Flat Fuck Fell - On Accidental Plagiarism

I just received an IM from somebody I didn't know. The conversation began like this:

Ok, sorry to be a random jackass, but you're the first Google result for "flat fuck fell," and I think it's insane. It's one thing to mimic a writer, but it's entirely different to gank a phenomenal phrase like that, and adopt and adapt the next line too, without giving any credit to Tim O'Brien. That's just my opinion though. Cheers.

He was referring to the #1 rank in Google that my bit of short prose Slipper Ice holds for the query "flat fuck fell". Once I explained what had happened he was totally cool, it's an entertaining story so I'll start at the beginning...

I had this awesome teacher for my American History class junior year in high school. He had us read O'Brien. I went on to read a couple more of his novels outside of class. That was in '96 or '97. A couple years later, first year of college, I wrote this bit of prose about a friend of mine, and an O'Brien fan (which I didn't learn until later). A year later we hooked up. 5 years later we are still together, this piece of prose is still kicking around on my website (albeit still in the old template), and I get this IM from somebody I don't know accusing me of stealing the phrase.

Now you'll have to trust me that my conscious memory of phrases like that just isn't good enough to pull something up from two years ago to deliberately use in a piece of prose. But now I understand how people can accidentally plagiarize, and why many writers avoid reading anything in their own genre while working.

So now this post will probably take the #1 slot on Google, since the phrase is now in the header and it's reinforced by the high rank of the other page. And so the vicious cycle of plagiarism continues, but at least this time it will be explained along with a bit of advice, "Let this be a warning to you, young writer, do not read. Ummmm, well at least don't read and then write in the style of your favorite authors. Wait, that's no go either. Fuck it. I don't have any advice, and it wouldn't be of any merit if I did. Don't do drugs."