I can’t decide: Pomo trickster? Or lazy, thieving lifter?
Perhaps Shia LaBeouf isn’t the talentless hack he appears to be, but is instead an android with artificial intelligence trying desperately to appear human…
This is pure gold.
This has to be part of an elaborate performance piece at this point. Shia LaBeouf is the Andy Kaufman of our generation.
I made a little comic to commemorate the occasion. I don’t know how someone else’s URL got on it.
Patton Oswalt has been hammering him on the Twitter and it is a delight to read.
I think it was T. S. Eliot who first said the “imitate . . . steal” line:
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
Or like that scene in American Hustle in the museum, “Who’s the master?” Shia LeBoeuf, that’s who. Props to him for going balls-out and copypasting his retraction, such moxie!
We need to go deeper
That’s exactly what Plato said.
Really? I thought it was Banksy.
This doesn’t even make sense. Unlike what he did with the film, finding and coping a 20 word response someone posted to a Yahoo! Answers question 4 years ago would take more work than coming up with your own. I think he’s trolling.
Source! Attribution, please!
Obligatory quote about plagarism: “Bad artists borrow; great artists steal; we get it off the back end of a lorry - no questions asked.” - somebody or other at Vertigo comics.
Well now, let’s not pick nits! The wording of the apology might have been copied but it’s use as a plagiarised apology for plagiarism is truly creative.
Or like that scene in The Last Dragon in the abandoned building, “Who’s the master?” Sho Nuff, that’s who.
I don’t think he’s thought that far down the road. I mean, you really think he’s got a statement to make about copyright and commentary on the modern state of attribution? And that stealing directly from someone he reportedly appreciates is the way to go about it?
Occam’s razor tells me this guy ensconced in Hollywood since the age of 10 really has no idea about how the rest of us see him and that when he puts out shitty movies he’s surprised that people say so.
Not necessarily. Maybe he wanted to quote the line about how “great artists steal”, went looking for the exact wording, then came upon this Yahoo Answers page… which is the third result for a Google search on “great artists steal”.
And if you’re struggling to find the right words, copying those 20 words can be a lot faster and infinitely easier than writing your own 20 words.
I think he’s just a plagiarist who really doesn’t get it. I believe people like that are way, way more common than most of us would like to believe.
What if he actually is Andy Kaufman? Has anybody ever seen them both at the same time? I think not!
Also, I don’t see in what sense this tweet is an “apology.” Has that word at last been expanded to include self-justification?
I have friends who read student’s college papers. They are consistently shocked that students think they are dolts. When students spend two paragraphs getting character names wrong and show spelling errors all over the place but their third paragraph masterfully pulls together deeper themes in a concise and clever way with larger words the students seem surprised that they get caught. All the professors have to do these days is type in a sentence from the paragraph that stands out and are likely to get the same link the students used.
TL; DR: The internet can be used by teachers to find out if you plagiarized.
