MaryAnn Johanson writes for Bleeding Cool.
"Lianne Spiderbaby plagiarized my review of Turn Me On, Dammit!"
I had no idea on Saturday morning at my film-criticism site, , what I was getting into.
It started when one of my readers emailed me that morning to give me a heads-up. He told me that someone called Lianne Spiderbaby had apparently lifted significant chunks of
The first thing I thought was, "So it's happened again."
Because unfortunately, emails from readers telling me they've spotted my work elsewhere on the web, in clearly unauthorized form, is no unusual thing for me - when you've been posting film reviews since 1997, there's a lot of stuff for idiots to lift.
Typically the plagiarists are running the teensiest of blogs that no one is reading. This doesn't mean it isn't a problem, of course, but it does mean that whatever damage they may have done, or whatever benefit they may have gotten from stealing my work, was minimal at best.
But this was different. Even though , it was immediately clear that she has some clout in the horror community.
She lists credits from major publications such as Fangoria and FearNet. She makes prominent mention of a book she's got coming from St. Martin's Press.
And the way she stole from me was egregious.
But wait a moment. Let's backtrack a little bit.
I'm still pretty steamed from the time, back in 2006, when Ben Domenech, cofounder of RedState.com, was forced to quit a prestigious position as a blogger for The Washington Post, just few days after he was hired, because he had previously lifted material from one of my film reviews for one of "his" own.
I wrote about .
None of the mainstream media coverage of Domenech's disgrace, such as in or , mentioned me or my site by name at all. Which is infuriating. Not that I particularly want my name in the papers, but hey, a little credit where it's due: my work was good enough for Domenech to steal and pass off as his own, and was part of the work upon which he built a career.
And that career was not hurt one tiny bit his unethical behavior, which is really ironic because his schtick has always been that conservatives are the ones with the moral high ground in American politics. I can only guess from that he's making more money than I can ever dream of earning.
Now, back to Spiderbaby. This screen capture shows how outrageous her theft of my writing is. The passages that have been lifted directly from my review are highlighted.
She lifted huge chunks of my opinion - encompassing the unique expression of my opinion - from a review I wrote. This is not a matter of neglecting to name paraphrased sources. She stole my work. No question. No mistake. No excuse. In one bit, she missed adding a closing parentheses to stuff she snipped - or forgot to delete the opening one. In another snippet, she has truncated my sentence but neglected to reword it so that her version is an incomplete thought.
And she has a freakin' book deal!
This was way worse than the unknown, unread bloggers who try to pass my stuff off as their own. I considered this a Domemech-level atrocity.
So I decided to publicly shame her with
And I figured that would be the end of it.
But then, thanks to another reader's email, I learned that Mike White of had posted - apparently nearly simultaneously and certainly without any participation from me -of material Spiderbaby had lifted from numerous horror writers across numerous outlets,with lots of compare-and-contrast.
I was not mentioned in this piece, and I have no idea if White was, at that point, even aware of my existence, never mind Spiderbaby's theft of my work., but it was starting to become clear that Spiderbaby is a serial plagiarist and has built her career on passing off the work of others as her own.
I got angrier. Not just on my own behalf but on that of all the writers she stole from. Perhaps most readers are not aware that most writers on the Web - even those working for big, well-trafficked sites - are not paid for their writing. By Spiderbaby is paid, and that book contract didn't come with no money attached. This was infuriating.
So I started tweeting links to my post. I tweeted at the horror outlets who list her as a contributor to ask whether they were aware that she was a serial plagiarist.
Unbeknownst to me at that time, it appears the last week had seen some behind-the-scenes, offline examination of her work going on across the horror community. So it's likely they did already know, but the reading public needs to know too that someone as respected as Spiderbaby apparently had been was actually a fraud.
A fraud who took the work of unpaid writers, working for the love of film, and turned it around for her own profit.
This disgusts me.
It disgusts me more, knowing that Spiderbaby will likely suffer no real consequences for her plagiarism. Just as Domenech did not. Just as science writer Jonah Lehrer did not -he's got a new book from a major publisher coming!
They are all still working as writers, and doing better than ever, and whatever small backlash that occurred as a result of their crimes against journalism only added to their notoriety and made them more famous.
I posted a link to my post on Spiderbaby's Facebook page, asking for her response. We had a Facebook chat, but I promised her I would not share the content of that without her permission. I don't think she appreciated the irony of this. But I do feel perfectly comfortable saying that I heard nothing from her that mollified me, and nothing that made me feel any better about any of this. There is nothing she can do to make this up to those she stole from, or the readers she fooled, and there's little she can do to make this right. Trying to sweep it all under the rug, as by deleting her site and scrubbing her Twitter feed, seem to me to be exactly the wrong things to do.
I am not a particular fan of horror, I'm not active in horror fandom, and had never heard of Lianne Spiderbaby until Saturday morning. I have no grudge against Lianne Spiderbaby, and I don't wish her ill. But I am sick to death of the plague of unethical behavior that infests our culture, and that is so often rewarded. I wish for Spiderbaby to not benefit, in any way, from her actions.
I am a film critic with nearly 16 years experience - and could be said, in fact, one of the pioneers of film criticism on the web. I've been slogging away for little financial reward all that time, because I love film and I love the web and I love my readers. And I'm way too pigheaded to give it up until there is absolute, incontrovertible evidence that I will never, ever ever be able to make a living at this. To the contrary: I am determined to be the first independent film critic on the web to make this pay. Somehow.
And when I see someone like Lianne Spiderbaby trying to cheat her way to the top - when she already has better access to talent and publishers than most of us! - is enraging. And depressing. I don't want to think that her way is the only way to do it. And I hope fervently that whatever happens to her in the future proves that correct.
MaryAnn Johanson has been writing film criticism at since 1997. Follow her on Twitter at .
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