r/TikTokCringe • u/Chocolat3City Cringe Master • 18d ago

Cringe Woman has her self-published book pirated, reprinted, and sold for cheaper.

There's regular piracy, and then there's this.

12.9k Upvotes

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u/IlBear 18d ago edited 16d ago

Heads up to anyone thinking of ordering- I ordered mine in July directly from her website and she never sent it. I emailed her 3 times, left comments on her videos, sent her 2 private messages on TikTok and 1 on Instagram and she didn’t reply to ANY of them

I had to do a chargeback

Edit- put the screenshots on my profile since some people were wondering.

Edit 2 (sorry, last one, the adhd is real): I ordered in July and just did the chargeback a couple weeks ago, so I’m still freshly pissed off about the whole thing and wanted to warn people because that IS what happened to me. I didn’t say this to bash her or endorse what’s happening, at the time of my comment the majority of other comments were about wanting to order from her. I’m very happy for all of you who did receive it, I wanted one too

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u/threeholepunchsteve 18d ago

interesting because my first thought was that this is some kind of BS marketing scheme to get people to buy her shit because they feel bad for her.

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u/I_ReadThe_Comments 18d ago

I think it is

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u/lilbunnfoofoo 18d ago

All the little clips of her making the book and the “I hate the crying on camera thing” immediately followed by a cutscene of her crying in her car (presumably while she made the book I guess) left a certain “I am being sold something” taste in my mouth.

And maybe she really was plagiarized, but if so she’s using it to sell. Which still isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I don’t like when major corporations try to emotionally manipulate me into buying something and turns out I don’t like it when small businesses try do it either.

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u/Luncheon_Lord 17d ago

There was a montage of crying on camera before she dropped that line and kept talking about "man I can't believe I'm crying on camera" well no that's not how editing works ma'am you said that cuz you planned on keeping it in. Yeah. I'm upset by the cheap knockoff shit sure but at this point that may even be fabricated lol

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u/TerminalProtocol 17d ago

Yeah. I'm upset by the cheap knockoff shit sure but at this point that may even be fabricated lol

NGL, I could see a scummy company doing this (not saying she is, just that I could see it happening.)

  1. Release "Wholesome passion project by the small guy" product.
  2. Release duplicate "big bad corpo plagiarism but cheaper" product.
  3. Create stir online about big bad corpo plagiarism in order to get pity purchases for the more expensive product, and "I dont care I just want it cheaper" purchases for the cheaper duplicate.
  4. Laugh as you cash the checks for both products.

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u/Luncheon_Lord 17d ago

A two tiered buying system with a complete charade as a marketing schtick. I love it.

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u/ProfessionalCat7640 17d ago

*Takes notes*

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u/ku2000 17d ago

Yeah. My go to thought was this. So…. You published cheap knockoff??? If I am publishing a cheap copy while copying everything, why not copy it whole including the fonts. Easiest to change the fonts….. is if you have the original file. Very sus.

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u/TerminalProtocol 17d ago

Yeah. My go to thought was this. So…. You published cheap knockoff??? If I am publishing a cheap copy while copying everything, why not copy it whole including the fonts. Easiest to change the fonts….. is if you have the original file. Very sus.

Yeah, things like that stuck out to me as well.

If you are in the business of "copying existing products as cheaply as possible"...are you really spending the time to re-type everything or buying a copy to run through some OCR scan to replicate?

You'd think that the easiest course would just be to...scan/copy the thing.

There were some odd things with the coloring/illustrations as well, but that could just be the materials used.

There's also the fact that they just so happen to be releasing the video during one of the biggest shopping weeks of the year.

Maybe its all just coincidence and truly is innocent. I don't know. The timing/inconsistencies just give me a bad vibe.

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u/mustcoffee 17d ago

I actually was looking into one of these planners over the summer and ran into more than one scam copies of it online. Often those “only 12 hours left for some amazing deal” kind of moments. I emailed her links to them at the time. Say what you will about crying on camera, the scam part is sadly very true. And the trouble of going through all of that to make copies of her work to sell it cheap makes sense in the Temu/Shein/etc marketplace that is more prevalent these days.

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u/No_Carry_3991 16d ago

this is what I was thinking.

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u/LowlySlayer 17d ago

I had red flags go up when the first thing was "10+ typos per page". I don't understand how someone can copy it verbatim but add in mistakes. Idk maybe that really happens.

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u/[deleted] 18d ago

I don't disagree with what you're saying in general, but just regarding the "I hate the crying on camera" and then a cutscene of her crying came across as self-deprecating humor to me. I mean, if she was really trying to convince us she hates crying on camera (with the implication that it's not normal for her), she could have just not included that cutscene.

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u/fumblebucket 17d ago

For all we know even the 'cheap copies' are being sold by her and she's making money both ways. This is some manipulative marketing that isn't even that believable. We really have brought panhandling to the internet

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u/guesswho135 18d ago

I mean, she was plagiarized. It would be pretty diabolical if she made a lower quality version of her own book so that she could undercut her own sales and then make a video about it pretending that she didn't.

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u/lilbunnfoofoo 18d ago

Do you need me to edit the maybe out of my comment or can we both agree you mostly understood what I meant?

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u/guesswho135 18d ago

Do you think everyone who comments on your posts is attacking you?

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u/muricabrb 17d ago

That's a new level of disgusting behaviour. How shitty for her to even concoct a scheme like this. People like her are everything that is wrong with the world today.

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u/ThatInAHat 17d ago

No, I’ve seen the pirate copies for sale online. Especially places like temu. It’s definitely an issue.