A YouTuber was accused of plagiarism. His apology highlighted a larger issue among creators.
A YouTuber was accused of plagiarism. His apology highlighted a larger issue among creators.
Video essayist James Somerton was among several people Harris Brewis, known as “hbomberguy” on YouTube, called out in a viral video.
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This is the most radical centrist take I've heard yet. The idea that exposing immoral acts is worse than the acts.
Yeah, what is anyone supposed to do with Somerton besides calling him out? Ask him politely to please don't plagiarise and scam people anymore?
Half of Hbomberguy's video is about Somerton having been accused of plagiarism for a long time and Somerton just kept doing it. Beside the fact that the very first anecdote about Somerton in the video is about him sending his fans after someone who dared to point out plagiarism, accusing them of doxxing him and sending him threats without any hint of that ever happening.
Somerton had no qualms to resort to harassment if it suited him.Dog knows social media is a toxic hellhole which thrives on malice and there will always be enough toxic people out there to harass people for whatever reason they can find (and often flimsy pretext), but to insist that the existence of these people precludes exposing wrong-doing, ultimately means that nobody can ever warn anybody else of scammers and grifters like James Somerton.
Honestly, I feel like this concept is what underpins a lot of why society doesn't change. Sometimes you get more stink-eye from people rocking the boat trying to bail it out than you do from putting a literal hole on the floor and sitting on the bucket.
We need to be brave enough to save the things we value.
FWIW I don’t disagree with you, especially on the second paragraph. The direction of punching feels unavoidably lopsided.
But… Somerton and his fans had harassed and silenced others when called out for this type of behavior before. The only real difference here is that HBomb is big enough that isn’t feasible to whine and shout the criticism away. Plus all the evidence!
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What would you have expected as an alternative? What other way could the plagiarism have been addressed? It had been brought up in multiple other instances over the last year and James brushed it off saying it was not true and led harassment campaigns against those that questioned if he had stolen others work.
Frankly, I do not believe James' woe is me bit is anything other than an act and emotional manipulation of his audience. He still has thousands of subscribers on Patreon and it is to his personal benefit to keep them as in the dark as possible or to believe that he is still deserving of their money and attention. If he does have mental health issues stemming from this, then he should have just deleted all his accounts, accepted responsibility from his actions, and moved on to something else and work on his mental health.
James also did not only have 300 subscribers. He had almost 3,500 on Patreon. He was raking in tens of thousands of dollars per month using stolen work.
I guess I'm just cynical because the way he "apologized" and came back was called like play for play for how to do a fake YouTube apology/comeback. I just find it so hard to feel sympathy for the man or believe anything he says with what he's done (not accused cause there were screenshots in that video) outside of just being a huge YouTube grifter.
Frankly, I do not believe James' woe is me bit is anything other than an act and emotional manipulation of his audience
I believe it is entirely plausible that Somerton is suicidal over this. If he can't muster up the willpower to write any of his own words in his videos, I doubt he can muster up any emotional resilience. Shame, guilt, and despair are appropriate emotions for Somerton to feel right now. These are emotions that teach us to do better, when they're properly controlled. I doubt Somerton can control his emotions. And uncontrolled shame and despair can lead to suicidal impulses. So I am willing to believe Somerton has attempted suicide because of H's video.
But I agree with you that that's not anyone else's problem, nobody owes Somerton anything, and we shouldn't let our opinions of him be swayed by what he's saying. I don't think it matters that it's true. Shame is the only way Somerton can possibly feel over what he's done. It's his own fault. And it is right that he be faced with appropriate consequences for his actions. We're looking at a choice between Somerton in the hospital and Somerton stealing money from queer writers who have actual integrity. I'd rather a Somerton in the hospital.
While HBomberGuy always starts off his videos as "don't attack this person." Realistically his fans always seem to show up and bash on the person he's exposing or attacking.
This is a problem with internet culture in general, tbh. If anything, hbomb is one of the good guys out there that is pretty careful about how he talks about these things.
He's kind of being a bully.
Nah. What I noticed about hbomb is that he generally avoids talking about people’s appearances, and avoids judging folks for who they are as people. He also tries to give people the benefit of the doubt (including the writer for Somerton’s channel, which… idk, not sure how the writer could have not noticed all the plagerism but whatever).
Basically, Hbomberguy focused on this guys actions and words. It didn’t feel like bullying at all. It would be different if this was a small creator and/or if this dude was doing it for free. But, that’s not the case; Somerton was making money plagiarizing other people’s work and got lots of subscribers for it.
Somertons channel was about queer issues. I’m sure he’s at least somewhat prepared for online harassment or he wouldn’t have chosen to be a content “creator” on that topic. Doing shitty things on the internet draws heat, too, and it feels somewhat earned this time. Wish people were nicer online overall but hbomb did nothing wrong calling this guy out.
TL;DR, talking about someone else’s bad (and public) behavior isn’t bullying, as long as you’re not picking on some lil guy.
"330 subs". You talk as though 330,000 subscribers is a small number. To your other points, I figure most of the anger towards somerton is going to come from his own community and not people from hbomberguys community. (In fact IIRC Somerton was getting a lot of backlash on his pateron on day 1 of this story breaking). Perhaps Somerton shouldnt have plagarised and lied to people? Maybe?
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- 1st rule of YouTube: make money.
- 2nd rule of YouTube: don't break the law
- Not a rule of YouTube: be nice
- Not a rule of YouTube: don't lie
Somerton followed rule 1, HBomberGuy also followed rule 2 and... hopefully didn't lie?
As for the content warning section, the simple rule is: don't base your world on lies upon lies, and it won't come crashing down when someone exposes them.
Other people already gave you on why it's not hbomberguy's fault and I don't have anything to add to that.
But I think maybe it would help you figure out, what you are sad about or what you feel bad for? And maybe this hasn't anything to do with hbomberguy? What I mean is, maybe you are seeing Somerton, his mental health problems, his situation and feeling bad for him. And I get it, I feel bad for his situation, too. But being raised by narcissists and having been in a long term relationship with an abusive chronic liar, I know that feeling bad for someone like this won't help neither you, the other person or anyone they've harmed. It only gives them more fuel to keep on continuing like they've done before. I don't know how to deal best with people like this apart from setting boundaries and keeping my distance. If you're only forgiving without setting boundaries, they will abuse and exploit you. James Somerton was already a mess before he was called out, now he has to face the consequences for his harmful actions and it is hard on everybody. But better to call him out and make him stop his abuse than keep going. You can have empathy with perpetrators but it doesn't help with making them stop.
Lol
mmm, let's not do this
What a load of waffle. "Appeared to" lift verbatim passages, really?
this is just legal ass-covering and is typical of news coverage in the absence of a conviction or similar--nothing new or unique about it.
I mean, yes and no. Is it probably safer to say 'accused'? Sure. Is it weasely, waffley bullshit to spend as much time as they did on the specifics of the apology, but completely gloss over the specifics of the accusations? Absolutely.
Anyone reading that article could easily come out of it thinking that the guy's being accused of doing a bad job of citing his sources. Anyone who watched the actual video has seen the evidence that he did it knowingly and with intent.
It's absolutely some false neutrality nonsense where they hold back the meat in order to make the story seem 'neutral' when the truth is clearly not.
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Two weeks after accusations of plagiarism rocked many in the YouTube community, a creator who was at the center of the controversy spawned even more backlash after he deleted an apology video within hours of having posted it.
Somerton — whose subscriber count dropped to 255,000 on YouTube — went silent online, hid all his videos from public view and deactivated his presence on Patreon, a platform where supporters could pay him monthly subscription fees from $20 to $100.
Many online said Somerton’s apology fell flat — they pointed out that he never used the words “plagiarism” or “plagiarized.” He also didn’t describe the full extent of what he was accused of.
Although Patreon is not a body that determines the ownership or settles disputes, when we receive complete DMCAs from creators, we act on them.”
Before he deleted the apology video, Somerton had restored his Patreon account, which alarmed other YouTube creators, who spoke out urging people to cancel their subscriptions before they got charged again.
Brewis said in his video that he would give any money he made from ads that ran on his YouTube exposé to the creators who were plagiarized, who included journalists and writers.
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I don't see the apology described here highlighting anything except that Somerton sucks