Plagiarism ain’t cool bro :(

It’s not every day I read an email subject that makes my heart sink, only to find myself laughing out loud. Today I was told someone plagiarised my website!

The snitch lol informant wishes to remain anonymous (they’ve obviously read my blog!)

I wasn’t sure how to deal with this situation. At first I was mad. Should I go super saiyan on the culprit with fire and brimstone? That would be mean spirited but the dude did try to steal my vibe. I’ve decided to go easy and just call this guy out. You can be the judge.

Update: the copycat has since changed their website (thanks!) so I’ve redacted full names here and removed the direct link.

I mistakenly dated this post Friday 4th (it’s still the 3rd). For the sake of RSS feeds I’ll only note the error.

Without further ado, here’s the jump scare for the guilty:

My homepage side-by-side with copycat website. — Can you spot the difference? Hi Jordan :)

Okay, so Jordan [REDACTED] hasn’t completely ripped me off, but the influence is obvious. He’s also working with… well let’s just say the constraints of Bear Blog (I’m being kind.)

Quick aside: Jordan’s two blog posts are the icing on the cake.

'Switching to Omarchy' 21st Dec 2025, and 'The Post-AI Internet Doesn't Look Great' 2nd Sep 2026. — Shot and chaser (chronologically).

Is this plagiarism?

I believe so. The colour scheme is almost identical. The oval green logotype. The use of a pink star shape. My star is a custom vector, Jordan is using Unicode “✦” (U+2726). The sans-serif for body copy and script font for headings. Lobster is not a bad choice if you’re limited to Google Fonts but it’s kinda played out. The combination of all these things is key.

I doubt anyone can look at the side-by-side and say the similarities are coincidence.

Is this homage?

Maybe it was intended to be and I should be flattered. I’m not. It makes me a little sad. Is it not courtesy to ask “is this cool?” — I never got that from Jordan. Not even an attribution.

Nothing in design is truly original. I had plenty of influences myself. However, my personal style has evolved over a decade. Jordan saw my website two days ago and decided to copy it (probably found it via Hacker News or Lobst.ers).

What now…

Plagiarism is seriously uncool even when done poorly. Am I being fair calling this plagiarism? Should I have sent a “cease and desist” first? Had it been more direct and higher quality, I’d have written this post differently, that’s for sure!

Anyway Jordan, this is an open letter to you. Please try to be a little more original.

And please get off Omarchy if you haven’t already:

— Thanks!

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