"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

[StuntAcorn]

A load of old tosh or true?

AIBU in feeling not the slightest bit flattered but fecking annoyed at my twat of a neighbour who has not a smidgeon of imagination in that she has to copy every bloody thing we do??

<FEWMING>

Unless someone is stealing my business idea and affecting my bottom line, I couldn't give a toss. How does it affect you exactly that you feel so strongly about it?

What are they copying?

I'd take it as a compliment. My in'laws do the same and they have absolutely no imagination either.

If it doesn't hurt me, doesn't hurt someone I love and doesn't cost me anything then I don't really care what people do.

Depends on what it is. It’s tempting to think of ourselves as individuals but really we are far more homogeneous than we realise.

Does the neighbour have streaky blonde hair, wide leg jeans and a Tesla? This would describe half my street.

I honestly just couldn’t care less if a neighbour copied something from my house exterior or garden.
How does it really negatively impact you?
No one else cares whether you did something first or not.

Start pretending to like shit stuff.

you are not wrong @StuntAcorn, so they say, but it is extremely annoying!

eta; the full quote from Oscar Wilde is

"Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness"

It depends, doesn’t it? If you’re just doing standard stuff then it’s hardly copying. If you’ve done something interesting and they’ve copied then I can see why you’d be annoyed.

Why does it matter if they copy you?

I find this really annoying too. I made myself a "Live. Love. Laugh" sign and the next thing I know my SIL has got herself one too. She doesn't even laugh that much so it's not even that appropriate.

I can't tell if this is serious or a joke about how ubiquitous (or at least used to be) and rather joyless those things are.

@StuntAcorn my sister is like this! She came to stay with me for a few days then I went to hers a fees weeks later and her bathroom was a replica of mine. I’d always been aware that she “couldn’t see shit go by her” (as we say where I live) and used to joke that if I lost an arm, she’d need to lose both legs.

it’s more trying to out do me I think though. Every idea I come up with, she has to go one better. We bought a tent and she bought a camper van. We bought kayaks and she bought a small boat. We went to Tenerife and she went to Elevenreef….you get the picture.

I think she is envious of me - not because I’m great- but because she thinks I have this great life compared to her. Which is just not true. To be honest I don’t see as much of her anymore because I got fed up of it. So no advice really but I get how annoying it is as people might think you are copying her

Problem is, how well do you know your neighbour to be aware of her “copying” you? If she has had a really similar kitchen extension that may be because it is what suits your style of house. In fact, to get any planning permission round here, we need to show that it is in keeping with the area or that other properties have had similar changes. So the planning regs actually encourage “copying”.

If it is a similar make of car, this may be a reflection of the area you live in. At one point, it seemed as though half the cars on my street were silvery grey Golfs.

If, however, she has chosen to to also call her children Jezebel and Octavian then I will agree that is a bit weird.

Why? What is it annoying, I genuinely can't make my mind get to that point where I would be annoyed

It may possibly be because, you're flattered?

If she can afford to buy a camper van and boat just to annoy her sister I don’t think she has too much to complain about!

I know this does happen, but I also remember two occasions (to be fair we were all very young) where other women thought I was copying them and I simply wasn't. One time we'd both bought the same plain white top from a very popular shop that went with everything (and I'd actually worn mine first, though she didn't remember; why would she, the outfit was completely different apart from a plain white top). Another time I'd bought a lava lamp and she insisted I was copying her. Actually I was copying the 500000000 people who'd bought a lava lamp that season, they'd become fashionable, I'd seen lots of them around and liked them so I got one. That's how fashion works.

Right, this is long and this is just the latest episode (has been going on for years, not kidding).
DH family has own business which is landscape gardening.
For DH's 50th, BIL and FIL drew up some plans for our garden, a bit of a revamp now the kids are older and not going to trash it with footballs and trampolines etc.
So the ground work has kind of started (been too wet over the winter otherwise would've started sooner)
Nothing really in yet as they said it's easier to start with a blank canvas.
I am at work all day every day but Sue next door (because that is her name) knows DH works from home so she has been interrogating asking questions and DH, being the nice normal kind man that he is, just answers without reservation.
Turns out Sue has had a look at the plans and said "Oh Mike is just starting our garden makeover" - I used to think Poor Mike but now think he is an enabling bellend.
And then there was all the oh we are going to put a summerhouse in that corner (which funnily enough, corresponds exactly to the position in our garden).
This has happened before, and it's stupid it's actually laughable.
Last year, we deliberately waited until they were on holiday before digging up some horrible fencing and putting a new hedge in.
I'm not kidding or exaggerating when I say that they'd barely got off the plane and over their jetlag when she had Mike outside digging up their fence!

I get what a lot of you are saying, it's not hurting anyone, let them be but it's not once or twice, it's pretty much constant.
And they also do it to other neighbours too (who have also expressed annoyance).
The weird thing is they've been in their house twice as many years as we have so could have made any changes then...

So they’ve copied literally one thing, and are landscaping their garden similarly to yours? Might that just not be because there are relatively limited amounts of different things you can do with two identical plots, side by side, with the same aspect, soil, slope etc? And the summerhouse has to go in the same position as yours because that’s what gets the sun at the right time of day?

If you weren’t obsessing over what they were doing in their garden you wouldn’t even know this level of detail though.

I know!! Her DH had multiple affairs (including another DC) but she always took him back so deep down she’s desperately unhappy.

I still don’t get what the problem is

Some years ago I had a colleague (who previously wore mostly black and had long hair) got her hair cut like mine, styled it like mine (definitely not a popular / trendy style at the time). She started dressing like me - think Laura Ashley pale blue flowers. She bought the same make and colour of car (again, nothing popular, and a bit quirky - not this, but think Citroen 2cv type). It felt weird and not at all flattering.

Other colleagues thought it was great fun and encouraged me to opt for bizarre things to see how far she would go (I didn't, but we had a bit of fun thinking about it). I concluded that she was a bit of a sad soul and best to ignore the whole thing.

The strangest was a year later in the pub when I met an ex-boyfriend (who was also part of the work crowd) and the copy-cat colleague was there, clearly in a relationship with him. Weird. Just weird.