The Starling Fallacy: 36 Pages of Redemption

I’ve now read the “source material” for what it is and am now more sympathetic to the writer. He seems to have invented a concept that he’s released into the wild and keeps dropping in everywhere he can because he’s quite proud of it.

It’s not necessarily a new ideain that it describes a person forgiving some perceived product shortcomings because of other factors they find more important but it does assume that multi pivot suspension is somehow “better” than single pivot.

Unfortunately he has named Starling in the creation of his concept so instead of being the custom steel simple single pivot fallacy it’s the Starling Fallacy.

I don’t have any sympathy over his “loss” – it is after all just one man’s rant/comments on the internet rather than real articles BUT I do find it odd that they’ve been copied the text wholesale along with the title. Does the fact that he’s a semi pro writer and not just a punter with a grudge hold any weight? No idea. I can see both sides though I naturally err on the side of Starling.

“Copyright issues can be waived for the purpose of satire.”

Yes but you can’t take one person’s piece of satire and repeat it and pass it off as your own – that’s what Starling did. They might not be selling product directly but they are using it as a tongue-in-cheek way to market their products. It’s commercial misuse of someone else’s work.

Was the original work satire?

didn’t brant richards use the comments a disgruntled customer made on this forum in the promo material for the last bikes he did for on one? made from gas pipe and will rust spring to mind.

a similar but not identical situation.

Just thought I’d better pop up to give Starling’s point.

Omitting Andrew Major’s credit was in fact a genuine error. He was credited in an early draft, but then got missed in final version that got sent to media outlets and newsletter subscribers. We have since done all we can to correct, but it perhaps didn’t happen quick enough due to it being the weekend. We will make a public apology very soon.

Maybe we should have included him from the start, but as it was just in comments section, we didn’t really think we needed to? A lesson learnt maybe…

I’ve spoken to Andrew, and there’s no bad feelings.

It’s hard work trying to be satirical!!

It’s commercial misuse of someone else’s work.

would the contents of a post in the comments section under an article be part of his body of work?

edit: just seen the above post

didn’t brant richards use the comments a disgruntled customer made on this forum in the promo material for the last bikes he did for on one? made from gas pipe and will rust spring to mind.

a similar but not identical situation.

His latest venture uses snidey comments from social media in its advertising, amongst some interesting copy.

BruceWee

Like it or not, it is plagiarism. Unless you want to argue that it somehow falls outside the scope because it was in a comment on the article rather than the article itself.

It’s plagiarism… but using a quote someone posted on a forum in an April Fool’s post is hardly the most egregious example. If they had lifted his article and used it in actual advertising copy, fair enough.

I don’t know many companies who would commission and pay someone to put an April Fools prank together as Starling did in this case.

Like it or not, getting exposure through clever use of social media is how many companies advertise these days.

As Max Dubler said in the blog I posted earlier, some companies take advantage of this grey area between advertising and social media to avoid paying photographers and it wouldn’t surprise me if the same thing went on with writing.

I’m not saying this is what happened here, just that companies should be very careful how they handle their guerrilla marketing campaigns and avoid the appearance of trying to get something for nothing.

You can all stop getting upset now

https://www.starlingcycles.com/the-starling-fallacy-you-guessed-it-just-kidding/

This puts it all nicely to bed.

https://www.starlingcycles.com/the-starling-fallacy-you-guessed-it-just-kidding/

For completeness, here’s the apology posted on the Starling website here

Sorry for the repeat post 🙄