The tale that Monkey never told is the one everyone wants to hear. For the last 8 months his blog Monkey Fables And Tales was the most popular blog at Entrecard. Then 2 days ago his blog suddenly vanished from Blogspot with the following message “Sorry, the blog at monfat48.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.” As the twitter airwaves buzz with more questions than answers, let’s look at the two explanations given.
First the explanation given by Where The Hell Was I in this forum post. Author Charlie Hatton claims Monkey Tales stole all his posts. Doing my share of the legwork, I find Charlie’s claims to be true. He is an established net personality and his posts pre-date Monkey’s posts by years. There is no way he manufactured a fake Internet identity as a prank on Monkey Tales.
Monkey’s side of the story: Before hearing the above accusation, I messaged Monkey Tale via Entrecard and asked him what happened. Here is his message quoted in it’s entirety. My apologies to anyone insulted by me posting an email without permission, but I no longer have any way to contact the author.
From: Monkey Fables And Tales
I’ve decided that EC isn’t for me any more. (And unlike others who quit, I decided I didn’t need a dramatic exit with a post condemning the place.)
I’m putting all blogging on hold for awhile as well since it appears the business I work for is having a rough go of it with the economy spiraling down.
(We sell high end beds and accessories and I’m going to put more time and effort into that right now in an effort to get sales back on track, which my boss would appreciate.)
Mike”
Who to believe? While not a personal friend off Monkey Tale, I always liked the guy. He seemed to be a stand up guy in an Internet world of scammers and spammers. More than once I read forum posts of his complaining about “crap” written by other people. Yet, I have to look at the Google evidence. Almost every post was stolen.
Why it gets weirder:
- Monkey Tales did not have a single ad on his blog. Not even AdSense. He made no money from his actions
- Monkey had many blogs in the system, all written for the purpose of generating credits to advertise for his main blog.
- Monkey dropped many cards per day, probably 1300-1500 each and every day.
- Monkey’s blog was a blogspot domain, he couldn’t even sell the domain name in the end.
So, did Monkey Tales fool all the people all the time? If he did, I think an apology to the original authors he stole from and to his readers is in order. Either way, I welcome him to contact me and I will post either his apology or rebuttal to the accusations. In the end, I’m not really angry at Monkey. For the first time he actually made me laugh.
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Mike: You nailed me on the overthinking part. That’s my job, analyze all this stuff and come to a logical conclusion. I posted that just in case someone only read your comment and misinterpreted it.
That is without a doubt one of the weirdest things I have ever heard of. Maybe he just wanted to enjoy a little popularity but didn’t have the writing skill needed to keep up a truly good blog.
Sad, and really strange.
NathanKP
“…And unlike others who quit, I decided I didn’t need a dramatic exit…”*
I contend he made the most dramatic exit.
For all the people saying this isn’t EC’s fault. It’s not. But it is EC’s fault that they make popularity about how many cards you get dropped on you.
* We’re assuming Monkey actually wrote that email to you, Turnip. For all we know he copied it from some site.
Turnip said: “Someone with an agenda used a fake name and website, no big deal.”
Her name is Anita. She has an agenda alright. See here – http://indiedesign.typepad.com/inspire_emotion/2008/07/trolls-and-psyc.html
On Topic – I still believe that there is more to it than we currently know. Maybe I believe in Oz, but in spite of the evidence, I know Monkey well enough to think that there is more to it. I have contacted him, and have not heard back.
What’s funny is, no doubt “Monkey” is reading all these blog posts about himself, as well as the thread on the EC forums. The question is, is he laughing or crying?
A truly weird situation, for sure.
well, mike has also had about 7gazillion blogs over the last gazillion years, often with different names and usernames as he tries to avoid some annoying stalker-types.
i’m shocked that he started lifting others’ words … but i know he didn’t steal all of it. (for one, there used to be some posts that he and i worked on together.)
I noticed and wondered what happened to him. I seen his blog everywhere when doing anything with Entrecard.
When making a blog, many people do not place ads and spend a ton of time trying to build traffic and PR first. At that point, it will be worth a lot more when selling ads and links. That could explain what he was doing.
If the stolen content is true, he ranks among many who are no more than a common thief.
Really, really bizarre! And I look forward to reading more about it and try to understand the motivations behind it.
The guy whom Monkey apparently plagiarized, posted about it on his own blog.
http://www.wherethehellwasi.com/blog/ripped.html
Glam: Thanks. I read that post and found it to be accurate. Not enough new info to write a whole new article on it, but everyone fascinated by the story should check it out.
I hate palgiarism, but I guess it’s some kind of sick compliment. By the way, the guy whom Monkey apparently plagiarized, posted about it on his own blog.
http://www.wherethehellwasi.com/blog/ripped.html
No doubt “Monkey” is reading all these blog posts about himself. Turnip, as usual a good job of tracking shit down.
Well damn. I’ve taken a week or so off from dropping to focus on my offline life and some weird shit goes down.
Just imagine a note scribbled on my forehead: I agree with Ken.
I’m glad to get an explanation for this. I was wondering what happened to his blog.
I too wondered what happened to him. Stealing content is wrong. If this is in fact what happened, then so long…. If not, he will need to clue us all in…
copied or not, his blogs were great to read.
Holy cow! I had been neglecting the forums all this time, not knowing that there was so much capital-D Drama to be found there.
I’m not sure which Monkey thought was more work, the copying and pasting or the mindless clicking to generate credits?
so that’s what happened to that blog… how weird..