Plagiarism is nothing new on Scratch, especially in the design community. Most new designers will plagiarise or copy the art of others without providing credit at the start of their design journey. Ask any popular designer you know and most will say they did plagiarise something back in the day when they didn't know what they were doing. However, sooner or later you learn that making your own original art is much more rewarding, and the design community here will become supporting to you. But sometimes that doesn't happen, sometimes people don't realise that making original art and designs is a greener pasture to walk down. Many will continue to blatantly plagiarise even after constant critique from the design community. Some also take it a step further, by impersonating popular Scratch designers, this has happened multiple times to @-Archon- and @nuni-, who have both had to deal with multiple accounts parodying their name, branding, and more. Every time this happens the design community rallies to critique and shut down the account, but no matter how many times we do this, more accounts crop up. The reason I'm making this project is due to a recent situation where my main account's name was parodied, and many more characteristics of my main account was impersonated. This was the first time for this to happen to me, and it made me feel like making a project about it might give you some insight as to why this is so annoying and wrong. Before I continue, I want to make it clear that I will not be featuring the name of the impersonating account or the owner of it (which I am aware of) as I do not want people to send hate to the individual. I will also clarify that this has happened over the last few days, and more things can happen in the very near future, so I may update this project, which I will indicate. After learning about the impersonating account, I decided to use my meme account @Auriali to send joke messages while trying to get an idea as to who this individual behind the account could be, as there are some usual suspects. Word would spread and more members of the design community would make silly and joking comments on the account. This would continue for the next few the days. The account would also reshare lightly modified or unmodified designs from other respected designers. When confronted on this, they would claim that the original designer stole from them, which is not true, as the original designs were shared weeks and even a year ago. Due to this they garnered more criticism and more messages joking about them. Then I was informed that the person behind the account (who I am aware of and have heard of them before) created it as an "experiment". Let me make this clear right now, impersonating another Scratch user to ride their popularity or as an "experiment" is completely wrong. It is not funny, nor is it fair on the original designer that has to deal with the account. This also goes for plagiarism, it is wrong to take someone else's hard work and use it as if you made it yourself. Once again, it isn't funny nor is it a good idea for an "experiment". This has been a growing issue on Scratch, and has been an annoyance for many designers specifically for some time, it needs to stop. If you think it's funny to impersonate a designer and steal the designs of other designers, then you're sorely mistaken. That's about it really, I hope this is insightful or interesting in some way.
