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They Stole My Idea!

A

Anonymous

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You've nurtured that long cherished sci-fi movie project for years. 'The Attack of the Men in the Matriculated Munch Bunch Ads!'. Then Hollywood makes it, almost verbatim, as its latest movie. Maybe the same thing has happened with an idea for a new kitchen appliance, rock song, cartoon character or video-game accessory - and one of "them" mass produce it before you can smash your piggy bank and go to the patent office.
How is it that Hollywood, major corporations or record companies seem to know exactly what you were thinking? Maybe it was just a scene in a movie or a riff on a song, or the aesthetic of a new blender - but "they" must have scanned your brain. You were so careful, you didn't even tell your mom - how did they manage to steal your idea?
Has anyone else had these paranoic - or factually grounded fantasies - contributions, please on recent thinking about this possible use of remote viewing and/or genuine cases of the biggies nicking stuff off the little guy (Jeffrey Archer's plagiarism and the various Disney/Pixar indiscretions are the only ones I can think of at this time!)
 
Yeah similar things have come up over the Matrix and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - I suppose the difference is that those ideas were "out there."

If it was just soemthing you were thinking about it may show that there is no such thing as an original idea (just people who got their first) but it is more likely that this is due to you remembering the hits and forgetting the misses. We must have plenty of ideas but we'd only take note of the one's that actually get made.

Its happened to me - I just shrug and move on ;)
 
Haha.. yeah this has happened to me quite a few times. Ideas are a dime a dozen, though. It's the implementation of the idea that counts, and that's where either- skill (in composition), or- resources (money, usually, to hire folks with skill) come in.
 
If you get enough like-minded individuals who have to think about a certain subject, even if they're grouped in different places, they tend to come up with similar ideas. When I used to work in the computer games industry, this was a common problem - you'd come up with some killer idea, only to find out that some other development house was doing something similar.

Likewise, you could also make a comparison with the way disperate cultures seem to come up with similar themes WRT to problem solving, ideas, etc.. Some would like to paint this as evidence of outside help, etc. - but IMHO it's just an example of the way all humans will come up with similar ideas no matter where they are if there's a situation that demands enough brainpower and attention.
 
dagnabbit

i was just about to post the exact same message!

damn you and your mind-thieving abilities!
 
I've got this great idea for a thread its called the stole my idea.......wait a minute

ok ok i've got my coat and i'm on my way out the door
 
It's just people tapping into the zeitgeist and cultural memes, surely?
 
I recently wrote a 32 page comic strip script for a friend of mine who's a talented digital artist to illustrate and put up on his website ( http://www.redux-art.co.uk/ ). My friend said he had an image pop into his head of a deformed monkey chained up in a cell, and my script ended up being about an oriental sage-like monkey who speaks only in Haiku being interrogated by a pair of military types. The chief asks the monkey questions, and his assistant interprets the enigmatic simians answers.

About a week after I had finished my script, my friend informed me that a new Orange mobile phone ad had appeared on TV. In it, an enigmatic oriental sage-like monk is interrogated by a pair of executives from Orange. The chief asks the monk questions, and his assistant interprets the enigmatic sages answers.

As my TV is no longer "plumbed" in, I haven't seen the ad myself, and frustratingly can't find it to download from the net. Nevertheless, if it's as my friend describes it, anyone reading my script now would assume that I stole the idea from the advert, and just changed the monk to a monkey! Most annoying. But these things happen, I guess.
 
People aren't stealing my ideas, they are planting theirs in my head! :shock:
 
graylien said:
I recently wrote a 32 page comic strip script for a friend of mine who's a talented digital artist to illustrate and put up on his website ( http://www.redux-art.co.uk/ ).
Click to expand...

Great graphics! Excellent website.
 
graylien said:
I recently wrote a 32 page comic strip script for a friend of mine who's a talented digital artist to illustrate and put up on his website ( http://www.redux-art.co.uk/ ). My friend said he had an image pop into his head of a deformed monkey chained up in a cell, and my script ended up being about an oriental sage-like monkey who speaks only in Haiku being interrogated by a pair of military types. The chief asks the monkey questions, and his assistant interprets the enigmatic simians answers.
Click to expand...

I like their work.

So did this script never get made into a comic strip? Pity - the Ornge ad is pretty generic kind of stuff - the general concept: foreigners words get translated to be more meaningful/silly had been done before its the implementation which is the important thing.

I think if anything his thread proves there is rarely such thing as a truly original idea (I'm sure I could come up with half a dozen previous examples of the translation/deliberate mistranslation routine quiet quickly if I put my mind to it) - if we let that put us off people'll probably never do anything ;)
 
Keep wearing your tinfoil hats!

They'll never steal your ideas then!

8)
 
you've been duped, rynner- just like countless others. Tinfoil hats merely act as transmitters.

You're just making yourself an easy target for "them".
 
high and mighty said:
you've been duped, rynner- just like countless others. Tinfoil hats merely act as transmitters.
Click to expand...
Not if they're lined with GARLIC!

That defies all blood (and transmission) suckers! :D
 
'Tis not a conspiracy.... as others have said, the influence of the current culture and the fact that (most) people's minds work the same way often leads to this sort of thing (eg. the parallel invention of the radio by Marconi and the other chappie. What do you mean "I thought you were doing a history degree"? :roll: )

Jung discusses this. Somewhere. He touches on it in "Flying Saucers" (not really worth reading unless you are a fan of tangents).
 
taras said:
Jung discusses this. Somewhere.
Click to expand...
He invented my favourite word, synchronicity, in the process.
(Something that seems more meaningful than mere coincidence.)
 
Hey folks I just found something fuzzy growing on some old bread and it gave me an idea.

I think I may have found a way of curing bacteria from being killed by those nasty antibiotics by regularly exposing them to various types of the antibiotic infection. I will also try surpressing the immune system of various humans by giving them antibiotics at the drop of a hat even for things like the common cold dispite the fact that it will do nothing to help them.

Don't worry bacteria I am there for you.

Oh hang on, the medical profession have been doing that for decades. Damn!

Back to the drawingboard
 
I remember reading once that somebody got mad at the guy who draws the Garfield comic strip (you'd think I'd remember his name considering it's my favorite comic) because he said that the comic-drawer was reading his mind.

I refused to watch the X-Files when I was younger because I liked to write short stories and I came up with an idea I really liked only to see something very similar on the show. :roll:
 
RainyOcean said:
I remember reading once that somebody got mad at the guy who draws the Garfield comic strip (you'd think I'd remember his name considering it's my favorite comic)
Click to expand...

:idea: Jim Davis I believe.
 
You know he hasn't drawn it since the 80s, don't you? From what I've seen he can't even draw Garfield in that style.
 
Wow. That sucks. All this time Garfield has been my favorite comic (although I'm starting to like Get Fuzzy more) and I just assumed Jim Davis had decided to draw the characters differently than he used to. :(
 
I've been shouting from the roof-tops for years that I should patent a mint flavoured bourbon biscuit before someone else does.

Still no-one hears my cries...
 
you could cover it in chocolate and call it Mint Seagull or something....
 
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