2012).  Nevertheless, assessing performance and assigning rewards (aka ratings) is exactly what "yelpers" (members expressing their opinions) do.  

A few unique traits place Yelp, Inc. in the avant-garde of this movement.  They encompass a wide spectrum of consumer services.  Right now you can find referrals on businesses in 20 main categories – from restaurants to religious organizations, further subdivided into specialties.  In less than 10 years they have achieved an international magnitude.  The listings are essentially combined efforts: detailed information about the business is provided by the commercial participants themselves (for a fee) and consumers supply their reviews, photos, and ratings.  The search engine is geographically oriented allowing users to find what's around them on the map. 

Also, Yelp, Inc. claims that they use an "aggressive" reviews filter, which rejects posts that are suspected to be biased or false.  As a result, according to their public releases, about 25% of entries are being dismissed.  And I can appreciate that. Like I said, rendering communal judgments on commercial establishments is a serious matter: ultimately it has a power of affecting the livelihood of individual businessmen.  So, the filtering is great as long as Yelp conducts their selections, rejections, and other manipulations fairly and without prejudice. 

Unfortunately, as with everything touched by greed, the communal quality control as executed by Yelp, Inc. may be seriously misused.  While I was writing this piece, TypePad's "related-posts" function has presented me with a few reports (including the one attached below) accusing Yelp of manipulating reviews in exchange for business clients' participation in the site's advertising programs (you can also read about it on Wikipedia).  And that's criminal.  Not only because it's nothing short of blackmail, but also because, by using individual consumers' personal and freely expressed opinions in this unsavory process, Yelp corrupts the participants' intellectual property and constitutional rights.  I sure as hell hope that these accusations are not true.  If they are, yelpers should file a class-action suit to bar Yelp, Inc. from using their reviews as the means of racketeering.    

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Inside Yelp's Wasp Nest: When Social Networking Meets Extortion

Quote of the Week: Finally, the Truth Out of a “Professional” Critic


Typical Critic"Critics don't like to admit this, because it makes us seem as herdlike [sic] as civilian TV watchers, but sometimes we decide which shows to take seriously based on on where they air.  Track records mean a lot, and certain channels (HBO, AMC, FX,… Showtime) do have a reputation for arty boldness…

Critics and viewers alike tend to assume works that are mainly interested in laughs, excitement, and beauty are inherently less substantive than shows that rip the scabs off life and leave you feeling wrung out or disturbed.  That assumption partly explains why so few comedies have won the Oscar for Best Picture.  It surely explains why Cary Grant, the most altogether enjoyable leading man in film history, never won an Academy Award for acting:  He gave us pleasure no matter what the story and situation and made it look easy."

                                                    Matt Zoller Seitz

                                                    TV Reviewer for New York magazine

The Frustrated CFO Commentary:

Well, thank you, Mr. Seitz for admitting that "professional" critics (as in those who, for one or another reason, get paid for expressing their opinions in various media) are phonies working off of some preconceived standards instead of assessing the actual quality of the creations they are compensated to review.  No wonder, the quality of their work is just as low as that of the majority of people.

And, what a snob: "as herdlike as civilian TV watchers!"  Aren't you writing for those TV watchers?  So, why are you insulting them?  Or you write just for your own ego-massaging purposes?  And what are you, may I ask, a military TV watcher? 

And the funny part is you still got it all confused, Mr. Unintelligent Snob:  The actual "herd" goes altogether for the Kardashians and the Real Housewives.  If the narrow slew of snooty hipsters, unable to appreciate art and entertainment on their merit and, therefore, resort to selecting what they watch and consume based on the hype generated by the hipster-catering PR, is a "herd" for "critics" like you, I have no fucking clue, what you, people, are  doing in popular media.  Definitely not promoting the open-mindedness. 

These, so-called, taste-makers are the reason, why the quality entertainment like (forgive me for the "old" references) My So-Called Life, Firefly, and, more recently, Prime Suspect get cancelled.  These shows fall in the cracks between the preferences of the masses  and the critically acclaimed (most of them, but not all, deservingly so) dramas.

I pride myself on approaching all arts with an open mind and without prejudice.  And that includes the TV series.  I don't care that The Good Wife airs on CBS and Grimm on NBC.  They proved to be quality entertainment with unexpected layers, and I will continue watching them along with Game of Thrones,  American Horror Story, and Homeland.

Hell, I even gave Breaking Bad a fair chance: diligently watched 5 first episodes of it – only to find out that the critics who go nuts about it apparently smoke the very meth that Walter White cooks.            

The American Revival of Failed Soviet Labor Constructs


Let mSoviet-poster1e admit right off the bat that Matthew Shaer's article The Boss Stops Here in the June 24th issue of New York magazine has brought my already high level of agitation to a boiling point.  So, if some of my comments appear to be hostile, don't be surprised – you've been warned. 

The article takes up a subject unusual for a life/politics/culture publication - it ventures into the business discipline of organizational management; specifically, a post-modernist pseudo-innovative spectacle of a "non-hierarchical workplace."  Fancy verbage and incorrectly-used business terminology aside, Shaer focuses on a few companies, whose owners, to put it simply, replaced management leadership with the collective's (as in all employees) show of hands. 

At Menlo Innovations (one of the companies in focus, a software developer), for example, "there are no bosses … and no middle managers."  Instead, "every morning, the entire staff circles up to discuss" the distribution of assignments." Valve Corporation (a video-game company) operates as a network of self-governing teams, with employees choosing at random which team to join and when to switch to a new one.  In all the companies mentioned in the articles, the projects' progress reviews are the collective exercises as well. Obscenely, personal achievement means nothing, because it's the whole team that gets evaluated: the brilliant guy who comes up with incredible solutions at lightning speed gets no recognition and his mediocre team members, who spend weeks gnawing at their portions of work, get to share in his professional triumphs. 

Now, get ready for it! At Menlo et al, hirings, promotions, layoffs, and firings are handled by a committee.  At W.L. Gore & Associates, once a year all (!!!) "employees gather to rank their colleagues based on their contributions to the overall success of the company.  Those rankings are used by a separate committee of associates to determine pay raises or cuts."  The article omits the exploration of how such committees are elected and/or appointed.     

As far as I am concerned, all of this is nothing if not yet more evidence of the incredible ignorance I bring up so frequently.  Most people learn so little about World History, they are not capable of recognizing that there is nothing new about these "experiments."  It has all been done before: In the Soviet Union and other countries of the former Eastern Bloc everything was decided by various committees, starting with the ones in every single place of work and residence through the different medium levels all the way up to the Central Committee of the Communist Party!

Moreover, all these team-work models have already been tested (and failed) in the Soviet Union.  Such groups were given a very special name - they called them Brigades of Communist Labor.  The main purpose of these constructs was to eradicate any form of individualism – intellectual, political, emotional, spiritual.      

Throughout the article, the author kept making an unfortunately confused mistake by calling these unformed socialistic blobs of companies "flat structures."  That just fucking hurt me!  A flat organizational structure is a typical attribute of a small business.  But instead of eliminating the leadership and reducing everyone to some equalizing average, it actually elevates each employee to the level of a multi-functional manager.  Every person handles a multitude of tasks covering entire sectors of the value chain.  Moreover, they do that with little supervision and only general guidelines from senior and executive management.  This is how they achieve, what I call, "career growth in the same chair," raising themselves from one level of expertise to another.  And I'm not talking about mom-and-pop candy shops here – this is how $50-$750 million companies are ran by 10-20 hard-working people.

I have been working in such environments my entire career.  So, it was laughable to me that the article made a big deal about companies with employees setting up their own schedules.  You must be kidding me! Who in a small, or even a mid-size company has got the time to set up their subordinates' schedules!

The author praises some Fortune 1000 companies for trying to fix their management problems through workplace decentralization.  Look, I don't give a flying fuck whether a Fortune 1000, or any large company, recognizes that there is something wrong with it and takes a stab at fixing itself through decentralization and "flattening."   It's not enough to make them more efficient, because, to paraphrase Woody Allen: You know what's wrong with them?  Everything.  Companies are not supposed to be that big – break them up into small entities and the flat structures will come naturally (see above).                

While reading the article I couldn't help but notice that in these companies only functions related to daily operations, general administration, and HR management (much despised and largely ignored by many entrepreneurs) get "delegated" to the workforce masses.  The labor is not actually involved in the decision-making responsible for the strategic development and the survival of the company: which commercial directions to pursue, which projects to undertake, which clients to accept, where to procure the financial resources, etc.  It is so evident that Matthew Shaer had to acknowledge that "overseeing strategy, the long-term vision of Menlo as a whole, still falls" to the two owners, who "also serve as representatives of Menlo at scads of management and business conferences," both in the US and overseas.  Nobody else gets to go.

What can I say?  This is the precise recipe of building the absolute power used by the Soviet leaders (and still employed by their contemporary successors): You let the hoi polloi pretend that they are the "power," delegate to the "collective" the most unpleasant tasks of dealing with each other, but leave yourself with the rights for the real leadership, for the ultimate decisions.  And guess what?  In that top-of-the-Olympus realm, there is nobody who can challenge you, because you got rid of all qualified personnel aka managerial talents.  In Russia, they first called them the enemies of the people and then "cleanse" them out, if you know what I mean.  

I found it very emblematic that the owners of Menlo Innovations consider Thomas Edison a "patron saint" of the company and keep his bust in the middle of their open-style working space.  That same Thomas Edison who hired a very talented engineer named Nicholai Tesla and stole all of Tesla's ideas, patenting them in his own name.  That Thomas Edison who later staged public electrocutions of puppies and other small animals in his attempt to discredit the viable Westinghouse/Tesla high-voltage system, in order to eliminate the competition. 

And "the lady doth protest too much": Menlo employees' readily provided self-convincing quotes insisting that their "self-management" meetings keep the morale high (What about that guy who donated his outstanding one-of-a-kind solution to his team?) and make them feel that they are working toward a common goal.  Oy! Hurts again!  I have always propagated that creating in employees the sense of being important, of being a part of the bigger picture is a key to the successful management of human assets.  But it's not achieved through making everyone into an unrecognizable little screw in a homogeneous pile.  It's done by raising the awareness of each and everyone's crucial value and singular necessity for the company's survival.  

In reality, just as it happened in the Soviet Union, all these collective decisions and committees' resolutions, usually lead to dilettantism.  These people may be great designers and coders, but what the fuck do they know about business administration and organizational development.  In fact, most of the high tech pros I've ever worked with were incredibly disorganized individuals, intellectually far removed from any administrative skills.

Another false agenda the poor schmucks who work for these "organizational innovators" subconsciously force themselves to accept is what I would define as the "evolution of rewards pretense."  Since pre-historic times to these sad days, only three main factors have been stimulating people to work hard: the adequate merit-based pay, the recognition of achievements through promotion (not just title-assignment, but the real elevation of responsibilities), and the self-realization aka pride in your own professionalism. 

When there is no middle or senior management, the promotions are out as well.  It's not like you are going to take over an Owner's position.  Turns out (here comes the funny part) that material stimuli are "irrelevant" as well.  There is a quote in the article from one of the developers at DreamHost, who explicitly says: "Twenty years ago, it was about higher pay.  Now it's more about finding your work meaningful and interesting."  Well now, is that why you are ogling Mark Zuckerberg's photos in Forbes and invest your 401k pennies into high-risk stocks?  And don't deny it, because I know you do.   But hell, of course money is "not important."  What else are they going to say?  The decent jobs are scarce and the candidates are a plenty.  So many young people went into coding and computer engineering; they are literally a dime a dozen.  Those who get employed consider themselves lucky, and if you tell them to drink that "teamwork" and "money's not important" Kool-Aid, they will.      

But the aspects that make this whole collective/committees bullshit especially inconceivable to me have to do with the very core of the business management, i.e. the behavioral science, the human nature itself.  Did these business owners somehow develop some sort of a new breed of people, the kind that's inherently free of the evolutionary pre-built competitive instincts?  Or maybe they psychoprofile every single employee and keep only those who are uncommonly fair and just, or, more likely, idiotically indifferent?  

Incredibly, like all fanatics, these commy-following bosses manage to fool not only their employees, but themselves as well.  Let me remind my readers that the greatest incentive for all organizational restructurings is profitability.  I have no doubt that the private owners of the businesses highlighted in the article are under the impression that by eliminating the key decision-makers they significantly increase their profits.  Let's face it: even in the current market, high-quality execs still make relatively decent salaries.  Unfortunately, these owners, marred by their own special brand of entrepreneurial ignorance, are unable to see the big picture: while their worker-bees spend unnecessary long hours on trying to inexpertly debate the organizational issues, they are not attending to their primary responsibilities, e.g. ACTUALLY WORKING!!!  Talking about real losses! 

The article's author describes one of these long meetings, which started at 11 am and went until 2 pm (!), "and by the midway mark, the proceedings were moving a little more slowly, with more exasperated sighs, or slight but conspicuous head shakes, and sometimes everyone seemed to be talking simultaneously, in one big warbly squawk."  But don't worry.  There is always the pressure-relieving tool introduced at Menlo a few years ago, "walkies" – ten-minute group walks around the block. 

As my readers know, I am a small-business crusader, who believes that giant corporations structured around towering hierarchies of management are cancerous.  At the same time, people of extremes and ideological fanatics (and don't be fooled: this is exactly what we are dealing with here) always terrify me, regardless of whether their views are "progressive" or "reactionary."  Why does everything always have to be so categorical: either a pyramid of useless bosses, or no bosses at all?  Why can't their be a middle ground: a handful of well-qualified key decision makers whose expertise allows them to make high-priority decisions quickly, without slowing the business down, while all functional decisions are left to the employees? 

I'll tell you why: Because that's a "small business" model.  Unfortunately, these "innovative" owners don't want to remain small and work hard to survive.  Notice that most of them are high-tech.  They want to grow big as fast as possible and sell themselves either to a larger competitor or a private equity firm, or (oh, the sweet dream!) make billions by going public.  Meanwhile, just like the Soviet Commies before them, they pretend to be "just and fair" by "empowering" their "collectives," only to completely abandon and betray them in that bright future.  I fucking hate this phony bullshit!                      

Warning: Unpunishable Plagiarism


Plagiarism – the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one’s own, of the ideas, or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.

            OED, Vol. 11: 947

As OED’s definitions go, this one is pretty straightforward: you create something, another person passes it as his own – that’s wrong.  It is also linguistically polite.  Authors unrestricted by the structural conventions of dictionaries, can be more blunt about it. Late Alexander Lindey, a copyright attorney and author, in his 1951 Plagiarism and Originality wrote: “Plagiarism is literary – or artistic or musical – theft.”

Note that OED’s definition includes both
ideas and their expressions.  Legally, however, only actual products are protected.  The United States Copyright Office clearly states: 

“Copyright does not protect ideas, concepts, systems, or methods of doing something.  You may express your ideas in writing or drawings and claim copyright in you description, but be aware that copyright will not protect the idea itself as revealed in written or artistic work.”

To simplify: Copying Van Gogh’s Sunflowers to a stroke and passing it as your own work is illegal, but producing endless still-lifes of vases with flowers in Van Gogh’s style is absolutely OK.  By the same token, reproducing somebody’s words verbatim without giving a proper citation is plagiarism, but recasting somebody’s original idea with your own words, details, and attributes cannot be legally challenged.

Generally speaking, the intention behind the exclusion of ideas from the copyright protection is founded in the possibility of several people coming up with the same thought at the same time.  This indeed happens from time to time.  However, more frequently than not, the law, as it stands right now, makes what I call an unpunishable plagiarism an okay thing.   

Of course, it is infrequent that someone copies a painting, or steals a score from another musician’s computer.  Actions like that can lead to criminal and/or civil law suits.  From time to time, we hear about people being expelled from schools or lose their jobs and professional creditability on account of plagiarism.

Sometimes, such allegations are unfounded and cleverly used to mar the innocent competition.  The fabulous Alan Rickman, whose character in the Broadway production of Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar became a victim of such a scam, moaned with all the heart-wrenching pain his ample talent was capable to deliver: “Oh, to be accused of such a thing…”  For him it’s the worst possible shame.  A rare man!  

However, when it comes to original ideas, only individual morals stand between one person’s precious imaginative jewel and another person’s grabby hand.  Unfortunately, morality being what it is in the present time, theft of the original ideas is far more common than pickpocketing and purse snatching.  As originality becomes more and more of a deficit, the stealing of it becomes more and more pervasive.  I personally don’t care whether it’s legal or not.  To me it’s worse than a theft – it’s an intellectual rape, a snatching of babies born in a torrent of a creative labor. 

In business environments it happens every day.  Those who watch NBC’s popular series Grimm know that the show’s core feature is to give a fairy-tale spin to contemporary life.  In a second season’s episode Nameless, a video game company celebrates the development of a groundbreaking code.  Everyone involved in the programming of this extraordinary algorithm stands to make millions.  As it turns out, however, none of the people taking credit for it had actually authored the breakthrough idea.  It was appropriated by the team leader from a tech guy who came to reboot her system and offered the brilliant solution in exchange for a date.  Not only that she had no qualms about accepting the praise and the rewards, she wasn’t planning to keep the date promise either.  She didn’t even remember the guys name.

Whether in business or arts, the worst idea thieves are your peers, especially those who work with you.  Trust me, I know it first-hand.  One such incident occurred during my time as a high-tech CFO.  We were preparing for a teleconference with our venture-capital investors.  My fellow board member, the VP of Marketing, strolled into my office and asked for my opinion about the topics to be discussed.  You know, at the time the Internet companies were marked by a sense of democracy and camaraderie.  So, I let my guard down and laid out my thoughts.  All these years later, I still remember the shock I felt, when this guy took the lead of the meeting and repeated everything I told him verbatim, without giving me any credit, of course.      

It goes without saying that the world of arts and entertainment is a fucking snake pit that lives by the motto “Everybody steals.”  It’s pretty much an every-day practice. 

No matter how many musicians and fans scorned Vanilla Ice’s shameless “re-phrasing” of the Queen/Bowie genius bass riff, “Ice Ice Baby” made millions, was nominated for a Grammy and won the American Music Award.  It only got worse since.  I happened to personally know a human equivalent of a music encyclopedia, and I constantly hear from her: “Wait a minute, I already heard this on…”      

In Woody Allen’s Vicky, Christina, Barcelona Penelope Cruz’s character Maria Elena bluntly states that Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a commercially successful artist, stole his entire painting style from her.  First, he reluctantly acknowledges that, yes, she was “influential,” and later admits that “maybe he took from her more than he likes to admit.”  Really?  With a hint of sarcasm Maria Elena says: “It’s okay.  We worked side by side for many years, and you adopted my vision of the world as your own.” 

Speaking of movies, it’s impossible to get an unknown writer’s script into a decision-maker’s hands.  99% of studios and production companies do not accept unsolicited (i.e. not represented by an agent) material.  And even if you do get someone to read your script or to hear your pitch, the first thing you will need to do is to sign a legal document promising that you will never-ever sue that entity for stealing your idea.  Why?  Because, if they don’t like the script but like the idea, they will most definitely steal it.

There is this tiny (in terms of viewership – $342K gross) Craig Lucas’s movie called The Dying Gaul (2005).  It is a feeble attempt to expose Hollywood’s perversity and corruption.   In spite of the presence of indy VIP’s Campbell Scott, Patricia Clarkson, and Peter Sarsgaard, whose pull must be responsible for a $4 million budget, the movie is an unremarkable failure.  (Let’s be honest, ever since Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), you really need something extraordinary up your sleeve to embark on this theme.)  Yet, the film has one valuable tidbit of a real truth in it: When the main character refuses to change his script from a tragic gay love story into a heterosexual romance, the big-time producer with a $1 million check in his hand warns, “If you refuse, you will walk out of here with nothing, and I will give your story to someone else to rewrite.” 

But don’t think that only the unknown writers fall victims to Tinseltown’s shameless pilfering of ingenuity.  The moment I saw a poster for Night in the Museum, I had a bizarre thought that Ben Stiller somehow managed to convince Gore Vidal to lend the movie a brilliant plot device from his novel The Smithsonian Institution (1998) .  You see, it was Vidal who made the historical characters come to life, most notably Teddy Roosevelt (but not dinosaurs).  Apparently, I was not the only one who noticed the uncanny similarity: the great writer himself openly spoke about it in various media.  Of course, he wasn’t going to attempt any legal action – he’s been around the block way too many times (his first publication is dated 1946 and his oeuvre includes 14 screenplays).  

Some occurrences of unpunishable plagiarism are simply ridiculous.  In 2007, Joe Swanberg (another semi-known indy writer/director) made a practically unseen ($23K gross) movie called Hannah Takes the Stairs:  Hannah (Greta Gerwig), a recent college graduate, is an intern and an aspiring writer, who is cruising from a relationship to  relationship, trying to find her direction in life.  Hmm… Wait a minute… Doesn’t this Hannah live on HBO now? Wasn’t she shoved into everyone’s face by the hipster media for the past 18 months or so? Wasn’t she supposed to be an alter ego of her “oh-so-original” creator, a “genius” on the list of “100 Most Influential People,” the one whose name I promised not to mention in my posts anymore? A coincidence?  Nope.  If anyone did see the 2007 movie, it would be this HBO’s you-know-who.  After all, she is a friend and a collaborator (Nobody Walks) of Ry Russo-Young, who co-starred in Hannah Takes the Stairs.

Speaking of those Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, it is my firm opinion that the biggest scrounger in fictional writing ever is J.K. Rowling.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Harry Potter, but that woman sponged her material off everything she ever read (granted, she is a very well-read person). Let’s not drown ourselves in the boundless sea of magical names representing wizardly attributes: Lupin = wolf (Latin); Sirius = dog (Latin via Greek); Severus = serious, strict (Latin); Dumbledore = stream of gold (a combination of “dumble” – a Nottinghamshire local for a forested stream, and French “d’Or”), etc., etc., etc., etc. Instead, I’d like to point out a few very specific items:

  • Let me remind you that in 1961 Roald Dahl wrote a very popular book James and the Giant Peach about an orphan boy James Henry Trotter (Harry James Potter, anyone?!), whose loving parents were destroyed by a brutal rhino and who is forced to live with cruel aunts until a magician helps him to get out.
  • In Gaudy Night Dorothy Sayers’s lead character Harriet Vane describes her alma mater, Oxford’s Shrewsbury College, as an incredibly confusing place with seemingly moving stairs. 
  • During Victorian times, British citizens started depositing their money in the banks in increasing numbers.  Funny, they developed a slang term for the sovereigns the deposited – they called them “goblins.” 

Actually, my list is so long, I can write another book.  How about “Harry Potter Genesis, Or Did J.K. Rowling Come Up With Any Original Ideas?”

Obviously, I am very apprehensive about the usurping tendencies all around us.  I know talented young people bursting with artistic ideas. Extraordinary pearls of originality simply roll off their tongues.  It’s painful to admit it, but instead of enjoying their creativity, I behave like a robotic warning machine: “Keep it to yourself! Don’t share it with anybody!  Stop dropping your pearls publicly!  Why did you post that brilliant thing on fucking facebook?!”  I know it makes me sound like a paranoid maniac (and it makes me feel real shitty), but what else can I do to protect them?  Their artistic expressions are incredibly unique.  Their verbiage is so catchy, their “friends” not only repeat it, but have the gall to claim it for themselves.   

How can we possibly control this?  How can we safeguard the originality? We can’t: There is no legal way and most humans lost any shreds of shame a long time ago.  The only way to protect your ideas is to constantly convert them into products, so that you can stake your ownership via the copyright.  And even then, as examples above show, you are not secured from various brands of scavengers.