VIRAL: #SottoPlagiarismProtest

MANILA, Philippines – Can you ever get away with anything? Not in this day and age.

As if it were not enough for some to lambast Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto III through blogs and memes, the online protest against him continued with the trending Twitter hashtag #SottoPlagiarismProtest. 

The hashtag was started by Twitter user Brian Paul Giron (@tikbalang), a history lecturer from the Ateneo de Manila University, Thursday, August 23 as an act of protest against Sotto’s plagiarism. “Senator Sotto needs to learn that the internet will fight back when you abuse it; and there is no excuse for plagiarism,” he tweeted.

In protest of his defense of plagiarism I will begin misattributing quotes to Senator Sotto and using the hash tag #SottoPlagiarismProtest

— Brian Paul Giron (@tikbalang) August 23, 2012

#SottoPlagiarismProtest is trending! Our histo teacher has power haha @likethecereal @wencessir

— Frances Peralta (@francesperalta) August 23, 2012

It did not take long for other netizens to join the campaign and tweet famous lines from movies, songs, beauty pageants, and TV soundbytes – and attribute them to the senator.

@dimple_song I don’t think it’s just my campaign anymore, :))

— Brian Paul Giron (@tikbalang) August 23, 2012

The clamor of the online community against the senator started when Filipino Freethinkers blogger Alfredo R. Melgar discovered that a portion of Sotto’s speech against the Reproductive Health (RH) bill was copied from the blog of Sarah Pope also known as “The Healthy Home Economist.” 

Sotto has refused to apologize “because he can’t apologize for something he did not know,” according to his chief of staff. The senator further enraged the online community when he said “Bakit ko naman iku-quote ‘yung blogger? Blogger lang ‘yon.” His camp said it was a speechwriter who copied the quotes.

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