"I Love Karma": Classmate Accuses Woman of Plagiarism and It Backfires Horribly

Redditor @stellactqm shared a nice story of schadenfreude (well, nice if you like those kinds of tales) to the r/amiwrong sub. In her story, a classmate attempted to accuse her of plagiarism but then it whipped around and slapped them right back in the face.

In a post titled, "Am I wrong for telling a classmate she doesn't own sci-fi?" a 21-year-old journalism student says that she was in a creative writing class in school and that she had to turn in a 1,500 word "free piece" story which could be about anything the students wanted as long as it was "fictional."

As part of the class group, students could put together certain pieces for other class members to give feedback on in a forum, which OP took advantage of. She decided to make her story about a colony of folks who live on Mars in the future but soon learn that they're actually part of an experiment.

Not long after posting her version of the story, a classmate (whom OP says that she's never interacted with previously) emailed her and accused her of plagiarizing her story, which was also set in space in the future. She also CC'd the class lecturer about the story.

OP was stunned to see this development, especially because their two stories didn't share similar plot lines save for the fact that they're set in space in the future. The Reddit user goes on to add that she didn't read the classmate's story before writing hers either and that she decided to respond to the email thread by putting up both links to their stories and writing that her classmate doesn't "own sci-fi" as a genre.

Where OP feels bad is that she wants to know if she may've been a little too harsh was in the way she responded to their classmate: "We haven't heard from the lecturer yet, but [the classmate] messaged me privately saying that I humiliated her in front of our lecturer and could get her penalized. Now I feel bad about it. I don't want her to not get her fair shot."

In follow-up edits to her post, OP made sure to specify that she wasn't the one who originally involved the lecturer, but that her classmate did. Also, she highlighted that the university employs the implementation of anti-plagiarism software to scan students' works, while adding that the penalties for plagiarism are quite serious.

It appears that there were numerous Redditors who thought that her classmate accusing her of plagiarism was way worse than OP potentially hurting someone's feelings, which is something she only did in response to the accusation in the first place.

One person explained why they thought OP definitely wasn't in the wrong: "She gets the lecturer involved and then complains that your reply is also CC'd to them? What did she expect a. to achieve b. to happen?"

While someone else penned: "Plagiarism is far more serious an issue than being embarrassed. F'off."

This seemed to be a sentiment that others echoed: "You are not wrong you just defend yourself with evidence."

Another Reddit user replied: "You did nothing wrong. The way she attacked you and 'told on you' to the lecturer makes me wonder if she copied the story from someone’s else story and wanted to get ahead of it by trying to make it look like you stole her story. Just a thought."

According to OP, it seemed that the drama between her and the classmate escalated ... at least from the classmate's perspective, as the classmate sent the Redditor an email with some very strong language. OP wrote: "I haven't heard back from the lecturer but I did receive another message from the girl. She told me that I ruined her life and never to contact her again or else."

OP went on: "I haven't responded to either messages but took some of your advice and screenshoted the conversation for proof in case I need it. I don't know what she meant by that but I have a feeling I'll find out since our class together is on Monday."

But here's where things get interesting — as it turns out, the girl who was giving her grief about copying her story, actually ended up projecting in a big, big way. OP explained: "I heard some chatter throughout the day and our entire class received an email about cheating and plagiarism. As it turns out, she plagiarized her story! Her sister had written the story when she was in university a few years back and she had stolen it and submitted it as her own, thinking no one would notice as it had been a certain number of years."

OP discovered that her classmate had basically taken her own sister's story and then passed it off as her own: "Well, after the incident, our lecturer used the anti-plagiarism software on our stories and found out about her cheating. Her situation is now being assessed by the ethics committee. She could be expelled."

So ultimately, @stellactqm got accused of plagiarism and it turned out that the woman in question was actually the one stealing other people's words. Providing only further proof that folks who are projecting wild accusations against someone are usually just guilty of that thing themselves.