6

Mass Erotic E-Book Plagiarist

shahfarshid/iStock/Getty Images

Producing factory-line erotic eBooks is a disturbingly lucrative business, but you have to write a lot of them if you want to pay the rent $1 at a time. Also, writing is hard, even when it's about lesbian werewolf twins. That's why there's an entire underground industry of "writers" who just download a bunch of other people's stories, change a few words around here and insert some anal there, slap on a new title, and commence rolling around in that dirty (in more ways than one) money. Some successful e-smut authors are literally copying and pasting from free sites like Literotica:

Via Fastcompany.com

Via Fastcompany.com
This explains why Sonic is a character in every single top-selling erotic novel on Amazon.

5

Rich-Ass Instagram-Stealing Artist

mapichai/iStock/Getty Images

As a society, we've become bizarrely comfortable with documenting every aspect of our lives and sharing it with the entire world, from our gross sex tapes to the even grosser photos of the resulting babies. But be careful that your stuff isn't too good -- you could be giving away a goldmine. Career art plagiarist Robert Prince and his gigantic balls have made headlines recently by hanging screenshots of strangers' Instagram posts in art galleries and selling the prints for up to $90,000. And so far, he's getting away with it.

CNN
"Sorry, all the crappy lunch photos are sold out."

4

Viral YouTube-To-Facebook Thief

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images

3

Professional Twitter Joke Plagiarist

Mireya Acierto/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

You heard about the Fat Jew, right? If not, then know that's not the setup to a terrible joke -- well, sort of. It's the nom de douche of John Ostrovsky, who was looking at a bright future based on stealing jokes on Twitter until the Internet metaphorically sent boxes of rage poops to the prestigious talent agency that had signed him.

Via Twitter

Via Twitter
Ripping off Cracked writers rarely ends well.

It was a rare act of justice from the Internet outrage machine, but Ostrovsky is far from the only one doing this and making shitloads of money off of it. Elliot Tebele -- "the man behind Instagram's funniest feed," @fuckjerry -- is one of a multitude of users whose strategy consists of cropping the names out of other people's tweets and reposting them. "It's really hard to find out who was the original creator when pictures go viral on Tumblr or whatever," explained the Internet sensation who doesn't know how to use Google.

Via Twitter

Via Instagram
Screw that guy.

2

Fake Social Media Follower

Twitter

Clearly, the number of followers, likes, and shares your online presence garners is important to a lot more than just your self-esteem. Accounts with millions of followers can drown in sponsors and advertising revenue, which means that maximizing your interaction becomes a priority at all costs -- specifically, about ten bucks. That's how much it costs to get 1,000 robots to follow you on Twitter.

FastFollowerz, via Baracudalabs.com
And possibly in real life, after they send back Terminators to hunt people like you.

If your budget is a bit higher, some websites offer one million fake followers for only $600. You can get 1,000 Instagram followers for $12 and 1,000 SoundCloud plays for $9, creating this weird reverse "Emperor's New Clothes" situation in which everybody but your sponsors knows that you're playing to an empty arena.

And for a mere $50, you can get a six-month license for software that lets you create a practically infinite number of Twitter accounts, which you can program to tweet, retweet, and follow others just like real friends. (You cannot, sadly, make them love you.) You can then turn around and sell these fake friends to other users, creating a pyramid scheme of untold numbers of fake people interacting with other fake people in a fake environment. We did it, everyone. We built the Matrix.

1

Official Trailer Passer-On-er

YouTube

The most tragic thing about all the rampant plagiarism is that there are totally legitimate ways to make buckets of cash on other people's work. All you have to do is limit yourself to offering a preview. Movie trailers used to be a thing you tolerated while wondering how long you should wait before digging into your popcorn. But these days, they've become events unto themselves. Just look at the one for Fifty Shades Of Grey:

Youtube
The last 52,163 are us refreshing the page over and over to try to get it to 69 million for this screenshot.

If our calculations are correct, 68 million views comes to about $136,000 in revenue, possibly more. Now you know why we suddenly have teasers for the teasers (preceded by teasers for other movies' teasers). Everyone loves trailers and movie snippets, but we love them more when they're posted not by the greedy studio trying to sell you something, but by passionate fans sharing the thing they love. That's where professional "passionate fans" come in.

A YouTube channel called Movieclips -- which is devoted, surprisingly, to movie clips -- generates over 600 million views a month and over $1 million in ad revenue. For uploading parts of movies. Not only that, but they've posted so many cinematic bits over the years that they now have the ability to identify other fan-posted movie clips as soon as they're uploaded on YouTube. That scene from Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot you thought you got away with posting? They probably saw that.

YouTube
You freak.

But rather than getting the clips deleted, Movieclips simply helps the studio claim the revenue -- and the stats, which are almost as valuable. If clips from a movie that tanked suddenly start getting tons of views, that tells the studio that the audience is there, opening the door for sequels. That used to be measured in DVD sales, which is what allowed the Austin Powers franchise to flourish. OK, maybe that's not such a good thing.

The point is, it's an industry that thrives on sharing content created by other people, who have no problem with you sharing it. Not only do you never have to create a single thing, you never have to feel bad about it.

Um, excuse us, we need to go have a talk with HR.

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