Stealing personality?!

First there were identity theft and cut 'n' plagiarism. Now there's cut 'n' paste personality theft, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's more sad than threatening. "These identity thieves don't want your money. They want your quirky sense of humor and your cool taste in music." The Journal says people are not just stealing others' jokes, but their favorites films, books, "life philosophies, even signature poems." It brings new meaning to the phrase, "Get a life." In a way, it's also a sign that social networking is demanding something pretty cool; to have an interesting profiled, it helps to be well-read, have some musical interests of a certain depth, have something to put out there for friends to see. But back to the downside: Stealing these things from others it's similar to the laziness of plagiarism and it's yet another indicator of the crying need for teaching ethics - not just cyberethics, certainly, because, at least to young people, this is about identity exploration, socializing, basically just life.