Shia LeBeouf heard we don’t like plagiarism so he put some plagiarism in his apology about plagiarism. Is he LeBluffing?
Backstory: Shia LeBeouf’s Cannes-approved short film, HowardCantour.com, recently drew heavy criticism for plagiarising acclaimed artist Daniel Clowes and his comic strip, Justin M. Damiano. LeBeouf then decided to come clean and issue a formal apology via everyone’s favourite damage control medium, Twitter, but only made matters about 14 times worse. Why? His apology itself was plagiarised, and if that’s not bad enough, it was copied from – wait for it – Yahoo Answers.
Here’s the start of LeBeouf’s original apology:
Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 17, 2013
Now here’s the original Yahoo answer made four years ago by random user ‘Lili’. Let’s play spot the difference:
It’s one of two ways: either he’s deliberately trolling which means he’s not actually remorseful about plagiarising the work of another artist, or he’s too dumb to write his own apology and hoped no-one would notice. No matter which one you pick, the guy is a LaDouche.
Importantly, now the whole incident has taken off into a hilarious new meme, #shialebeouffilms. Here are some of our favourites so far:
A Story About Some Talking Toys #shialabeouffilms
— Josh Spiegel (@mousterpiece) December 17, 2013
I Know What You Did Last Summer Because I Copied It #ShiaLaBeoufFilms
— Steph Rogers (@StephR2D2) December 17, 2013
In The House All By Yourself #shialabeouffilms
— Lola Wilson (@LolaWilsonCopy) December 18, 2013
The kid who saw dead people and the ghost who didn’t know he was dead. #shialabeouffilms
— Arthur M. Jolly (@jollyarthur) December 17, 2013
Let’s Get Together and Beat Each Other Up (But Don’t Tell Anybody!) #shialabeouffilms
— Daniel Radosh (@danielradosh) December 17, 2013
To conclude, I think Shia himself sums it up best:
I fucked up.
— Shia LaBeouf (@thecampaignbook) December 17, 2013
Yeah you did, Shia. You done fucked up.
More stupidity
Watch: Santas brawling at SantaCon is one of the most ridiculous things you’ll see all week
Tila Tequila rants about Jews, Nazis, the Illuminati and more
Man fined $183,000 for helping Anonymous for one minute