Just a friendly reminder/recap of info outlined in the FAQ, the contact page, and the order confirmation email you get when you check out š
I’m happy to talk with folks generally about goods, services, custom work, ideas, ingredients, high weirdness, all kinds of things, pretty much wherever you catch me. But once you’ve placed an order or booked a service, I need you to follow the directions, please š
Social media/Discord/Messenger etc. is not a VIP line to customer service. If Sonia or I need to look something up in the database in order to answer your question or you’re asking about something that involves some kind of transaction or update, then that is not a matter for social media. That is a matter you need to send in an email about so the ticket can be logged, the matter can be tracked, and the action can be taken by the appropriate person, who might not be the person you’re trying to DM.
The instructions and workflows exist for a number of really, really good reasons, promise!
Please see your order confirmation email and/or the FAQ for more info.
Pro tip: the drawing power of the Busted Tail Light Law Attracting Charm is generally stronger than the protection power of the flannel Law Keep Away charm.
If youāre going to bother with a Law Keep Away charm, slow your roll for a minute and make sure youāre not also carrying something that can negate or overpower it. In addition to the Busted Tail Light, that includes the following Law Attracting charms, amulets, and words of power:
the āNon-functional Tag Lightā charm
the āIDK When to Shut My Mouthā chant
the āI Hang Out With Stupid MFersā talisman
the Subwoofer āWhole Neighborhood Needs to Hear My Favorite Jamsā rite
the āLead Footā amulet
the āToo Loud For This Paper Sackā charm
Give your rootworkers and your folk saints a little bit to work with, yāall.
I’m not trying to get into a bunch of crap publicly – I have my hands full right now with basically three full-time jobs, so I’m not naming names in this post. [1] But I feel like as a writer, editor, writing tutor/coach, former English teacher, and erstwhile journalist, I should maybe do this PSA for bloggers and denizens of social media who mean well but just don’t actually understand what plagiarism and intellectual property theft are, and so they are not aware of when they are guilty of it.
Now not all copyright infringement is plagiarism and vice versa, and I can’t possibly cover all of this in a few minutes. I also have no idea if anybody even cares lol, but from 10+ years of teaching writing to college students and over two decades tutoring and editing, I have a fairly good idea what the major misconceptions tend to be. And I see the results of these misconceptions every day online, from a huge variety of site contributors, business owners, and bloggers who are breaking the law and don’t even know it.
Plagiarism is bad manners and bad juju.
Ā
Here’s the thing — most student writers who got in trouble for plagiarism when I was teaching were doing it accidentally. They did not intend to commit fraud by passing off someone else’s ideas and words as their own. They just didn’t understand what did and didn’t count as plagiarism and what was required for proper, responsible citation.
Is a fledgling blogger with a small audience going to end up in court for not putting quotation marks around two sentences in their blog post? Not usually, no. But anybody blogging or doing research to write product descriptions or whatever has just positioned themselves as a professional. If you’re writing online, you just signed up to be subject to the rules. Ignorance of the law is no excuse and it will not protect you from takedown notices, demonetization, lawsuits, and/or the contempt of readers and other creators in your online communities.
Similarly, site owners who copy/paste huge chunks of text from another site and think it’s ok because they put the site’s URL at the bottom of the page are usually not trying to violate copyrights or steal intellectual property. Nevertheless, even accidental plagiarism can be considered fraud in academic contexts. And it can ruin your writing career and reputation in non-academic contexts, even if you never get sued. It can destroy your brand or channel fast if your platform removes your content or demonetizes yo, or Google decides they’ll never serve your ads again.
Seraphin Station 