Huffington Magazine Issue 5 | Page 86

Exit eWISE BY KATY HALL An acquaintance of mine is plagiarizing my status updates on Facebook. I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt the first time, but last week it happened again (with an old Liz Phair lyric). We have mutual friends and it’s weird. Should I confront her? — Flattered?, Austin Q First you should confront the sad eighth grader inside of you and tell her things will get better. Broadcasting your angst only makes it worse! Then go like the status updates your friend copied. That should embarrass her into deleting them or at least steer her toward someone else next time she can’t find the words to convey her feelings to the masses. Also delete your own lyrical status updates. You are the original plagiarizer — come up with something more pre- A ILLUSTRATION BY JASON SCHNEIDER HUFFINGTON 07.15.12 cise to say about yourself and save the faux introspection for Tumblr. As for your friend and other uninspired attention seekers, there is an app that generates mildly clever stat us updates intended for users to pass off as their own. It’s called Status Shuffle, and for 99 cents, musings such as “Hmm. Halo or horns today?” can be yours, or at least appear to be.