More Than Just Words

The measure of a man's character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

As of late, there has been a rise in the amount of Men’s Empowerment and Gentlemen Motivational groups and workshops. And this is a wonderful thing as it helps spread out the word that character and morals are important within a man’s life. With our casual access to social media, pages similar to this one help guide men who’ve lost their way back in the right path. They serve as a North Star off which men can cast their own route to becoming better men.  Unfortunately, the same popularity that has brought together men searching for ways to become better men has also attracted plenty of lesser men with ulterior motives.

You would think that a message of “Men of Character” or “True Gentleman” would scare off the daring of plagiarists and hypocrites feeding their vanity through the modern social media currency of likes, shares, and followers.  Personal experience has proven the contrary as I already mentioned once before.  The problem is how as of late, this movement has also started to attract the vultures, those unethical sites and motivators looking to profit by exploiting the weak.

Let me make it perfectly clear, there is nothing wrong with someone charging for sharing their knowledge. There is nothing wrong for profiting from your own efforts. If you work for it, you might as well get paid for it. And that’s OK. We all have bills to pay and mouths to feed. “Monetizing” isn’t a bad word.

My problem is when I find “Gentlemen” Coaches plagiarizing the work of other gentlemen pages and selling it as their own. Even more amazing is the laziness of their actions, as they will take content and graphics straight from the original site and simply crop out the logo. You would think that selling lessons in character and integrity would have rubbed off on the teacher.

And Gentlemen sites aren’t the only ones affected with this practice.

You might have noticed that as soon as you get a cool quote popping up on your social media feed, about 10 minutes later you will see the same quote pasted on about 5 different memes from like minded sites. Again, you would think that sites promoting integrity would be above acts of moral turpitude, or would at the very least understand the concept of “clean hands.”

You see, when your moral integrity is questionable ANY words you state have no value, as you have already been proven to be untrustworthy. Stealing someone’s intellectual property and then sell it forward as your own pretty much invalidates any claim you might have towards words like Character and Integrity.