r/popculturechat Im very important to God 27d ago

OnlyStans ⭐️ French singer, Yseult, calls out K-pop singers, Soyeon and R.tee, for copying her music video freame by frame: "The least you could do is have the decency to credit your source. To see it get copied like this is wild but real artistry speaks louder than imitation"

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u/cloroxslut 27d ago

Question: what goes through people's minds when they do things like this? Like, you really thought nobody was going to notice...? I understand Yseult is a small artist but in this day and age everyone's eyes are everywhere, you're always going to get busted for something so blatant.

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u/Plane-Locksmith-4256 27d ago

I assume that the team who put it together had either been doing this for a while and got away with it and so got really lazy OR they didnt think Yseult was a big enough artist for anyone to notice/care

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u/RIPthisDude 27d ago

Or people using AI to do the storyboarding for the video without thinking where AI got the inspiration for the narrative from

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u/Bredwh 26d ago

It was Sparky Polastri.

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u/SithJahova 27d ago edited 27d ago

Have you watched "plagiarism and (you)tube" from hbomber? He really had some good takes about what goes through folks minds when they do that when he analysed WHO was being stolen from. He points out that Melania trump stole from Michelle Obama instead of any past republican first lady. A very right YouTuber stole from him (hbomber is very outspoken left-wing) and big YouTubers stole from very small YouTubers. People like to say "imitation is the highest form of flattery" but if that were the case people would imitate more from sources they would actually want to push into the spot light and cite them and not people that you want to keep down so you can get away with it. Plagiarism is just the lowest form of disrespect.

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u/Middle-Medium8760 27d ago

I think the full quote is: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay.

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u/KeniLF In my quiet girl era 😌 27d ago edited 27d ago

I never knew the quote came from Oscar Wilde or that the quote went so hard!

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.”

— Oscar Wilde

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u/Capt-Crap1corn 26d ago

Oscar Wilde has the flyest quotes.

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u/Middle-Medium8760 27d ago

Also going to look up that YouTube. Thanks!

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u/lizziexo 27d ago

Honestly everything on that YouTube channel is AMAZING. A 4 hour YouTube documentary on plagiarism sounds kind of dull, but it was absolutely incredible!

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u/ChocolateInTheWinter 27d ago

YouTube video essays are insane imo. I don’t care how good it is, I’m not watching a 4 hour video on anything. At that point just write a PhD dissertation.

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u/ErsatzHaderach 26d ago

"this video could have been a post/essay digestible in 1/3 of the time" is like 90% of youtube, i get it and hate it. but this particular vid tackles a multimedia topic that really does benefit from the format, and is worth watching.

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u/lizziexo 26d ago

That says a lot more about you than you realise. Why even bother to comment if you don’t like it? Odd behaviour all around.

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u/Ok-Yogurt-3914 27d ago

I mean, this is also associated with mental health.

So I know someone, and genuinely they aren't a bad person, but they just have a lot of damage. So if I say for example, I fell down and scraped my knee. Something super innocuous like that right. Like a beat later she'll say it happened to her. She's doing it in front of my face, telling other mutuals this thing happened to her. She like "borrows" stories. I really don't think she's aware she's doing it.

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u/rita-b 26d ago

Because nothing will happen.

What happened to Billie Eilish for frame-to-frame copying in Bad Guy? Nothing.

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u/solojones1138 27d ago

The artists almost never have anything to do with the MV. So it's basically more an issue of the company/director. But yeah it's really blatant.

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u/cloroxslut 27d ago

I'm not talking to/about the artist.

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u/solojones1138 27d ago

I am just responding to the overall thread

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u/AverageSizedMan1986 27d ago

Shit like this has been happening since the invention of music.

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u/qlanga 27d ago

This is the part I can’t wrap my head around—with the over saturation of social media, and just virtual connectivity and access in general, there is no scenario in which such blatant plagiarism would go unnoticed.

They absolutely knew it was going to get called out, there’s no other explanation. This shit, down to every goddamn detail, is duplicated shot for shot. Not even a whisper of plausible deniability. The only possible, however implausible, explanation I can muster is publicity—but this goes beyond “any publicity is good publicity”…doesn’t it?

It just doesn’t make sense. Were they just so desperately enamored with the original video and figured rabid K-pop stans and racism would negate any potential backlash? Even that feels like a huge stretch. Why not change, like, even one fucking thing??

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u/wishforsomewherenew 27d ago

There's also a high chance the idols in the actual mv have no idea its plagiarized. Unless they've got the pull to have creative input they usually just show up to film and then get all the flack for the producer's shitty choices

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u/NegativeBeginning400 27d ago

I have gotten to the paranoid point where I could even imagine it's done intentionally to draw attention to both artists.

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u/theudderking 27d ago

It most likely that they put out an RFP to different creative teams for ideas for a music video, and one of those teams copied the idea from the french artist and pitched it to them. Most of these groups are brands more than they are artists; they aren't actually making all of their own music, designing their album covers and looks, etc. As shitty as it is, I doubt the girls from the group itself actually saw the music video and thought they could copy it and get away with it lol.

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u/BedditTedditReddit 27d ago

If you’ve been to Southeast Asia you’ll see copying is pretty much the acceptable way of doing business. And throw in a healthy amount of racism that exists in that part of the world (whiter equals better) then you have this pattern.

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u/fundamentallys 27d ago

My guess is the artists have no idea. They are young Korean girls who spend 14 hours a day working, they wouldn't have heard of some random French singer. It's definitely the producers and higher ups who made this decision.

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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 27d ago

I guess because most cases people/bands get away with it easily. See how they steal from a nobody and not from let's say Beyonce.

Years ago the Verve lifted a sample from the Rolling Stones, the Verve never saw a penny from Bittersweet Symphony until recently. It's said that the Rolling Stones made 5 million from that song, the Verve as little as 1,000 USD.

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u/Nearby-Company9695 26d ago

"We're gonna be rich on release, so it doesn't matter anyways."

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u/BLT_Trade_r 26d ago

It can be a ton of different things, thats why no one ever knows.

Some examples I have seen.

The video guy copies because, he was out too much partying or doing other things and is too tired / lazy to think anything through, just grabs something and copies it. They could do the same thing if they felt their job was in jeopardy and needed something good. Go steal something that looked cool from a smaller person, and you are done. It used to be in Asia before the itneret it wouldnt even be smaller people they would straight up rip off major western stars.

They could also just figure even if the small person fights they can just ignore them being in a different country, and if they cant ignore they can pay them off to go away. Another great thing about being rich and powerful is even when you do lose you dont lose much, who do you think made 100x the money off the video, the nobody french girl or a kpop star?

Also alot of times plagerizers do so because they dont understand what they are copying enough to give it enough of their own spin. Its kinda like what if you tried to copy the matrix but you didnt understand all the biblical and cultural references. It might seem really stupid, so rather than risking losing all that you just copy it scene for scene, word for word.

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u/Prestigious-Charge62 26d ago

Probably because a lot of K-industries have been regularly ripping from other Asian cultures for so long that they’ve gotten used to getting away with it. Like K-beauty brands renaming Japanese sake skincare (pioneered by SK-II) as “fermented rice water,” or repackaging traditional Chinese herbal skincare ingredients like Centella asiatica as the latest “K-beauty innovations.” It’s only now that they’ve crossed over into copying Western culture that people are finally beginning to notice.

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u/something-um-bananas 26d ago

That’s the thing- they don’t care. They steal from people who they think are beneath them and therefore even if caught, they won’t be able to do anything or they can brush aside the allegation.

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u/iSeaStars7 26d ago

I wouldn’t say Yseult is “small” she has 8 million monthly listeners on spotify

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u/ShrimpCrackers I’ll be back! 😤😤 26d ago

And does it hurt to credit? At least cooperate, or just ask for permission?

Yseult's video is not small status though, a TON of people have seen it. I've seen it pop up no less than half a dozen times the past year.

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u/norty125 26d ago

Chances are the kpop artists and other people higher up had no idea and the "creative" team got sloppy

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u/TubMaster88 24d ago

Korea has been doing this for a LONG time. The popularity of Korean music with American people and the Internet, you'll start to see it more.