I agree, Pam. Plagiarism of a fanfic makes no sense to me, either. At the same time, it's one of those things that I keep trying to understand. I mean, I can understand stealing someone's essay to submit for a class. You want the marks but you don't want to do the work. But stealing a fanfic? It's not as if it's going to give you the feeling of a job well done - nor is it going to benefit you financially or in terms of easy marks. So why bother? There must be some other motivation - like peer pressure. But I wouldn't have considered writing fanfic as the 'cool' thing to do.
But then, a lot of things about the web completely confuse me. For example, why do people claim to have insider information about a political candidate or a reality show outcome or almost anything else when they don't? Or why do people feel free to be mean just because they don't have to sign their own name to a comment?
There has to be a reason for these things, but for the life of me, I can't understand it. I'm sure it would make an interesting study.
ML
