I seriously hope we get some whiplash from the artist with a reply to the tune of "don't care, got paid".

If you REALLY cared about it staying to yourself, then don't put it online where your apes could get funged? I assume that's the fate of many comissions, one here and there mentions that they'll release certain comissions after a set time but the sponsor always retain the highest quality version to themselves and these tend to stay hoarded.

"I hope at some point this stops getting reposted since it's blatant art theft" paints a picture of this kind of person, wishing for this image that people have been making fun of and getting enjoyment out of to stop being shared altogether for the sake of virtue signaling. It's not very "blatant" in the sense of being obvious since I'm sure most people didn't know it was traced (I sure as hell didn't until now,) and with how much of a stink this person is making I wouldn't be surprised if they were more upset about it than the artist whose art was stolen. The way they speak of these topics and the language they use (ex. "I won't stress her out with a wave of followers without consent") has that flavor of Tumblr/Twitter outrage combined with moral superiority and comes across as nearly unnatural. Art theft bad, yes, we know, but people are sharing it to make fun of how bad the image is- it being traced wouldn't be out of the realm of what's expected for those kinds of "repost bait" images, the kind that are bound to accumulate JPEG crust. Sure, tell the world it was actually traced and give credit to the artist, but let loose a little, damn.

…Though, I suppose the fact that I got upset enough about what they said that I wrote all this probably says something about me as well.
I stopped caring as much halfway through typing, but I still wanted to share in case anyone else felt the same way and wanted their opinion validated.