Confic Magazine Retro-Causally Attempts to Steal Really Cool Term
NEWS/OPINION — Some serious chronological crime going on here
July 28, 2022 — Disgusting and severely un-based online magazine and publisher Confic Magazine LLC has been indicted for retro-causal intellectual property thievery from a prominent SCP Wiki author, [REDACTED]. The LLC was caught red-handed when they sloppily left behind traces of a website hack and an absolute time-loop pile-up of conceptual carnage.
The LLC is accused of travelling back in time to January 2022 in order to inauthentically claim originative possession and coinage rights to a term used to describe a really really cool school of composition on the SCP Wiki, dubbed “neololFoundation”. The rightful creator of this term is SCP Wiki author [REDACTED], who coined it to much fanfare alongside their SCP-7000 Contest entry, and additionally in a now-archived Tweet (source: 1, 2).
When complaints were raised by the rightful originator of the term, an investigation was launched. Of course it’s those ineffectual, pesky confic people again trying to take credit from way less popular, but more honest and hard-working folk.
[REDACTED] had this to say:
“It’s kinda strange. Why would you try to retro-causally steal a term so blatantly? Unless it was valuable?
I guess they felt like they could turn it on its head and into some kind of pejorative, instead of the celebration that it is, one of our unique writing style. They just aren’t cool enough to get it.
We’re still proud to apply the title. It’s just like how Joe Biden started calling himself “Brandon” for a while there, or how the Maga crowd embraced “Ultra Maga”; brilliant, totally-extinguishing tactical PR moves to re-absorb an insult back into a “gotcha” moment.” — [REDACTED] (SCP Wiki author and “NeololFoundation” termer)
When reached out for comment, the LLC had this to say:
“We felt as though we could turn the term on its head and make it some kind of pejorative, instead of the celebration that it is of a unique writing style. Kinda like a reverse Joe-Biden. ” — LLC Spokesman
The spokesman also added that they would have gotten away with it too, if not for those meddling “Neo-lolFoundation” authors.
The LLC’s strategy was superficially effective, but had a fatal flaw; the term increased in popularity from the exposure. Because of the extra exposure, other connections were made that may not have been, including the term’s true origins and meaning.
Take for example the forced removal of the original term from the comment section of the author’s SCP-7000 entry by the thieves — something done to doubtless secure their apparent coinage of the term some 6 months earlier, as well as to get rid of the SCP author’s proof that they founded the term. The thieves had to hack the Wiki (now reversed) in order to accomplish this, which left clear digital evidence of tampering that ultimately lead to their conviction.
Additionally, there were noticeable incongruencies in the LLC’s renovated definition and spelling of the term, which raised eyebrows as the situation was looked into more deeply by those now familiar with the term.
While the original term was written as “neololFoundation”, the LLC’s bastardized version hypenized and capitalized it as “Neo-lolFoundation”. Additionally, unlike the SCP Wiki author’s intention of simply calling for a style that merely incorporated humor, the LLC’s fraudulent version of the term attempted to address something else entirely:
“We wanted to highlight the fact that you can be funny, irreverent, and silly on the mainlist and not be Neo-lolFoundation. Neo-lolFoundation’s humor is a very specific kind of humor that breaks in-universe believability and character in order to make room for a joke. These are usually pretty horrible jokes to boot.
Bad writing breaks character in order to make way for itself. Good writing finds ways to make jokes in-character.
It’s like leaving a blooper reel in the last minutes of latter episodes of Breaking Bad, because the tired veterans who knew what they were doing ran out of fucks to give, leaving the youngest of the crew to freely think it would be hilarious.
It’s at the expense of the project’s premise, everything that came before it. They’re leeching off other authors’ efforts and ideas, and to literary exsanguination. They only concern themselves with the immediate, self-aggrandizing effect; upvotes and dopamine hits. They are like bed bugs following carbon dioxide trails.” — LLC Representative
In response, the rightful owner of the term had this to say:
“I get that they wanted to flip the script; I mean, that kind of tells me that this was an effective term to begin with, and one that deeply set itself in people’s minds. Their minds, specifically. Very successful term.
The kicker I think is that we have a concept that’s good enough to be stolen. I have some other concepts they can steal if they want; I appreciate the flattery and signal boost. The term has infiltrated their own territory, something we always hoped for in coining the term, and we didn’t have to lift a finger.
This is kinda funny too because we didn’t advertise the term outside our own projects, which means the goofy confic people must have been necking into our spaces, as if in order to keep tabs on what we think about them. They seem to be pretty fixated on what we have to say! Again, I’m very flattered.
Yeah, we felt a little helpless, in that we can’t compete with the larger voice from the LLC; they have more viewers and a wider audience than we do. I guess it says a lot that they feel the need to dogpile the little guys. We released our term as CC BY-SA 4.0, so, that was kind of a dirty move. Nobody wants to correctly observe CC attribution, it seems. This is a real problem and perpetual hot-topic at the Wiki.
In addition to that, their different version of spelling it is still legally-protected intellectually property. The way they aren’t spelling it is the CC one!
When I approached the LLC about it, they basically told me “Finders keepers!” as if we were 6 years old on a playground. I mean the guy handed us legally actionable, intractable proof of his denial in the face of a virtual takedown notice, for crying out loud. Can you believe that? DMCA can take down his entire Twitter for that, and any website his incorrect claim is on.
It only costs about $200 to file a take down, works if you’ve got the proof, which we do. Thanks to the immature eagerness of this one person —fittingly, the same immaturity that they write with — to blunt what they have taken to be an insult to their pride, they have put their entire website and Twitter account in a perpetual state of jeopardy. All at our whim. The button is right there. Will we push it? I don’t think he or his handlers realize this.
But legality aside, it’s even richer, morally speaking; I think having the term be falsely attributed to this LLC, and have their whole circle repeat something they clearly wish never existed at all is its own justice, in a way. It’s like the sort of fate an Olympian God would give to some poor sap; every time they hear the term — even from their peers — they know deep down, in their heart of hearts, that they are liars, cheats, and petty thieves who can’t come up with this stuff on their own.
We now literally have a blatant, proud instance of non-attribution of Creative Commons material, on a site that is obsessed with maintaining proper attribution for Creative Commons material. The moral irony of that will keep me smiling for quite some time.
One of my buddies was all up in arms about it, very irritated, and I cooled her down and told her this is a good thing, and to let it be. I remembered a wise quote, I think from Sun-Zu or Napoleon or something:
“Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake.”
They can keep the dibs. That’s kids stuff. We just want the term to proliferate and be used. This doesn’t seem like it, and certainly not to our thieves, but this is a PR win for us relative little guys at the SCP Wiki. It’ll just take some time.
When asked what could have motivated such dislike to justify intellectual property theft — and from such a darling SCP Wiki member too, one who just wants to live, laugh, and love everyone a bit more, and make the Foundation just a bit less cold and cruel— the LLC representative said:
“I mean, it’s all right there in the name. Such an ironic endorsement. They believe the -J should be abolished, that it isn’t needed or useful. There was a good reason it was invented in the first place. They don’t seem to understand it.
In turn, they aim — whether they realize it or are too deaf from their own snickering — to turn the Foundation as a character, and themselves as writers, into a laughing stock.
They are so focused on making in-jokes, they don’t understand this is a legally actionable one. A cease & desist letter could show up to our platform’s owners or our social media any day, but for some inexplicable reason, it hasn’t yet. Thank goodness we’re dealing with some truly oblivious people, otherwise we would be putting the whole site at risk!
Bottom line is we feel that — intentionally or not — the SCP Mainlist is becoming a joke. One big joke.”
Only time will tell who the joke might truly be on.
For legal reasons, this news report is obligated to cite the following:
Confic Call-In, SCP_Meta, and the Lack of Lepers blog are all subsidiaries of Confic Magazine LLC, with full legal protections actionable under US law. The legal rights and representations therein apply to these products, as it does to the Confic Magazine publication.
Any reproduction of content from these sources must be by released license, Fair Use, or with permission. Non-attribution for content originally present on the Confic Wiki is in violation of CC BY-SA 4.0.
Alabama Entity Identification number for this entity is 946–270.
The Federal Employment Identification Number for this entity is: 87–2936813
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