I think this is the year of reveals.
When Kylie Jenner said that 2016 was the year of realizing things, we did indeed realize some things. Most of them were depressing and political. Eight years later, I think this will be the year of revealing things. Most of them, hopefully will have to do with interpersonal or niche internet drama that plays out on a public scale.
I think this will be the year of explosive revelations of fraud that will create zeitgeist-shifting discourse on an app (not Twitter, nothing good ever happens there anymore). Some real Scooby Doo-like shit.
The genesis of this vibe shift probably starts with the millennial scam or, I don’t know, Ronald Reagan, which is where most contemporary Bad Things seem to start. But this imminent shift didn’t really become a prominent one, at least not for me, until I watched HBomberguy’s almost 4-hour long video on James Somerton. As of writing this, I’ve watched it three times.
The long short of it is that James Somerton is a gay Youtuber who discussed mostly queer media among a few other things. HBomberguy, whose name is Harry Brewis, spent months researching Somerton’s videos after watching some of the videos that would come up as suggested on youtube. He noticed the misinformation in them and also noticed accusations of plagiarism pop up on social media against Somerton from time to time.
To deflect from the accusations, Somerton would deny that any plagiarism was either a mistake or simply didn’t exist and the accuser was homophobic and deliberately targeting a successful gay man. He would sic his followers on anyone who dared to speak out against him, cyberbullying people into silence.
But Brewis, an “open bisexual who knows what the internet is like” explained
“I’m vigilant to the possibility the ‘phobes are making a fuss about nothing again to take down a fellow gay boy, it does happen. So, keeping this possibility in mind I looked at what he'd been accused of for myself, weighed up all the evidence as objectively as I could, and it quickly became clear he did do it he's a massive plagiarist in fact there's a bunch of stuff no one else has found yet he's just convinced his audience to attack people when they notice and the worst part is they do it in the name of defending a gay creator when many of the people he has financially benefited from stealing from are queer themselves.”
He spends the next hour and a half decimating Somerton’s credibility. The thing that stuck with me and a lot of other people is this screenshot.
The fallout from this video, which at the time of writing has over 15 million views since it was published on December 3rd, 2023 has been massive. Somerton of course has completely wiped his YouTube channel, but not before others (I’m hesitant to call them his peers seeing as they actually do their own writing and research) got off some more good shots at him. They’ll be listed below.
This not only fascinated me because of the element of massive intellectual and to an extent financial fraud, but also because of the other examples of plagiarism Brewis discussed in his video. He spends the first half of the essay discussing other Youtubers, including video game reviewers, film critics, and popular MLM exposure channel iilluminaughtii. These channels weren’t producing original content, they were ripping off articles and stealing written words and video footage from existing documentaries and claiming it was their own research and experience with the subject matter.
In some cases, the creators wanted to make the work sound like it was their own, so they would reword sentences and shorten statements but to the point where they were now spouting misinformation and gibberish into the camera. In school you (or at least I did) learn that it only counts as plagiarism if you use someone else's words verbatim without giving them credit, but what about if you use the phrase “according to my research” five times in ten minutes, only use one source but make it look like it was 10 different ones, and arbitrarily provide broken links to those sources? What then?
Brewis points out that some of these examples aren’t plagiarism, they’re just instances of creators being lazy. If I’m being honest with you, his section on iilluminaughtii scared me a little bit.
One of my biggest worries as a writer and even when I did stand up comedy was plagiarizing someone’s words, even if it was an accident. Some comedians like Amy Schumer have reputations for being joke stealers. It’s a big deal, but why?
Maybe it seems obvious but on my third watch something really stuck with me. Brewis seemed to be really annoyed with the laziness of creators. He explains that he became a video essayist because he has a passion for it. Creating is his full time job and anyone who does anything creative already knows how difficult it is to sustain yourself off of it. In the arts, it’s difficult to get paid on time if at all, it’s difficult to get exposure, to find your audience, to know if what you’re doing will pay off. You have to have a certain level of conviction in yourself and your work and the public, to some extent has to reciprocate.
But in the gig economy, in the creator economy, in the attention economy, a lot of that falls to the wayside. Now, all of these creators, the passionate ones and the ones that really are just in it for the money are mixed together, and it’s sometimes hard to tell who’s who. Every paid ad on TikTok is a microcosmic example of this.
I was wringing my hands for a few days after watching Brewis’s essay because I kept wondering to myself: am I one of these lazy creators? I do have paid subscriptions but not because I want or even ever think I’m going to make bank off of this newsletter I value my work and if others feel the same way they have the option to invest. In 2023, my new year’s resolution was to start getting my thoughts and art into the world. 10 months later, Tangie Dreamz published it’s first piece. But as I’ve said before, I’ve been working on this project for a while. And before that, I wanted to start my own YouTube channel. I’ve had radio shows at university, I’ve had podcasts, I’ve given away some of my IP for free just for exposure. I can’t see myself forgoing my 9-5 anytime soon, but I do love writing and expressing myself to others and I always have.
The last thing I would ever want to be is a fraud, mostly because that’s so embarrassing! Being a fraud means you have no swag, you’re just faking it. Me personally? I hop up out the bed every morning and turn my swag on!! And anyone who knows me knows that I can’t be fake. I’ve tried it before, and I think I’m allergic to it or something. Also, if the millennial scammer has taught us anything, it’s that it’s easier to get caught than you think. There’s always the perfect storm of some dipshit getting too comfortable with their scam and becoming lazy. They assume everyone else is lazy too, on top of being stupid enough to fool. But there’s always someone not lazy and at the very least just smart and confident enough to call them out.
In the end, I stopped worrying because I realized that I’m too anxious to ever be a fraud. If I ever incorrectly cite a source, please believe me when I say it was 100% a mistake. I do my absolute best to cite all of my sources correctly, it’s not that hard (by the way, the words that are highlighted or underlined in my posts are links to sources, just in case you didn’t already know!). But as the poet laureate Hannah Montana once said, “Nobody’s Perfect.” If you see a mistake, call me in, send me a DM or an email and I’ll correct it as soon as possible. Or call me out! I’ll still fix it, but then we’ll both look like flop bitches and where’s the fun in that??
Plagiarism and You(Tube)
The video that started it all. It’s almost four hours but it’s really good and if you’re only interested in a specific bit, then you can skip around the chapters, but I can’t recommend watching the whole thing enough. Brewis gives so many dynamic examples of plagiarism, it really is everywhere.
I Fact-Checked The Worst Video Essayist On YouTube
Todd in the Shadows follows up HBomberguy’s video with an equally important one. He focuses on the fact that when Somerton wasn’t plagiarizing, he was making shit up! It really is scary to think that people are making YouTube essays and informational content full of lies. For a lot of people, essays are accessible points of entry to academia and the information used in videos can help people form personal and political opinions and views (I’m including myself here). To find out that information is all incorrect? Scary. As. Hell. (I don’t know why this video is age restricted, YouTube is weird)
This Twitter thread by video essayist Dan Olson (Folding Ideas on YouTube)
I’ve referenced Oson in a previous essay. Here, he’s explaining why last April he got in a Twitter tiff with Somerton. Somerton got in a little bit of hot water after tweeting a thread about how sex work should be a subsidized mental health service. Days later, he announces that his Patreon revenue is so low, he may have to shut his channel down. This was suspicious to Olson, who called it out. Read the thread below.
A Man Plagiarised My Work: Women, Money, and the Nation
Abby Thorne from Philosophy Tube confirmed that this video is not connected whatsoever to the James Sommerton scandal, but the subject matter is still relevant. How much is women’s labor valued? Was it ever valued to begin with? Do women even value their own labor? Thorne digs into those questions with informed answers in a super entertaining way. Watch below!
A Reddit thread
For users who want to recommend good queer Youtubers and call out more of Somerton’s plagiarism not covered in the video. This was created by HBomberguy’s producer Kat.
Have you watched or read anything interesting about the James Somerton incident or plagiarism in general? Comment below!