About

I Made This is an exploitable where a character claims attribution for an object that another character created. The exploitable is used in reference to scenarios where people steal other's creations.

Origin

The original comic (below) was posted by Tumblr user Nedroid (real name: Anthony Clark)^[6] on January 30th, 2013,^[1] with the caption "The Internet." It gained over 65,000 notes in three years.

Spread

After Nedroid's initial posting, several users on Imgur and Tumblr reposted the comic without attribution with the title "I Made This," as a pun on its content. One such post, submitted to Imgur by user mousestar on March 9th, 2013, received more than 190 points, 270 favorites, and 2.3 million views.^[5]

On October 9th, 2013, Imgur user Efreeti uploaded an edit (below, left) about inventors Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, referencing their concurrent discoveries of different types of lightbulbs. The edit garnered over 3,500 points, 900 favorites, and 200,000 views in just over two years.^[2] On November 12th, 2013, an article was created by RVA Magazine about allegations that musician Lil' Kim used a makeup artist's work as the cover of her album without her permission.^[3] In it, the meme (below, right) is used to explain the issue.

On December 3rd, 2013, a thread asking about I Made This was submitted to /r/outoftheloop.^[4] The main post got a score of 45 (83% upvoted), and the answer scored 48 points before it was archived. The top voted answer defined the illustration's use as "illustrating how quickly people try and claim someone else's work as their own on the internet."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References