I (28NB) have been dreaming about getting into content creating, and it’s not til recently that a specific niche spoke to me, let’s call it crocheting. Last week, I started posting videos on TikTok from meme-like comedy to comedic-informational to lipsync skits. There’s an influencer (M) I admire. I love his review content and thought I should give reviewing a shot, maybe I could get more views than I had been. ‘Admire’ has 200k+ followers and 11M+ likes on TikTok; I only had 10 followers and 800 likes. Lo and behold, “popular string brand” released new samples! I grabbed my nice jumpsuit, wrote out a script, set my phone, and spent hours recording a 6-minute video. Took me a few hours after to edit. I decided to try a similar structure to ‘Admire’s videos: TikTok’s green screen effect and text-on-screen to present. That’s where the similarities end. It was my face, my voice, my script (plus the new samples) and well.. I’m not white. Fast forward to posting. It blew up. I ambitiously hoped 7k, because my highest view was 7k. It’s now at 390k. It was around 100k when ‘Admire’ messaged me. I reacted as any fan would: he knows I exist, omg I am getting closer to a collab! Well, he called me out for copying him, my heart sank. 100k worth of views turned to 390k worth of (what feels like) fraudulent views. Here’s the first PMs (paraphrased): ‘Admire’: Hey, did you create this based on my last vid? I noticed the green screen effect with text plus you said “let’s get it started”. Me: Hello! Yes! I was super inspired by your vid and thought I should try it! I hope I didn’t do anything inappropriate, I did not intend at all to copy. I hope I didn’t step on your toes. What happened next were long texts saying that it’s not ok to copy someone’s video and that it’s practically stealing someone’s work. He asked that I find my own style, and that he’s spent years formulating to get views since it’s his career. He asked that I understand that there’s a reason why a lot of creators don’t like getting their contents copied. He also said that he couldn’t record this now knowing that it could fail (because of me). [He’s posted his review, only time will tell now if I affected] I was very apologetic, and commented on my vid that it was “inspired by ‘Admire’”. I’ve felt terrible since. It feels like I offended my hero. But, my friends were telling me that he was patronizing and bullying, that my post wasn’t at all the same content, and that you can’t own a common video format (I think my friends are biased because I feel hurt). Tho, I can’t help but feel he wouldn’t have contacted me if the video didn’t perform as it did. To ‘Admire’: if you come across this, know that I really am sorry. I wish we had gotten along the first time we talked. (This post is just for my sanity for an outside opinion) TLDR; I made content inspired by an influencer’s previous work, and decided to give it a try on a similar style. It blew up, and I got called out for copying. AITA?