Gen Z TikToker who made six figures teaching people how to write essays plagiarized

A 19-year-old TikTok influencer whose college tuition made six figures in just six months by teaching people how to write essays has admitted to plagiarizing.

Brooke Lim, who is better known online as @sugaryhas over 183k followers on the video sharing app which helped her start Classicle Club.

The agency proved to be a fruitful venture, making six figures in the last six months of 2022 alone and having a waiting list of 150 people, it said. The Street Times who published an article about Brooke’s agency earlier this month.

But TikTok account @sugaresqueessay Brooke, from Singapore, this week accused her of plagiarizing her since-deleted essay, On Fear of Food, about her experience with an eating disorder that was published on her blog, Grayscale Copy.

But TikTok account @sugaresqueessay this week accused Brooke, from Singapore, of plagiarizing her essay, On Being Afraid to Eat

The essay was published April 18 on Brooke’s blog. Insider reported.

The account shared a series of videos and a google doc detailing their allegations, adding, “More than 70% of the original essay is not her original work.”

In the first 15 second video, an “open letter to Brooke” is shown.

“I understand you may have struggled with an eating disorder… but taking experiences from a fictional BOOK and making them resemble your own experiences/words without revealing to your humble readers and STUDENTS that this is NOT quite your material is so insane because I and I can’t believe I admired your work ethic,” it read.

“I sympathize (sic) with your struggle and I do hope that one day you can recover, but this highly misleading essay is a very different issue from your disorder and suffice it to say I am extremely upset and was confused as to why you saw the need to copy MULTIPLE parts of the SAME book and not cite it as source material, as you had done with the other quotes and references scattered throughout the rest of your essay.’

The letter’s writer goes on to say they hope Brooke took “some responsibility” and not just “swept the allegations under the carpet.”

Some of @sugaresqueessay’s works accused Brooke of plagiarism, including Laurie Halse Anderson’s Wintergirls, Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects, and Susan Burton’s The Way I Ate for The New Yorker.

The similarities between the essay and Wintergirls are detailed in a second TikTok video on the account.

Brooke’s blog has since been password protected and is not open to the public.

Some of the highlighted passages from Wintergirls compared to Brooke’s blog essay

Another screenshot showing a second passage that Brooke plagiarized, according to the anonymous TikTok account

In response to the allegations, Brooke posted a clip in which he said, “I want to make a statement regarding a recently made public long-form essay in which I made the very serious and regrettable mistake of plagiarism.”

“And for that I am so sorry to my students, I approached them one by one to apologize.

“I am so sorry to my followers, to everyone who has supported me in one way or another, and to the authors of the books I plagiarized from. very deep with me.

“I should have been more careful while writing the essay, rather than resorting to my earlier compilation of thoughts and insights taken from previous authors.

“I should have done my due diligence and I will be more careful going forward.”

Brooke went on to explain that the essay in question was “not for profit” or used for college admissions.

She added that she wished she could “turn back time” and that she had removed the essay from her blog.

Brooke, who is better known online as @sugaresque, has more than 183,000 followers on the video-sharing app

Brooke also urged people to leave other recommendations on how to “make things right.”

The TikTok influencer said the essay “had nothing to do” with her agency and that the controversy surrounding it would not affect her students.

She addressed other allegations that Classicle Club had plagiarized them, claiming them to be “untrue,” and made another video to debunk these allegations.

a change.org petition started by Brianna Lee has called for UCLA to investigate Brooke’s admissions essay.

It said Brooke had tried “to boost her professional credibility as a writer through her plagiarized (sic) essay through self-promotion for her personal brand, and by not taking any responsibility for her actions.”

At the time of writing, only 815 people have signed the petition.

According to Insider, Brooke was a student at the prestigious Raffles Institution in Singapore.