The Cardinal Rule

It's drilled into our heads in kindergarten.  Or at least it used to be.  Plagiarism is the worst sin you could commit in your academic career.  A career you were going to be pursuing, like it or not, for the next twelve years or more.  It was the highest crime.  The lowest criminal act.  Taking the words and ideas of someone else and passing them off as your own.  If you did it and you were found out your cheeks should burn with shame for the rest of your life.  You weren't even pond scum.  Pond scum was too good to be applied to a plagiarist.  A low-life like you.  So why did so many of us do it?  Why do so many continue to do it?  It's the "if you were found out" part.  People take the risk because the odds are that you won't be found out.  I've done it.  In college I turned in more than one paper that wasn't my own work.  Why?  Because I was pressed for time?  Maybe.  Because I'd procrastinated to the point that writing my own paper wasn't feasible?  Maybe.  Because I didn't really care about the course but I didn't want to flunk?  More likely.  Because I really was committing a sort of criminal act and it was  kind of a thrill?  Because the suspense engendered by the act: will they find out?  Will they not?-was a sort self-perpetuated drama?  My very own Hitchcock scene to star in?  I think that's part of it.  But what about bigger platforms?  Bigger platforms in this day and age of instantaneous Univac level information accessibility.  Why would someone take the risk now?  Well, on a bigger platform, the risk isn't for a grade.  It's for money.  It's for accolades.  It's for winning prizes and getting on lists for prizes ("long listed for the so and so prize" Ha!). And it's still the death-wish risk that no one will find out.  But to paraphrase Morrissey: If you must write prose and poems, the words you use should be your own.  Don't plagiarize or take on loan.  Because there's always someone, somewhere-with a big nose who knows...who'll trip you up and laugh when you fall.  See, I credited him.
Luckily, nowadays you don't need a big nose; just a laptop.