I’ll post the details of the story tomorrow. It’s late and I am hoping that I will wake up in the morning and the person responsible will have done the right thing. I’m thankful for all my readers and those of you who took the time to tell me about the theft. I was hoping there was a rational explanation but that was not the case, just a lot of denial and a refusal to do the right thing. Apparently, pleasantries stop once I have something people want more than my friendship. It’s made me sad.

UPDATE: Good morning readers. Woke up to a full inbox this morning. Thanks for you emails and comments.  I am going to give a brief explanation here, and then let’s just all take a deep breath and move on. Blogging is supposed to be fun.

As you know, I live in Atlanta. This blog is primarily a blog about Atlanta gossip. Since I was born here, I have lived many places but have always come back to Atlanta. I have a lot of friends here. As you know I had a source who had information that there was a lot happening at the St Regis a few days before Kim Zolciak’s wedding. That source turned out to be a bad lead. It happens. My post about that was stolen and copied by another blogger in it’s entirety and posted as if they wrote it.  When the other blogger was confronted, they tried to deny it and but eventually changed the wording but did not credit me as the source. Their defense was “everything comes from somewhere”. 

While this was going on, I had begun posting at LynnNChicago.com . Lynn’s blog is a “Real Housewives” blog.  She talks about all the shows, does recaps and covers stories related to all the Real Housewives Shows.  I posted about her blog yesterday in my Kim Kardashian post and gave a link recommending it as a great place to post.  LynnNChicago followed me on twitter and tweeted that she was linking to my blog in her post yesterday. We exchanged a pleasant tweet or two and that was that.

So it was clear that Lynn had read my blog yesterday and had found something she wanted to link to. I was excited. She is a blogger with a big audience, and I am a brand new blog focusing on Atlanta gossip. I’d found Lynn’s blog because I was seeing referrals coming from there in my stats. I tweeted thanks to her followers and began posting regularly at her blog.  Everyone was nice and welcoming and helpful as I discussed my shock that someone would copy my blog entry and claim it as their own.

Now remember my sources in Atlanta? One of them felt bad that my wedding source was wrong, and provided me with pictures from the reception. These pictures were no where else. I posted them and someone copied one. I asked them to remove it and they did. I then placed a barely visible watermark of my icon in the bottom left corner. I wrote in bold letters at the top of my blog entry to please not copy those pictures and to instead refer their readers with a link. I received several links to my blog.

So imagine my surprise when the very next day (yesterday) Lynn went to my wedding dress blog and despite the fact that I had written in bold letters across the top of the page not to copy the pictures and explained that they were watermarked lifted the pictures and tossed them in at the end of her blog about the wedding as if they were hers.  Just, oh and here are some more pictures.

I was stunned. I would never have expected her to do that. She seemed like a nice person who was encouraging someone with a new blog. I tweeted her. No response. I posted in her comments section. Nothing.

Now Lynn’s blog is a little different. Her comments section is more of a daily chat room. She posts  a long post a day and then everyone chats in the comments. Maybe about the post, maybe about their sick cat, maybe exchanging recipes, maybe asking for prayers, it’s like a message board with no threads. It’s a little Internet family that talks in that one comment section all day. There are hundreds of posts a day. She may or may not have time to read all. I asked her why she was using my pictures with no credit fully expected her to credit me. I did not ask her to take them down even though it was clear that I did not want them lifted because the people at her blog had been so nice and I didn’t want to cause a stir. Much confusion occurred in the comments section because her readers didn’t seem to understand which pictures I was talking about and because they are quick to defend Lynn. They are friends. I understand that.

Eventually Lynn DMs me and she is furious. How dare I call her out in public? She lied repeatedly about getting the pictures from my board and claims she got them somewhere else. She did not. Her followers claimed they were posted all over the Internet. They were not. I asked them to please link me to where my pictures were being used. They could not. I tried in DM to reason with Lynn. It was clear she had been caught stealing content. She didn’t seem to know what to do. I tried to give her an easy out. She would not take it.

It was never my intention to cause drama. I am not the one who stole content. I wish this had never happened. I was enjoying posting at her blog. She has some great people there. But I could not just sit idly by when my content was stolen. We teach our kids when a big kid steals your lunch money you tell someone even if they threaten jump you after school.  If little blogs keep doing nothing when the big blogs bully them, if no one every says anything, then the bullying never stops.

So at the end of the day, it was more important to Lynn to steal my content than have me as a commenter at her blog.  To me, it was worth losing my first exclusive get to find that out early. I am sure I will have more exclusives in the future. I’ve learned a lot from the experience and for that I am thankful.

And that boys and girls is why right click is disabled on the website and you see that cute little alligator at the top.   Now let’s find out what is happening in Atlanta today! Tweet me your sightings @tamaratattles !