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James Somerset was making $170,000 a year with nearly 6 million views and 267,000 subscribers on YouTube, until...

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[-] sculd@beehaw.org 93 points 11 months ago

When Hbomberguy goes after you, you know you are in big trouble.

I still can't believe I watched a "3 hour" video essay on plagiarism and its worth every minute.

[-] Xariphon@kbin.social 32 points 11 months ago

I'm so out of the loop I have no idea who any of these people are or why I should care. Or if I should. What is even going on?

[-] Axolotling@beehaw.org 72 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

So basically, James Somerton stole literally all of his content from other queer creators while positioning himself as the de-facto queer creator to support. And by "all his content", it really means all his content. Every. Single. Thought. Was plagiarized from someone else's writing. And the extremely few that didn't revealed that James Somerton is a crazy misogynist Nazi-loving lesbophobic transphobe.

Basically, he's a massive piece of shit who's comically evil to a mind-numbing degree.

[-] sculd@beehaw.org 39 points 11 months ago

You should care if you follow any YouTube creators. It is the biggest topic right now on YouTube. Everyone is affected because lazy creators and content farms stealing other people's work is such a big problem on YouTube.

[-] Turun@feddit.de 5 points 11 months ago

"any YouTube creator" is a stretch. The video called out a few people, and I can imagine that quite a few more vlog style YouTubers are guilty of it. But the vast majority of channels I follow either properly cite their sources or don't need to, because they present original work.

[-] DarkenLM@kbin.social 37 points 11 months ago

Essentially, Hbomberguy dug up every skeleton on this guy's closet and went to town on them, identifying and tracking down most, if not all of the original authors of the works this fucker plagiarized. And the internet blew the video sky high, which made a lot of eyes turn to this guy's actions, in the wrong way (for him).

[-] alwaysconfused@lemmy.ca 34 points 11 months ago

I'm usually not into social media drama but I did watch the video. It's set up in a way so you don't have to know any of the people mentioned and don't really have to care about the people mentioned afterwards either. It does take a really close look into modern plagiarism, specifically through YouTube and video essays. I thought the way all the information was really well presented.

Hbomberguy starts off with an example of a plagiarist who responded poorly to his accusations. This was a set up for the following examples and call outs of plagiarists which further explored the various reactions and attempts at damage control to preserve a creators reputation. That was the main focus for the first half of the video. The second half then focuses on James Somerset which others have already explained in this thread. What I found interesting was how James Somerset was very much a culmination of all the prior examples. Yet he was able to navigate his way around the accusations while continuing to profit off other peoples honest work. The fact that James Somerset is removing himself from the internet shows how thorough Hbomberguy was in documenting the plagiarism.

The video also touches on a things like Content Mills and AI Generative Art which still falls under the topic of plagiarism.

I'm not an artist or creator in any capacity, I just found the video interesting. Especially how the examples or accused reacted to the discoveries of plagiarism. However, I think artists and creators could probably benefit from watching this video to understand the possibilities of what happens to your work once you release it to the internet. Plagiarism seems to cause a lot more grief and frustration once you start to look further past the act of a person simply taking someone else's work.

[-] JowlesMcGee@kbin.social 20 points 11 months ago

Hbomberguy is a popular YouTuber who recently released a video on plagiarism on YouTube. You can watch it here. I haven't watched it myself yet, but I'm assuming the person in the article is someone he calls out in his video

[-] Unaware7013@kbin.social 23 points 11 months ago

Like half of the video is about this douche, he's the post-reveal topic if your familiar with hbomb's style

[-] jol@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 11 months ago

I also didn't know the guy. This is the first video, nay movie I watched of him. Found it randomly in Nebula. And somehow was lured in to watch the whole 3 hours.

[-] GammaGames@beehaw.org 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Definitely watch his OOF.mp3 video if you liked the style, it was last year’s release

[-] executivechimp@discuss.tchncs.de 26 points 11 months ago

Closer to 4 hours

[-] germanatlas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 82 points 11 months ago

The existential horror of being in the second half of an hbomberguy video

[-] taanegl@beehaw.org 15 points 11 months ago
[-] LoamImprovement@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago

Can't be comfortable to be one of the focii of the first half either. Finding out Internet Historian is a plagiarist is how I found out Internet Historian is also a straight-up Nazi.

[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 49 points 11 months ago

wish ben shapiro would delete his accounts after being in an hbomberguy video

[-] chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 27 points 11 months ago
[-] LoamImprovement@beehaw.org 12 points 11 months ago

20 seconds of furiously chopping a hole into a wall

[-] bermuda@beehaw.org 44 points 11 months ago

Not just plagiarism, he was also a Nazi fetishist.

[-] kboy101222@lemm.ee 21 points 11 months ago

I must have missed this part of hbomb's video...

[-] Vodulas@beehaw.org 49 points 11 months ago

Todd in the Shadows went a little deeper on that. Mostly saying they were so fit and sexy that they inspired American fitness culture. Which is just not true.

[-] bermuda@beehaw.org 15 points 11 months ago

He made an erroneous claim in one of his videos that the main reason for people enlisting to WW2 from the US were because the Nazis had "hot and sexy bodies"

[-] chunkystyles@sopuli.xyz 6 points 11 months ago
[-] Hisnitch@beehaw.org 7 points 11 months ago

It's mostly covered in ToddfromtheShadow's, who happened to choose actual violence and dispute as many claims as possible. Some of the things that came up is that:

  • He thinks that all the gays who died in the Aids pandemic were the cool ones and that the boring ones didn't do anything but focus on the boring rights, like the very cornerstones of the Civil Rights movements. The specific statement is also a directly plagiarized statement that came from someone who was mostly aiming it at artists because she liked to start shit.
  • He seems to really like nazis to the point of making shit up about how the Nazis are the reason why Amercians enlisted in WW2 (for those who don't know, America did not have a large enough enlistment and most GIs were conscripted soldiers) and proposing fringe theories about why we designed our body building programs in first place.
  • He despises women and transpeople. When he isn't plagiarizing (and therefore going off script) he goes on entire tangents about why women are the reason why Dalmar and Bundy get away with their crimes, and he stills massive amount of his work from transpeople. He also likes to deal in my personal favorite, Bi Erasure.
[-] kboy101222@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

God damn, I need to finish watching that video

[-] HeckGazer@programming.dev 30 points 11 months ago

Good riddance to a poisonous voice in the queer zeitgeist

[-] Gormadt@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 11 months ago

Small incorrect thing in the article, he had about 330k subscribers until this whole thing blew up.

Source

[-] tiago@beehaw.org 16 points 11 months ago

Okay, but what about the profits he raked?

170k is an insulting amount of money to be "earned". Retribution is needed.

[-] jarfil@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago

Finders keepers... he clearly outsmarted everyone else who didn't do the same he did, so unless someone sues him... it's how these things work, right?

[-] hernanca@beehaw.org 24 points 11 months ago

Next step is starting to appear in right wing spaces to say you were "canceled" by the left to start the next phase of the grift.

[-] commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 11 months ago

oooh. we should take bets on this. i would guess it's his business plan for 2024, so i expect to see him making a public appearance sometime in january.

this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
143 points (100.0% liked)

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