Originally published at: Epic 4-hour documentary about YouTube plagiarists sends them scurrying desperately away - Boing Boing
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Another YouTuber released a video accusing Somerton of, when he’s not plagiarizing, just completely making shit up, shortly after HBomberGuy released his video. It’s a little shorter at just over an hour, but it’s still worth a watch. The really bad thing about this is that Somerton is gay, and a lot of the stuff he was just making up was evidence that the LGBTQ community is persecuted. Like…we are, and there’s plenty of evidence of that, you really don’t need to make shit up, and doing that is really harmful because it makes all of us look bad. Hopefully this guy is done.
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can we get a TL:DR on this and who these people are because I ain’t got 4 hours to spend on this.
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If y’all don’t mind a couple Tumblr links…
Basically Somerton is an absolute garbage barge of a human being, and he’s been rewarded for that up until, basically, yesterday…
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Harris Brewis, aka HBomberGuy, is a long time YouTuber who is a part of Left Tube (or BreadTube) who makes long form video essays that are pretty good. He doesn’t release a video a week like some, but instead focuses on making fewer, higher quality, documentary style videos. YouTube, and other video based social media, has become kind of overrun of late with plagiarists. People are just straight up ripping other content creators off. Sometimes, as in the case of reaction videos, they don’t even really hide it. Basically, a bunch of people are taking advantage of how YouTube’s algorithm works and making high volume, low effort content by using or blatantly plagiarizing other people’s content. Usually, but not always, they rip off smaller creators with fewer followers and subscribers, making it much more difficult for those creators to build their channels. This very long video is exposing several of the worst offenders. What’s funny is, I don’t really know who any of them are, because I don’t think any of them have very high quality content, and I tend to not watch low quality shit, so it stays off my recommendations.
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I like some of Todd in the Shadows stuff (mainly the One Hit Wonderland and TrainWreckords), so I will probably make it around to watch this.
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I also didn’t know who James Somerton was, and I only knew of Illuminaughtii because of her misguided attempt to accuse Devin at Legal Eagle of plagiarism, which is rich, given that she plagiarizes most of her content-mill garbage. Mainly, I liked the analysis of why these people do what they do, and how we can support these lesser-known YouTubers who are creating some really good stuff for their “mere” thousands of followers, and getting ripped off by plagiarists like Somerton.
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Yep. that Legal Eagle incident is also the only thing I know Illuminaughtii from. I need to get around to watching the rest of the HBomber Guy video, because I want to see the part about why he thinks these people are plagiarizing. I suspect it’s because the algorithm makes it a shortcut to building a channel. I’ve been saddened to see some creators I used to like slip into making nothing but reaction videos, and I know they do that because their reaction videos end up with orders of magnitude more views than their original content. I used to watch this history YouTuber, VLogging Through History, a lot, but all he does now is react to other history videos. He is at least genuinely trying to add his own analysis and opinion, but he’s still just sponging off other people’s content. It’s sad because he was making decent original content at one point. But people would rather watch reaction videos, so that’s what he’s been doing.
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Yeah, a list of the big offenders would be good.
Funny thing is that one time I was served a video by someone, maybe this Sommerton guy, in my autoplay. I felt it sounded like someone was reading wikipedia at me and checked and it was word for word…much like how this documentary points out at one point. I assumed it was just someone with an AI bot grinding clicks.
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I watched this four-hour long video twice yesterday. I found it fascinating. I was strongly reminded of Logicked’s review of the wildly plagiarized (but obscure) book by Almando Calvo, “God Is.” That exposé took two videos: Part One and Part Two. I seem to have a thing for outing plagiarists.
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…and, just like the rest of the self-contained ecosystem, Somerton at least will be back in a few years, proudly wearing his hairshirt and possibly even at a higher level than just “YouTuber”. Johann Hari is somehow still getting book deals despite being completely busted a decade ago for a career of plagiarism. But he’s personable and mildly charismatic, and it seems as though that’s all you really need, and Somerton at least strikes me in much the same way.
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Fancy made up words? I’m anaspeptic, frasmodic even compunctious to have caused you such perricombobulations.
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That sounds very cromulent.
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H-BomberGuy is great and I’ve watched all his other videos but I just don’t have the time!
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Seriously; is there a reason this couldn’t have been split up into a multi-part series?
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I was going to start a YouTube Channel where “British Guy Reacts To American Reacting To Something.”
Is that a no-go area now?
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Honestly? It’s a very long form, but I think I prefer it better this way for this topic. It just kept going because he just kept FINDING things. And one of the main targets of it is a man named James Somerton, who … and when we say plaigerized, we mean he literally read people books and articles and called them his videos (and offered zero credit… and made hundreds of thousands of dollars on this.) The victims of these thefts were oftentimes the very marginalized writers. Some of them have passed away or no longer have careers writing because their industry faded.
Yeah, it was long, but this James Somerton guy is such a piece of shit that if HBomberguy didn’t produce all the receipts, he would have denied it away. And he just kept finding more and more. Literal hours. Hundreds of thousands of dollars stolen. $15,000 a month from patreon. All on other queer writers works.
So… that’s my reason for why it couldn’t have been split up. Because it is more impactful this way. (Also, probably, because he is giving all proceeds from it to every single person who was ripped off by Somerton and this will be far easier to track)
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I doubt Somerton comes back from this. Hari at least has an ability to write, despite stealing from others. He’s shown that after the plagiarism scandals. Somerton has nothing. He didn’t write anything. He didn’t edit anything, his clips are from other youtubers. Almost all the flashy special effects and what not were purchased from companies that do this. (Harris in his video actually shows this off by doing transitions with Somerton’s “graphics” and where he purchased them from.) His movie studio movie posters were stock photos and fiver artists. His movie studio plots came from other stories dustjackets. There’s no there there. There’s just nothing to build off of. When you take all the skeeviness away from him, there’s nothing left. So what’s going to come back?
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Exactly.
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No one says you have to watch it it one go. It’s a video, watch it in 5, 10, 60, or however many minute chunks that fits your fancy.
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