As was pointed out to me by colleague William Wilson, pseudo-celebrity Lianne “Spiderbaby” MacDougall, perhaps currently best known for dating Quentin Tarantino and appearing with him at the 2013 Academy Awards presentation (as well as the Saturn Awards in Burbank), is a serial plagiarizer. Her writing (and award-winning multimedia reviews, called “Fright Bytes”) has been in such respectable horror-oriented outlets as Fangoria Magazine, FearNet, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Video Watchdog, Film Journal International, and Cineplex Canada, among others. She even has a book slated to be released in late 2013 by St. Martin’s Press, entitled “Grindhouse Girls: Cinema’s Hardest Working Women” (with a foreword being written by Tarantino himself). The problem is that a large majority of her work has been stolen.
As of July 16th, 2013 her personal website has been taken down, her social networking profiles heavily edited, and her contributions to notified websites removed. Her Twitter account (which has gone through several edits) even admitted to the plagiarism, and she commented that she intends to apologize to all of her victims individually. The acts themselves were obvious and blatant, copying and pasting large chunks of text from numerous horror movie reviews. She apparently couldn’t even be bothered with paraphrasing.
As each hour passes, more and more of Lianne Spiderbaby’s plagiarized works are coming to light. Perhaps the most upsetting element of her theft comes from the fact that she garnered rates from magazines and probably turned plenty of profits from her various activities, while purloining creative properties from authors who make far less money. She got the fame and connections, while the real scribes remain mostly unknown. GoneWithTheTwins.com was not immune to her far-reaching swiping of reviews, either. Our review of cult classic horror movie “Basket Case” was plagiarized for her “Terror Tapes” column on FearNet, in which she compiled a rundown of the film to supplement her interview with actors Beverly Bonner and Kevin Van Hentenryck. The below image’s highlighted lines are the ones stolen from the original review:
Some commenters have dubbed her the “Lindsay Lohan of Horror,” having stolen from more than a dozen identified sources so far. The backlash is hilarious, and we encourage you to keep reading on the subject elsewhere online. One of the most aggravating articles was written by Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog, in which he defends Lianne’s actions by saying, “I think it was just a stupid mistake, repeated out of simple convenience until it caught up with her, and made in the first place because she’s still young and fairly new to the rigors of professional writing. She is accepting all responsibility and I don’t think there is any more we can ask of her.” Yeah, right. He also defends her attack by saying that her youth, beauty, affluence, education, athleticism, and bicoastal life naturally generate jealousy – along with having millionaire filmmaker Tarantino on her arm. I’m sure. The internet can be a pretty cruel place, and it’s likely its hordes of users will dish out the tongue-lashing she deserves. Or maybe she’ll be bailed out by Quentin Tarantino, himself no stranger to accusations of questionable derivations.
– Mike Massie