My story of dealing with a frustrating copycat.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But, is it reeeally? Because having a copycat sure as hell makes me want to pull out my hair sometimes. Let me pour myself a glass of wine and tell you a story.

It started when…

My friend introduced me to an acquaintance of hers. We seemed to hit it off and had a few laughs about how much time we would spend on Instagram. We discussed the trials and tribulations of “influencing” and I confided in her about some specific future content ideas I had. After that one meeting we didn’t see each other in person again.

A few days later I noticed that she changed her bio to mention nearly the same things as mine. I’m talking a drastic change from what hers used to say. I ran to show my boyfriend but we both agreed it had to be just a coincidence. Over the next few weeks she started posting things eerily similar to things I had posted. Similar locations, similar outfits, and even similar captions (although there wasn’t any obvious copy-and-pasting). She didn’t normally post this genre of content so it was a little odd for her to suddenly start. I also noticed she started following accounts I was following but I continued to tell myself it was all a coincidence.

As more time passed…

SO MANY little incidents were happening but I felt conceited thinking somebody would try to copy or imitate me. I won’t go into detail here but I tried my best to be unbothered. Also remember I told you that I confided some content ideas to her when we met? She started posting these ideas that I told her about! Now I KNOW somebody somewhere in the world probably beat me to these ideas. But for this particular person to start using them weeks after we talked about them… it was frustrating and I suspected I had a copycat.

Then out-of-the-blue a friend called and asked me if I had seen this girl. My friend had stumbled on her account and instantly thought she was copying me. I got angry! I had been giving this girl the benefit of the doubt for months. But when an unbiased outsider recognized the similarities that’s when I decided it was no longer coincidence.

This person has a significantly larger following than me so naturally I felt jealousy. She now had the same bio and general niche as me, and I swear her profile picture even resembled mine!

Her posts and stories would appear on my timeline when I opened Instagram, and almost every day it seemed like I was spending time feeling angry and jealous. I felt like she was getting attention for things I was doing the work for.

To this day…

She is copying/impersonating things I post on my Instagram AND even my blog. Often I wonder, how do you stop somebody from re-creating your photos or re-wording your blog posts? If she was stealing my photos or copying word-for-word then maybe I would have some ground to stand on. But it’s just an arrant imitation that makes me feel frustrated.

The fact that I feel jealousy and anger is hard for me to admit. Although I’m now in a better place of understanding than I was when this started months ago.

So here are a few lessons I learned after some introspection & rational thinking.

• What somebody else does is none of your business! EVEN if it’s a copycat. If somebody is impersonating you then clearly they have no creativity or ideas of their own. Because they lack the inherent passion of a genuine creator, they WILL grow tired and exhausted.
• Stop getting yourself upset by something you have no control over. Unless you plan on confronting them (which I don’t feel necessary or worth the energy) then stop stressing yourself out. Trust karma to do her thing.
• MUTE/BLOCK/IGNORE THE PERSON! Stop looking at their account or what they do. Do not spend YOUR valuable time focusing on them. Instead of spending 15 minutes bitterly scrolling through their account, spend that time creating your OWN kickass content!
• What you focus on will multiply. So I’m gonna focus on my own aspirations and raising my vibrations.

_{Note: I left some details vague and omitted parts of the story to keep it from being blatantly obvious who I’m referring to.}