How Slashfilm Plagiarized My Original Shyamalan Article
The once-renowned film blog is now basically a content mill
About a week ago I came upon Harry Brewis’ amazing video essay “Plagiarism and You(Tube),” which provides an in-depth look at how and why it is common for the work of YouTube creators to be copied and ripped off by opportunists. What I saw inspired me to open up about my own experience with plagiarism. It occurred a little over two years ago, when an article that I had written for this very publication about the M. Night Shyamalan movies Unbreakable (2000) and its sequel Glass (2019) was ripped off by what I thought to be a high-quality film blog: Slashfilm, aka /Film.
By discussing Slashfilm’s act of plagiarism, I intend to get the copycat article either taken down or amended to give me proper credit. In the process, I hope to bring attention to how damaging widespread plagiarism of pop culture writing can be.
ContentsOriginality and Visibility
On 17 October 2021, I published “On the Unseen Alternate Endings of Unbreakable and Glass” here on Textual Variations. I wrote it, as I am a big fan of Shyamalan, and realized nobody else had ever really talked about the evidence pointing to Unbreakable having an alternate ending, nor discussed in-depth the specifics of the original ending to its sequel, Glass. Both alternate endings were unreleased and unavailable for public consumption, yet evidence of their existence was definitely out there - in interviews, script drafts, and leaks dispersed across the web.
So, here was an opportunity to write something unique and original about two of the best movies made by one of my favorite filmmakers. I had only about 20 subscribers at this point, so naturally very few people read it. But it has over time become a relatively high-performing post for my newsletter. Its popularity may wax and wane but it still brings in new views on the regular, in particular thanks to Google.
Now, I am not the type of writer that has a strong social media presence. And though I’ve tried my best to grow it when I decided to write professionally for the web, I started doing that rather late into the game, after Twitter and Facebook had already undergone what Cory Doctorow describes as ‘enshittification.’
Consequently, these platforms rarely manage to substantially increase my work’s visibility. And so, I’ve become heavily reliant on good SEO practices and Google Search to get my articles discovered by new readers. I can’t say that this always translates to new subscribers, but it certainly helps grow my site’s overall footprint and so motivates me to keep at it.
As I learned how to make SEO work for me, I started checking to see where my articles show up on Google and how well they are doing.
Do they appear at the top of the first page? (Or rather, the feed, now that Google has completely removed pagination from searches.) Do the titles display correctly? What are the keywords that bring them up the most?
Slashfilm Raises More Questions than Answers
In September 2022, almost a year after initially publishing my essay, I decided to do a google-search for ‘Unbreakable alternate ending,’ and was happy to see my article pop up as the top result. But below it, to my surprise, there appeared another article courtesy of the popular film blog Slashfilm, that apparently tackled the same subject called “The Original Ending to Unbreakable Left More Questions than Answers.”
The post was dated December 6, 2021. This means it came out about six weeks after my own. Curious about the timing, I clicked on it and was shocked to see that it had several peculiar similarities with the first, Unbreakable-focused half of my article.
To begin with, much like my post, the opening passage of the Slashfilm article sets up the idea that, unlike the finished film, an earlier draft of the script did not have freeze frames with text inserts. It then goes on to cite the same specific passage from a 2015 Shyamalan interview by Creative Screenwriting to discuss how differently the script concluded and speculate about why Shyamalan changed the ending.
I argued that the change was likely made to provide the picture with more closure, as its scripted ending was basically a cliffhanger that left the fate of main character Elijah Price unresolved. The Slashfilm article reaches a similar conclusion about Shyamalan not wanting to leave the viewers with “more questions than answers.”
It then moves on to use the exact same Nina Jacobson quote from Entertainment Weekly. My article used the quote to support the claim that the original filmed ending was likely changed in response to test screenings and studio pressure. By contrast, the Slashfilm article used it to speculate, as to whether or not there was some other ending for the film that wasn’t filmed, linking it to another quote from the same source.
Though author Sandy Schaefer did not directly copy my text from the first half of the article, they paraphrased its central argument that Unbreakable clearly had a different, much more ambiguous ending in its screenplay from the final film, replicated its overall structure and then used the exact same sources as well as the exact same quotes from those sources to prove their claims.
In fact, I suspect that Schaefer may have initially copied the Unbreakable half of my article entirely, then just removed all my text, while leaving the citations intact. Whatever the case is, they never credited me or my article for the “inspiration.” (And no, I’m not entertaining the possibility that this was all just a big coincidence.)
I immediately created a side-by-side comparison of the similar passages in my article and Schaefer’s before sending an email to the staff of Slashfilm (staff@slashfilm.com), where I demanded that the article be either pulled from the site or amended to include clear and direct attribution of my article.
I referenced the fact that the Slashfilm website states in its policies:
“We take great pains to make sure we trace facts and information back to their original sources as often as possible, and include links to those primary and (if necessary) secondary sources for full transparency. If we can't support an assertion, we don't assert it.”
They never got back to me.
Several months later, after realizing that there was a /Film Newsletter run by the site’s editor
, I posted a comment on one his Substack posts.There was also no response.
As Evangelista’s newsletters have practically no comments whatsoever, I’m pretty sure Chris saw mine but decided to ignore it. Perhaps in both instances, responding was thought to be unnecessary, as I am not the ‘original’ source of the quotes that were copied by Schaefer. But I don’t really know.
If you like this article so far, please consider subscribing to receive new posts and support my work. Imitation and Anger
In any case, it seemed pretty clear that Slashfilm was not going to respond to me unless I did something public to get their attention. And I couldn’t really bring myself to do anything public at all at the time. In part, this was because I was afraid to potentially stir things up online with a film blog that reportedly pulls in something like “25 million people around the globe every month,” according to the official site.
So I made no more efforts to try to contact them.
I convinced myself that it was really no big deal, that I should be flattered that my work was worthy of being plagiarized, that talking about it publicly wasn’t worth the trouble, that I probably wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything anyway.
And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder: “How many views is Slashfilm getting from the article ‘inspired’ by my article? How many potential subscribers am I missing out on as a result? How many other people did Schaefer or Slashfilm similarly take ‘inspiration’ from without giving credit?”
I kept trying to forget about all this and move forward.
But the thoughts would eventually come back. Because, for a small, independent publication like mine, every view and click matters.
So, as I watched Brewis’ video, I came to realize that, even though I was indeed a little flattered that my article was found worthy of imitation, I was also angry.
I was angry that when my article popped up in response to an engaging search query like “Unbreakable ending,” Schaefer’s weak imitation appeared as one of the first results. I was angry that Slashfilm has not done anything at all to address the issue, and not even bothered to reply to me about it. I was angry that someone could do this to my work without any consequence. And so, I had to talk about it.
Because it’s simply not fair. It is unethical.
The fact is, I shouldn’t have to tell Slashfilm about any of this. I shouldn’t need to email or inform them about their SEO editor ripping off my work. It is their job to make sure things like this do not happen, which leads me to believe they know this happens but are not willing to do anything about it. And giving credence to this is the fact that the Slashfilm of today resembles less a film blog, than a content mill.
Content Mills and Mass (Re-)Production
Content mills are web companies whose main goal is to produce as much content as possible as fast as possible. Typically, this content appears in the form of cheap, low-quality, yet clickable blog posts, articles and videos that maximize ad revenue. It’s very much about quantity over quality. The more you produce, the more money you stand to make (though the pay for writers reportedly sucks).
According to writer Chelle Stein, intrinsic to content mills is the creation of “content that is going to rank in search engines.” The author additionally states that plagiarism constitutes “...a major problem with content mills because these writers are typically not experts in their field, so they simply search in Google and then rewrite what is already there.”1
This fits with Brewis’ argument in his video essay that a primary motive for YouTube plagiarists is to make money, an action enabled by the industrialization of internet video production and the rise of YouTube Content Mills. He points to how a content mill’s massive, low-quality approach to production “dovetails very nicely with ripping people off, if not outright plagiarism.” (1:06:42) In other words, faced with the need to keep up the rampant pace of production required by a content mill, employees are bound to start taking from, imitating, and outright copying other people’s works.
Though focusing on YouTube, his video directly uses Screenrant, a pop culture article content mill that predominantly focuses on text, as an example. Occasionally, there may be an interesting article or original interview on the site, but most of what it puts out is easy, low-quality content specifically designed to generate a quick bit of cash.
According to their linked-in page, Sandy Schaefer had spent 10.5 years working at Screenrant (and a little over a year at Comic Book Resources) prior to becoming ‘SEO News Writer’ for Slashfilm in November 2021.
So, they clearly gained lots of experience with content farming at a site that has already been proven to have engaged in blatant plagiarism. This, alongside the fact that their copycat article clearly did not alert the Google Duplicate Content police, evinces that Schaefer is really good at hiding the fact that they can take another person’s work and make just enough ‘adjustments’ to pass it off as their own.
The Decline of Film Blogging
Once a reputable film blog that was listed as one of the best blogs in 2009 by Time Magazine, Slashfilm today very much looks and acts a lot like Screenrant. What it lacks in quality, it makes up for in sheer volume by inundating the web on a daily basis with short, facile, film and TV-related articles that can rank on Google.*
*Sure, that’s not all that the site puts out now. But the good, substantial material now seems to be fewer and farther between.
So, it’s only natural that the company would condone its writer plagiarizing other people’s work. This is key to their mass production and thus helps them profit!
And if a writer for Slashfilm ripped me off, it’s almost certain that they’ve ripped off other independent writers that are trying to put original analytical articles and essays about film and television out into the world.
I see many such writers right here on Substack, creators who are trying to grow their newsletters, who are already struggling to find audiences amidst ever-changing social media algorithms and the looming threat of A.I.
The enabling of plagiarism by and within publications like Slashfilm and Screenrant is a threat to original critical writing and could very well prevent ripped off creators from deserved success, in turn annulling their ability to produce more quality work.*
*I mean, it’s hard enough already to produce original writing that gets discovered without some plagiarist flooding Google with lesser copies of your work.
I believe this issue requires serious attention, for it is symptomatic of a larger decline in the quality of mainstream pop culture writing sites that, imo, is happening across the board. Blogs and publications that used to regularly offer good and unique writing nowadays seem to be increasingly dependent on clickbait-y, mass-produced content, like needless ‘ending explained’ or ‘best order of viewing for [insert franchise]’ posts.*
*Is it really a wonder why so many established film and TV commentators from such sites have migrated to platforms like Medium, Ghost, Patreon, and Substack?
It’s entirely possible that more and more film sites will reach the stage where they resort to the same practices as Slashfilm, perhaps as a means to keep the lights on.
And that is scary.
Look, I don’t know the future and I don’t know if there’s a way to fix such issues.
But I do know that if you’re going to make a cheap, SEO-gaming content mill post that mostly draws on another person’s work for its substance and offers little of anything that’s actually unique, you at the very least owe it to your sources to give them the credit they deserve.
Please spread the word! Help me get credit for my work and/or get the Slashfilm post taken down by sharing or cross-posting this article! Also, what about you?Have you ever had your work or ideas stolen? Have you ever tried to fight back? Is imitation without attribution at all flattering?
Do you agree that mainstream film sites and blogs are indeed declining? Please,
Chelle Stein, What Are Content Mills? Should You Write for Them? 06/02/2022.
I wrote for slash film for a bit. I get why ppl there end up plagiarizing. The pay is terrible, and they treat writers like crap. They may say they don’t approve of plagiarism, but the incentive structure is going to push ppl to unethical practices to try to make ends meet. It’s an ugly business model.
I’m sorry they screwed you over as well.
I had this problem though not with SlashFilm personally. Recently I created a meme and had someone reshare it with their branding on it. I didn't originally brand it myself because I don't own the underlying content. However, it was pretty annoying. I reached out to them and they were nice enough to add my own branding although they didn't edit the original post.