It is mimicry of self. Replacing yourself with another’s thoughts, motions, mannerisms, feelings, quotes, lies, lives, words, voice… The highest form of flattery? Or the lowest form of self-respect, appreciation and depravity of character? It is one thing to look to higher learning through a source of knowledge you didn’t previously know of or understand; to be led down a path of self-discovery through someone else’s words and thoughts and another thing altogether to stop at the first sentence, copy and paste and leave it at that. Closing your mind off to the reasons and motions it took someone to reach that point and listing the end result as your own, not for comprehending, expanding and applying, but for being able to cut and click. It is one thing to quote a movie, actor, book, writer, story, character, song, musician, poem, poet, teacher, politician, parent, friend, partner, stranger and to take those words, feelings, motions, thoughts and another thing to make them a proclaimed statement of self; You can see yourself in other people’s words, thoughts, meanings, writings, voices, but you cannot be yourself within them. Imitation is not flattery, it is stealing. A mimic is not an original, a original does not take words, they reference them, they do not steal another’s thoughts, they imagine their own, they do not ask another’s question, they pose their own, they don’t write using others’ pens, they have their own, and they know it. They speak the truth as they see it, feel it, not as they have been told it. It is one thing to alter your perceptions of self through someone else’s ideals, and something else to attempt to be those ideals without so much as a consideration for why those principles are in place.
Quoting me is fine, impersonating me is just pathetic.