There was a moment during the Hbomb video that always stuck out to me. It was in the part where it was showing the video James made, his "About Those Death Threats" video, where he goes "I would NEVER have had the time to do THAT amount of research...for a youtube video". The way he said "for a youtube video" came off as having such contempt for the very fucking field he had chosen to wander into. It demonstrated immediately he absolutely does not care about video essays or even LGBT media discourse, he holds no genuine passion for research or filmmaking. He just wanted to enter the field and do the easiest amount of work possible in order to garnish the fastest amount of viewership and money.
100%. If he had any respect for education, video essays, his audience, or the LGBTQ community he wouldn't have done what he did. You don't spread misinformation if you care about educating. You don't half-ass video essays if you respect the craft. You don't sic your audience like a pack of wild dogs on anyone who criticizes you if you appreciate their support. And you sure as hell don't steal from queer creators, spread lies about the ace, bi, and lesbian experiences, or make up dumb shit like "the Nazis were gay" if you care about the LGBTQ community. The things he "cares" about are merely tools that he uses to make money and play the victim. Nothing less and certainly nothing more.
The extra funny part is that the apology video also proves James is awful at putting in as little effort as possible for the sake of money. If he had just lived modestly, slowly amassing a pile of money earned from manipulation and plagiarism, then the hbomb video dropped, he could've easily just disappeared himself off the internet, move somewhere else and have made a nice profit for as long as the charade lasted. Instead he's continuing to put himself in the internet's crosshairs, floundering to rebuild his image so he can scam more nickels and dimes out of people who don't know any better, and basically inviting further consequences for his actions.
Learning that his pre-RUclips education and experience was predominantly based around marketing instead of humanities or social sciences was absolutely no surprise to me.
@@camithepokefan2492 "You don't half-ass video essays if you respect the craft." That's the thing - so many video essayists just don't respect the craft. They don't understand what it is to describe things in their own words. They don't get what it is to have a "style." I'm writing my thoughts out on the recent Dune movie and it's just 8 pages of my thoughts out in writing. If I were to ever consider making a video essay out of it, I'd have to go through those pages of writing and think about how I want to change it to best fit a script. If I want to use in person comparison to prove my point I'd have to go find articles from reputable sources. If I want to make a comparison to the original movie I'd have to go watch it and write my own thoughts about that. If I want to bring up the cultural zeitgeist and changes Villeneuve made I'd have to cite the books. There's so much work and effort that goes into creation of something *meaningful,* that it *shows* how much passion the creator has for what they do. James does not *have* any of that. Just about every single video he's ever made, he uses the same joyless monotone. You could *tell* he didn't really care much about anything he said. Passionate creators have a voice that is unique, that sets them apart, tells you how they feel about what it is they're talking about.
Not many people talk about the fact that right after Hbomb video dropped (it was around for like 2 hours at that point, so people didn't have time to watch the whole thing yet) James was YET AGAIN writing on his Patreon about how all these accusations are totes fake and also he's being harassed by homophobes and haters over them. Only after he realized how DAMNING the evidence in the video was he deleted it. He was trying to weasel out as he usually did. And it didn't work this time.
@@celisewillis the chapter of the video is titled "James Somerton" and also its a topic close to James' heart so I assume that's why he checked the video. ;)
Still cannot get over “you called me out for this so you’re gonna be the one to fix it” bullshit. It’s the brattiest response to being called out for plagiarism that I’ve ever seen
Second only to being called out for plagiarism and accusing the woman who noticed of sending him death threats, and slandering her to his giant platform to the point she _left the internet_ Real “you can’t catch me if you’re dead” energy
how DARE you compare somerton to Ursula the Sea Witch. Ursula is a gay icon and does not deserved to be mentioned in the same sentence as a plagiarist!!!
he contradicts himself so much in this video. I wanted to be a voice for the voiceless so I plagiarized! But also I just forgot what was written by me! But I'll also definitely take out the plagiarized portions of my work! like pick a lane dude. the biggest tell of most liars is overexplanation. so obvious.
HBomber said somerton didn’t reach out to his team, and a number of people somerton plagiarized spoke up and said they heard nothing. At this point he should just leave, he’s already done irreparable damage and doesn’t deserve the good faith a RUclipsr kind of really really needs to operate in the video essay space.
My asd ass telling this to my government The A in the circle on my flag stands for autism, officer “Is it controversial to say u want to unalive fascism” “I don’t care if it is and it’s wild you would ask” Anyway free 🍉
I have clinically diagnosed severe depression. I am yet to accidentally steal other people's work due to my depression. I am also yet to weaponise my mental health against other people in a pursuit not to hold accountability by gaslithing internet audiences. I am really scared for these symptons of depression to happen guys 😢 Wish me luck 😔
@@Lucifersfursona Right?? Like most depression fugues are spent lying on (insert surface of preference, usually bed) unable to want to do anything. But James? Not at all. He is taking someone else's work as his own 24/7. Talk about productivity! He is really into his craft ❤️
Update on James's fake suicide: directly after he posted the suicide note on twitter he went to his alt account and kept posting. He mainly posted mild tv fandom things and nudes. So that gives you a picture of his "mental decline" through all of this.
13:09 - 14:21 also, as someone with adhd, something widely known to cause short term memory issues, I find this entire section of excuse so insulting. You don't just get to say "Oopsie, I forgot!" when it comes to tests, essays, house keys, and cell phones, because it doesn't fix your problem even if people are understanding. You set up safeguards so that when you do inevitably forget an important thing, you're reminded of it before it's too late. If it were me I would have immediately stopped and just started an entire new document the moment I realized I didn't know what was what. This time with a dedicated quote section. This isn't juggling chores and bills and appointments and friends and hobbies, it's media reviews. People already think enough that adhd folks are stupid without his help.
He never once forgot. Because when people (in one instance, the person he stole from even) pointed out he """""forgot"""""" to cite his sources he blocked, harassed, and bullied them off the internet. And claimed they sent him death threats. And then did it again. He didn't forget.
Not to mention that his defense is that he was going to change some words so they were less obviously plagiarized. That is worse! He has no moral qualms at all about stealing other people's hard work and passing it off as his own.
James claiming to be a "voice" for the LGBT community despite his notorious history of pretending bisexuals don't exist really gets under my skin as a bisexual. Where's our voice, James?
James "Voice of the LGBT Community" Somerton: bisexual and afab trans people dont exist, lesbians have never ever faced discrimination, the only ace person that exists is my buddy nick
I find it so funny that he claimed that when he clearly only gives a shit about white cis gay men like him and thinks that everyone else is making their oppression and/or identity up for attention
It would have been so easy if James, instead of stealing whole books, have actually platformed that people and interview them about their points of view and their work But then he paints himself as the poor victim bc how can he face consequences of stealing, that’s not fair :(
Right? Plenty of channels are dedicated to doing book reviews and interviewing people. It’s a perfectly legitimate and beneficial contribution. He could have just been like “hey everyone, I read this cool book, lemme tell you a bit about it so you can go read it too!” Like. That’s actually easier than plagiarism.
Exactly! I had this thought about the Internet Historian section too. In fact, Papa Meat did an article read about a cave incident, citing the original article and making it clear he was reading it word for word, and it did really well. I was like damn it, IH, there's no reason to neglect to give credit to the original article. The video would have been just as successful. It's baffling to me.
I love when Somerton calls himself the voice of the queers because like, I am very lgbt (yes every letter at once :P) and I never heard of him until the Hbomberguy video. It would be like if the Lorax said he spoke fir the trees and the entire Amazon rainforest said a unanimous "who?'
I feel he was “the voice” for cis gay guys, and that was really it. Like I am bi and trans, and I also never heard of him until that video, and I felt like he was very much not speaking for me. Hell he’d probably call me a slur if he was drunk enough.
Strange that his memory issues only happen in this one specific area of forgetting he stole material, and not in every other part of his life. Stealing is a choice you make over and over again. His explanation sounds like justification, which is probably how he excused it in his mind every time he made that choice to steal someone else's material.
Exactly. Folding Ideas has a really good patreon video debunking the whole "apology", and says the levels of memory loss James is describing is like forgetting where you live and what your name is levels of amnesia😆
Ohhh he knew. He wasn’t looking for justification, and if he was, it wasn’t the “I just need to get something because I forgot” and then ripped it directly. He actively doesn’t see art as having worth unless it is tied to making (him personally) money. I have seen, and lived, this around business and marking people. As well as “that one family member who managed to actually make a small business work before the entire economy tanked itself in the 2000s” because they’re that one family member that insists that the “really talented” people (be it academic papers, prose writing, drawing, sculpting, whatever else) should _only_ keep doing what they’re doing (reviews, art, hobbies, etc) if it’s able to monetized. They lack the entire _concept_ of being creative and so don’t appreciate or care, what happens if they wholesale lift something. I have seen those same people try to scam small graphic design firms for getting free logos they then tweak and get as their “own” and claim it was actually their original and not that they were being shady. I absolutely resent the heck out of most business majors and business/marking departments, because if someone is creative there, they will be sucked so dry so fast that they might as well drop out. You either become incredibly cold and paranoid and don’t publish anything anywhere, because you are too scared to have more of your work stolen out of hand and for their own bottom line, or worse, a _grade_ as well, so it should have also been protected but in the states we don’t tend to bother doing that even though it’s the law and why academic material can reprint things in places like their copy writers and artists for the English/fine arts magazine. It’s horrific.
his body language in that video gives me flashbacks to when I confronted a guy at an anime convention for stalking and being creepy to my friend for almost the entire weekend we'd been there, he did the exact same avoidance of actually stating what he'd done wrong and instead just repeating empty apologies, same kicked puppy act (which p quickly turned into scorned bitch when I called him out on said act "WHAT YOU WANT ME TO LOOK HAPPY? SHOULD I BE SMILING???") so fucking gross
That scorned puppy act... when they use that you can tell that they lie a lot, and are used to getting away with it. Drives me insane when people expect me to believe that bs.
James Somerton saying "I had to plagiarize, otherwise i couldnt release enough videos to make a living!" is the same as me saying "I had to break that shop window, otherwise I couldn't have that expensive pair of shoes that I really really wanted!". Dude. My guy. My absolute fucking brother. If you have to break the law and/or an ethical norm in order to get what you want, then you're not supposed to get it, at least not the way you're planning on getting it. James Somerton was not entitled to a career as a RUclipsr and that he justified stealing someone else's work as "well I couldn't have a career as a RUclipsr if i didn't" is absolutely gobsmacking.
13:29 One word: *HIGHLIGHTER.* So, I suffered a traumatic brain injury in a major accident several years ago, and it tore my elephant memory (right along that edge of photographic) to shreds. Short term especially, but long term is still affected, excluding major events. I say this because if I’d been writing scripts the same way James was, I would also not be able to tell what was copy/paste and what was my original words…and multiply that by like 100 if a few days or more have passed since I was writing it up. BUT THERE’S SUCH AN EASY FIX FOR THIS THAT’S SO OBVIOUS! So much so that it honestly makes me doubt his life-long memory issues, because as you also mentioned, when you have something affecting your life like that, you develop tools and routines to get them managed as much as possible. If he was so fkn dead set on using large chunks of other people’s work…all he had to do was make habit of *copy - paste - select all of the text just pasted - highlight tool* Boom. Now you know for sure which parts you pasted in and need to rewrite in your own words. If somehow his memory issues are sooooo bad that he just couldn’t possibly have remembered to highlight immediately after pasting (which is obviously not true, because then that would apply to every other aspect of his life and he wouldn’t remember how to do anything at all) then put a sticky note on your computer frame. Foolproof way to make sure no one ever gets confused on whose words were which, and takes a literal second to do. Especially since most writing programs will continue to keep the pasted paragraph selected until you click off, so it’s literally clicking *just one more* obvious button on the formatting bar. Besides, it’s common practice for writers to mark any other materials they plan to include -everything from direct quotes to using it as a source to then rewrite in summary & add their own thoughts- as soon as they paste them in to avoid accidentally plagiarizing and help easily gather who to add to the source list at the end. It’s taught in high schools and definitely in higher education writing, so he definitely knew this. He just simply didn’t want to. His memory problems are nothing but a[nother] red herring.
I havent got memory issues beyond like adhd but thats what i was thinking. When i saw thatnimage of his script from hbomberguys video where the different sources and blocks of texts from other sources are highlighted it reminded me of what my essays would look like BEFORE i started writing them and was just gathering quotes. my essay writing technique was to have each source a different colour with the citation obvious and underneath each quote id write my thoughts on it and how it related to my arguement. Then id open a new word document and copy and paste whats relevant from the old one. Im not saying he needed to do my exact same essay writing technique but when youve always suffered from a problem you learn to adapt. No university would ever take adhd and memory issues seriously as an excuse if you were found plagarising
My job involves a lot of writing, and I’ve used the copy-paste-highlighter-note source approach since high school. It’s never failed me, and as far as I can tell I’ve not plagiarized yet.
On a side note: I don't know if copy&pasting stuff just to rewrite it in his own words would be any better. Contentwise that's still plagiarism and you can do this very easily with AI today. Just give a text to the AI and tell it to rewrite it with different words, proof read, done. Takes almost zero effort. Somerton should just start to watch and read queer media himself and talk about his very own thoughts and interpretations, plus publish his own media (movies, series) he's planing. Additionally, he has to quit his "I'm the voice of the LGBTQ people". He can and needs to be his own voice and certainly he'd gain a crowd to agree with him and that'll do.
I'm glad James seems to be safe, but the narrative some people tried to spin about Harry being guilty for causing James' reaction is totally insane if even made in good faith (i doubt it). So is the right thing to do just... not report on bad things public figures are doing because they might react poorly to being caught?? Should Harry have been "nicer" about stating the things James did? Baffling
In other words, we can't call out toxic behaviour or even give constructive criticism without fear someone will react with contemplating ending themselves? Is pretty much my take from seeing those types of comments, what was HBomb supposed to do? Let Somerton carry on without saying anything? We were given plenty of examples of people confronting Somerton either in comment threads or privately through message about his plagerism and his response would be blocking, bullying and setting his fans on them claiming they were harassing him! HBomber Guy said himself to NOT go after Somerton, and while I have no doubt he has had some mob mentality after him (similar to the ones he would sent onto other people when called out) the majority of comments I've seen left on his channels re uploaded videos are people suggesting he leave RUclips for good or pointing out the videos are still full of misinformation (lies) - no death threats!
@@gRinchY-op5vr no one is saying you cannot call someone out for bad behaviour however the truth is if that person then potentially tries to game over themselves you are technically partly responsible
@@NeloBladeOfRanni as long as you are being respectful, you are in no way responsible for the way that another person decides to react to your good faith criticisms, they are adult people who are entirely responsible for their own reactions and decisions. just like in emotionally abusive situations how you have a responsibility to yourself to end the relationship even if they are threatening suicide over it because it isnt your fault if they make their own decision to go through with it, people have a responsibility to call out bad behavior and it is not their fault if the one accused decides to end it to get out of the consequences because that is the accused's decision and no one else's
@@NeloBladeOfRanni what about the dozens of people who have called him out for plagiarism, would they all be responsible? what about Nick leaving him, his "only friend"? is Nick now responsible? what about what about what about. At what point is James responsible for for his own actions? For plagiarizing? At what point is he responsible for siccing his fans on the people who fact-checked him?
11:24 DONT FORGET! latter toddintheshadows ended up blowing The lid that all of the non plagirazed content was misinformation, when he droped his video talking about this
@@ScarfgirlTodd's video was in the works at the same time as HBomb's video. Todd agreed to let HBomb release first, but had recorded his video by August 2023. There was a brief bit, recorded after HBomb released his video, where he goes after Nick after finding HBomb had largely let Nick off.
I really cannot stand his whole psychological tactic that he uses by starting it off with a trigger warning related to self harm.. This entire thing just used emotional tactics to distract others and or eventually wear the viewer out, or gain sympathy for him as if he's the victim here but trust me guys he feels really bad, and never wanted to be a victim.. He never would use that as a tactic to subconsciously manipulate others NO WAY!! He's just sad he got caught and isn't praised to the max. He's just too emotionally and mentally immature and manipulative to admit that..
Exactly, you don't claim such a title. People put that title upon you when you earn their trust and respect to be deemed a representation of their community for those on the outside to look to
I used to be a fan of james somerton so was really shocked at hbomb's video. My absolute favourite video of somerton's was his one on how he, as a lifelong harry potter fan, realised that he couldn't support anything harry potter anymore because JK takes literally any monetary support as support for her views and it was something I really struggled with at the time as harry potter really shaped who I am. I thought it was a really heartfelt and personal account but it was plagiarized. Then todd in the shadows' video opened my eyes to James committing what I consider one of the worst lgbtq+ sins possible, and disparaged people who died of AIDS. I wasn't the biggest fan of his and didn't really sit down and listen to James' videos so I didn't note much of his bigotry, misogyny, and misinformation but now I know and will never support him again. It's also why his apology is so full of shit. Just partially apologise for plagiarism and nothing else he did wrong. I'm glad he apologised specifically to Jessie Gender as she's actually a great queer video essayist whom he treated horrifically but, like she said in her response, it seems like it wasn't done in good faith as shes such a good, forgiving person that if she could forgive him it'd make him look like everyone should forgive him. Sorry for ranting but he really bothers me in so many different ways 😂
@@TheDrLeviathan Thank you so much for saying that! I have a tendency to rant a lot which my family puts me down a lot for doing so and it's resulted in me having actual anxiety about writing comments online so I always feel like I need to apologise for doing so. Thanks again for reading my comment and saying what you did as it's very meaningful for me!
The memory issues bit...as someone who has memory issues if you're not sure if you wrote something yourself then google it??? I do it all the time. It's not an excuse. Do better.
fr, like I know james was just trying to find ANY excuse, but y'know what I do to help myself remember stuff? hundreds of phone notes and screenshots lmao. disclaimers in bold and nonsense in parentheses (that makes sense to me) in documents that lay out info I might've forgotten. voice memos. man was a BUSINESS major and has the gall to act like he doesn't know how to write smthn down for future reference.
Seriously tho. I have shocking memory so I always carry around a notebook with me and write down anything important so I never forget and always have my writing as a reference if my memory starts to blur. My memory started causing problems in my personal and work life, so I found a solution that works for me. Excuses are useless when you can just try harder
Also like, even a person with memory issues should know their own voice and what their writing looks like. If there are words there that you’d never use, it’s probably not your writing. Google def helps tho
@@fiery_scream judging from many business majors i went to school with, plagiarism was part and parcel of the program. Like they would complain about getting caught plagiarising, saying stuff like "i used like 12 different sources!" i guess the more sources, the less plagiarism lol
TBH Somerton is probably cursing the sky that he started his career just a couple years to early. Because if he'd gotten into video essays more recently he'd have certainly been able to pull a fake apology 'reveal' that he was totally using ChatGPT the whole time and the plagiarism was just the AI doing it without his knowledge. Confessing to a lesser sin to deflect, you know?
As someone with a head injury, if I can’t get away with doing shitty things, neither can anyone else. I also have memory issues and it’s my responsibility to write down things that are important and/or are pertinent to me. Disabilities are an explanation. Never an excuse.
As the Voice of the Deeply Confused But Aspirationally Cool Elderly, I must admit this is all new to me. Thanks to Short Daniel's trenchant analysis, I am now up to speed. Merci pour l'analyse de ce tas fumant de crottin de cheval.
15:50 As someone from Toronto, if James was still living in the city at the time this seems HIGHLY unlikely. Hospitals here tend to have pretty tight security and visitors need to check in, I don’t think angry strangers would be able to just wander in and berate him? Not saying it’s impossible, but given his track record he’s probably full of shit.
I know they felt it was their responsibility to do so, but I can't help but feel uneasy at people discovering that James Somerton is okay and then telling everyone "okay, that's enough talking about it, you guys took it too far" like... That's exactly what his fake suicide note was for. That's what he wanted.
are you saying that james wanted people to stop talking about him? we can't know what's in his heart, i guess, but in my experience with similar people, they generally follow the "any press is good press" approach to life 😅
@@celisewillis I guess I don't know, I just feel like he would want people to stop talking about the bad stuff. And either way, I don't think they should silence other people and not let other people say what they want to say just because he is in a bad headspace right now and can't handle being held accountable for his actions. If he is sensitive and can't take anymore criticism right now, the onus is on him to stay away from the internet, not for the internet to stop talking about him. That's how I feel.
I don't know I feel like at this point, everyone knows what he did. He has been exposed, and shown that he isn't going to be accepted back on RUclips. I do think that honestly, yeah, we have talked about him enough.
@@geekygecko1849 That perspective is fine. If the comment from the Hbomberguy producer was "I think you guys have made your point" I wouldn't have said anything. That's not what I'm commenting on. What I'm commenting on is the sentiment that the internet should be quiet because James is in an unstable state of mind. It's not right to try to make people feel guilty for voicing their thoughts on his behavior. If seeing that stuff upsets him so much, I think it should be his responsibility to ignore it. It's the least he can do after what he's done.
Somerton is so desperate to both wallow in the drama and pretend like it's not happening. Makes several "apology" videos but doesn't make any meaningful changes to his scripting methods or video style. Makes those apology videos long as fuck but never even mentions the more meaningful issues like his sexist and queerphobic comments. He used to be one of my go-to background noise channels, so it's embarrassing to see this all revealed and him double down in the worst way possible.
Even if I he actually has memory issues, I seriously doubt those memory issues made it impossible for him to write the source of a quote before forgetting where he took it from, or just even write a simple note to remind him later "hey, this quote is copy and pasted, at least rewrite it"
Using threats of self-harm as a means of emotional abuse is holding yourself hostage. If someone in your life is doing this to you, treat it exactly like they were holding someone else hostage. Call in the professionals. Trying to do it yourself does a disservice to you and to the hostage.
yeah, as soon as someone resorts to that, that's way outta your paygrade. and if you enable this behavior by doing whatever they want, they'll it again in the future next time they don't get their way... and it'll only get more intense and dramatic over time.
To quote Todd from Bojack Horseman, which I think would be fitting to say to James: "Dude, just stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It's not the drugs or the alcohol or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career or when were a kid. It's you."
Today the reveal that James is in fact alive, created another account to hide his identity where he was mostly just defending himself and hornyposting, and when it was revealed it was him he started hiding all his content.
I mean, a bunch of people close to him said he was okay immediately after the original post a few months ago That he's alive is really not new information It is kinda funny that he made an alt to defend himself and call hbomb fans a "cult" lol
I feel like the biggest tell about Somerton is that HBomb's callout was, to be quite frank, insanely gentle relative to how much evidence he had accumulated. He calls him out for his misbehavior using purely his own work as evidence. There's no great leaps on logic or stretching accusations. HBomb just... points out things Somerton did and admits to having done. Like a lot of creators could have turned that same body of evidence into the launching off point for a massive, spurious character assassination. HBomb just presented it without a raised voice at the backside of a longform video essay on several other creators. Somerton had just gotten so used to ignoring allegations from smaller creators and quashing larger ones with accusations of homophobia that he had no recourse but to take it on the jaw when a video too large to ignore came down the line.
The "suicide note" was fake. Right after he wrote it, he changed his alt account into a sock puppet account and started attacking Hbomberguy and his fans through it. He always intended it as a way to weaponise tragedy to attack those who criticised him. Credit to Lady Emily for discovering this.
I forget who said it, but someone pointed out that James Somerton would have won all apology videos if he’d sat down and said “I’m sure you’ve heard the news about me, here’s an original song I wrote about how I’m feeling” and then just sang the entirety of ‘Toxic Gossip Train’ 😂
I was struggling most of my life after one day suddenly not being able to talk when I discovered I was gay! So glad James bravely took it upon himself to talk for me 😊
As someone with epilepsy, it really ticks me off that he uses it and memory issues as an excuse. I've had loads of seizures, concussions, etc and never once have I confused my work with someone else's. It's a cop out that throws the rest of us under the bus. Screw you dude
There is a recent update that shows he was intentionally faking self harm and was actively playing online with his sock puppets and posting as a concerned random person.
I have memory issues. So when writing a piece that includes works of others I'll colour code quotes to their sources so I make sure I give credit correctly amd have an organized bibliography. I figured out that strategy in high-school... Before I knew I had ADHD. Now I know I have ADHD I'm even more careful of things I know I tend to forget about or confuse.
Exactly. Granted, my experience is primarily in writing academic papers, not video essays, but I think my perspective is applicable. As a neurodivergent person, most likely ADHD, I use index cards. I labelled where it would go in the paper and then wrote what I was quoting and the proper citation. (I also wrote the basic bibliography first and completed it after the paper was drafted.) I don't think anyone has to do exactly what I do to write but you definitely have to do something. If your two choices are "work through your issues in some way to properly credit those whose work you have used" and "plagiarism", then actually you only really have the first choice.
Gof fucking damn, James using ADHD as an excuse for blatant theft enraged me so much. I'm auDHD and my memory is really bad, but you know what I do? I keep notes, I use my phone's calendar, I set alarms, I ADAPT. And I certainly don't steal from those with smaller platforms. It's an explanation, but it's never an excuse.
The part of me that is a mature adult that has attempted suicide in the past wants to say that suicide is truly awful and that darkness is so evil that I would not wish it upon anyone but the absolute worst possible dregs of human society. The part of me that is an LGBT person that feels betrayed by Somerton and that part of me that is a suicide survivor that feels he's weaponizing my trauma to garner sympathy wants to say that James is one of the worst possible dregs of human society.
God, every time I stumble upon a video about Somerton, I can't help but think he and my ex-husband were separated at birth. It freaks me out how similar their MO is, despite not being at all the same with regard to subject, or their lives in general....it's just *eerie.*
I've let people down terribly due to my memory issues. It looked absolutely nothing like tripping over and accidentally putting 45mins of someone else's content into a video. The kind of thing that DID happen was getting badly wrong a train timetable and being so sure I'd got it right as to reassure others beforehand, because me remembering to check it got mistaken in my mind for me having checked and confirmed it. The kind of thing that did happen, was also, spending half a week off my meds, leaving the gas cooker on (and after that, not being able to cook for myself due to that risk). Combine that fear with having been in two house fires and anxiously sometimes waking up in the night and having to go around checking nothing's on fire. This bastard thinks that's some "free real estate" style apology content right there, to throw out and see if it sticks on the giant excuse shield. I hate that so much. The sheer disrespect! Memory issues are bloody TERRIFYING. This guy isn't terrified, he's slouching there bored out of his skull going "so hey does that one work? if not lemme move on to the next one, whatever gets me out of this". Before this video I thought ugh what a scumbag. After seeing that clip, I have a real loathing. Yuck. What's more, he can't even be happy with the money he's grifted so-far and call it a day? Even that's more than he deserves, but he actually wants to come back? Equally as insulting in its arrogance as it is deluded in its likelihood. He has no respect for the job he actually COULD do, either. Presenting. Like he doesn't realise that's an established thing already? Like guy, you don't have to pretend you wrote something you didn't write. You absolutely CAN just be a voice if you want to. All that's required, is to be honest about that. Plenty of channels doing that, plenty of folks making careers out of it (and being damn good at it, some of them). It's not rocket surgery. I've done sports announcing and it never even once crossed my mind to pretend like I wasn't copying the folks I admired growing up for my own vocal style and wording style, which was hugely derivative (as per tradition), and very proudly so. I just don't get this impetus to fake it, I really don't. Why would you? Boggles the mind. People do this all the time in music and it's an entire category, they call it "covers", and folks love it. What's wrong with that? On a separate note, my autism has never caused me to murder either! Not a single one of them was for that reason specifically. :P
Anyone blaiming hbomerguy for James trying to end things is basically saying that it's the allied powers fault that Hitler shot himself. Obviously the scale of crimes commited by each is not even comparable. However, just as it's not the allies fault that Hitler decided to end everything instead of facing the punishment, it's not hbomerguy's fault if James tried to do the same. Especially since it's clear to me James knew what he was doing was wrong, but tried to get away with it anyway. There's also a worryingly large part of me that wonders whether the whole message was just another way to try to gain sympathy. Partly because of the apparent lack of worry from the writer and partly because most of what James has been saying seems to be lies.
So not to be "that guy" but having had friends self delete, and having survived 2 attempts myself, 90% of the time, you put the suicide note in a place where people wont find it til after you are gone, not in a place where people can stop you...
Dude the head injury thing is such BS. Im a recovering heroin and meth addict, I used for ten years, I've also had multiple serious head injuries ranging from mild concussion to severe concussion resulting in 12+ hour periods where I have complete and total memory wipes, literally waking up and suddenly wondering why I was in hospital or being driven home from the hospital. After all this my memory is fine. Fine. So the memory loss excuse is total bollocks. I used drugs with guys like James Somerton; serial liars and total narcissists, only able to consider themselves and their needs. In my experience these people are unable to change because they simply can't "think" like most people, they just can't. It's not who they are, it doesn't matter how many times they go to rehab or how much time they spend in therapy, they just can't change. It's like it's biological, it's part of their DNA. Im aware that this is all conjecture and totally subjective, this is just my experience. James can't recover from this, because he can't empathise, and because he can't empathise he can't apologise, he can't learn, he can't change. It's over Jimbo, move on dude. You've got marketing qualifications, move into that, RUclips is over for you man. Edit: ok after some thinking I just want to say that although what James did is awful and he deliberately hurt and endangered people and their livelihoods it isn't beyond forgiveness. Although I don't think he'll ever truly change, he might. None of us know, including himself right now. And even if he doesn't change he can still learn to live with the problems he has and can be a good person in spite of them. He can't rebuild a RUclips career but really that's not what is important right now. The important thing is he can rebuild a life, he can work on himself and change and be a decent, honest human being. And people will forget this and, provided he makes amends, the people close to him will forgive him in time. "This too shall pass" is a saying that stuck with me during my drug withdrawal and early recovery. I say all this because I did some truly terrible things as an addict. I lied, stole, hurt people, I ruined my life, very nearly ruined the lives of many other people, i lost my family, my partner, i developed and suffered a prolonged period of florid psychosis and very nearly died multiple times. My life was in absolute ruin, I Fd up my family's lives, my kids lives, nobody trusted me, or even liked me, I was an insane, sick, lying thief and nobody ever expected me to change. 3 years later I have my family back in my life, my kids, I've rebuilt old friendships and new ones, I have my own business, I work hard, I have a future, I'm sane and happy and fit and healthy. I'm a good person, I am not the thing I was when I was sick. And James is sick, in his own way. But he can recover, and we should all remember that. And I think it's really important to keep in mind what hbomb said: "anyone who goes after James and harrasses him is worse than him and will never see the light of heaven" (or thereabouts). James did some bad, bad sht, absolutely, and he hasn't made amends, yet. But he might, he might use this to become a good man, at least a decent one and one day this might all seem very, very different. It is bad now, absolutely, but it doesn't always have to be. If someone who was like I was can recover then I truly believe anyone can. Sorry for the rant people, love you all x
I have a lot of complicated feelings about what James did, and you spoke to just about all of them in this video. I agree with your POV regarding his non-apology and emotional manipulation of his audience. Also about the gravity of plagiarism in academia... a lot of people on Twitter are like so what, but James came from an academic background, he knows better. I appreciate your rambling... it's hard to speak about the issue if you're not coming at it with an agenda. But I think you have a good understanding of what his motivations are and zeroing in on what he did wrong and why. I've been following this semi-closely and really just want to applaud your take on it. 👏👏 Plus your jokes are great 😂👌
It’s wild to me that people like this exist. He just has no problem stealing other peoples work and calling it his own. Meanwhile, I delete nearly half of the music I create because it sounds too close to some other song or riff I’ve heard from another artist.
The idea of appointing yourself as a worthy candidate to "speak for queer people" is a shitty thing to do in of itself. Let queer people speak for themselves, we don't need one individual who only has his own limited experience to do it for us. And he, in turn, can speak for himself and his personal experiences instead of forcibly drowning out the voices of other queer people. Claiming to speak for those you're actively stealing from is insane, I don't know what else to say. And that last bit? What a scumbag. Great video anyway, Daniel
The concept of a "voice" for any community lost a majority of its appeal the second the internet came out. There is so few things that could ever need a voice that a person couldn't go do themselves. It would be better to say "I'm the voice of my own experiences as a queer person"- but that doesn't really get all the clicks now does it?
@@harley5.7bviews5secondsago6 Adding onto my thoughts here... I seriously think that James doesn't genuinely respect the queer community as a whole. His primary reasoning that he uses at one point in the video is that because as a "white cis gay male" (his words), he can't provide a proper context into things about queer culture and media, so therefore, he uses the words of other queer creators, because he's supposed to be the voice of the community. Yet, he somehow forgot to give proper credit when making the videos because of his bad memory. There's also the fact that during plenty of the previous other attempts where a much smaller content creator attempted to get awareness towards James's actions, it ended up with them being accused of being "homophobic." Even if I'd bet some of those individuals are queer themselves. If James truly was trying to present a direct and transparent view of how the world treats the queer community as a whole, he has done a rather *awful* job at it, as the self proclaimed "voice" of the community. Ignoring just the plain plagiarism, the defense of "I can't be wrong, the people who are calling me out must be homophobes", and just the general lack of care to provide proper information about things that- taking in from H. Bomberguy's video, is rather common knowledge show the reflection of a incompetent if not inherently malicious drive to gain notoriety and monetary support out of a viewer base who actively wants to support queer creators. Ironically, H. Bomberguy's video while it focused a lot on him (2 out of the 4 hours roughly)- he isn't that much different from the other people on the video. James has proven himself to be a man who seems to prioritize getting the paycheck over the actual content, has weaponized the community that he's garnered through years of self proclaimed authority on certain topics (even if in retrospect there are many other people who can be cited as much better authorities on these kinds of topics, many of which would entirely deny that sort of title too), and proceeds to attempt to gaslight and manipulate in order to attempt to get away from accountability. Frankly I find his most recent behavior to be indicative to show that he hasn't had any semblance of wanting to change, and he's just waiting for the heat to die down, before coming back. He's likely not wanting to go down the path that Blair/Illuminaughti is currently going through.
Isn’t, like, the whole… core theme, for lack of a better term, of the queer community about the breadth and diversity of the human experience? No two people experience gender or sexuality or any number of other things the same way, that’s the whole point, right? Wouldn’t a single, all-encompassing spokesman defeat that point entirely? Wouldn’t it lowkey go against most everything our community stands for? The ego on this man, to think he or anyone could ever occupy such a position, to think such a position ever SHOULD be occupied. Good GOD, James.
I had a housemate once who treated all the rest of us like shit and anytime anyone would call him out he would complain that we were discriminating against him because of his mental health. I’m like dude, we all have mental health issues so why is it okay for you to use it as an excuse when the rest of us manage to still treat each other reasonably well?
The thing that bothers me the most about James... He had the privilege of a powerful platform--and squandered it. But when given multiple opportunities to do so--he seems to be incapable of taking the obvious route--to directly atone for his actions and not try to make a pity party for himself. He put himself on such a false pedestal, that he's unable to be humble and let go of his ego.
i literally clicked on this to find out if anyone knew if he was okay or not cos i've not seen anyone mention since the last debacle so thank u for including the info and i'm glad that he's still around but dude seriously needs to go see help cos he's causing a lot more harm dangling his wellbeing in front of people who don't wish harm to him, only accountability and for him to realize the damage his actions have done to others. i know that's prolly like a huge weight on him to come to this realization but like. he ultimately brought it on himself by piling the lies up so high and he could've stopped it at anytime and had control over his reputation, finances, livelihood etc. it sucks but that's the consequences of the things he's done and he really needs to stay off, get himself help and situated and figure out a different game play for a career path bc this one is over for him.
same, i'd seen the original note and speculation after the fact, but nothing concrete either way. He complains about "death threats" every time someone offers mild criticism, he's such a baby.
It literally makes me seethe that he claims to be the voice of an entire group when he legitimately STOLE THE WORDS OF DEAD AUTHORS. He ERASED THEM. Writers who died horribly of AIDS or whose words werent monetized due to their niche topics. How fucking dare you, Somerton
How was he able to do essays for college with a childhood brain injury then? 🙄 or even high school? Was he plagiarizing then? His excuses dont add up bc he lies so much. And I’m disgusted with everything he’s done. He genuinely needs to realize what he’s done wrong and take real accountability. Everyone I’ve seen talk about it didn’t even attack him personally, just his actions. Ugh. I really do hope he gets help bc I hate this.
The other thing about the Evil Queens video is, the author gave him permission but he also steals a whole other article in that video and he never got permission for that! The Mulan article that Hbomb was able to find. He just doesn't bring that up as if it didn't happen. Manipulative.
that's what got to me, like....my dude, Hbomb already debunked this lie. did Somerton not even watch his whole segment from the callout video?? it's baffling.
I trusted him. Sure he was aloof, but I thought that was part of being a film student. Instead of roasting him, I want to recommend a Great channel. Matt Baume! He is a gay historian who loves, and connects with his audience. If the subject is something you're into, please give him a look see!
I feel like the title "a measured response" is a joke, because despite him being such a well-researched essayist, Harris is absolutely unhinged through major portions of his videos. Not much of a point, just wanted to say like most material he steals from, i doubt James understood this when he copied it lol
Yeah his response is anything but normal or 'measured' in literal sense of word, but almost all of his arguments were backed by research and facts. James on the other hand make a very plain / normal response that is in line with literal meaning of the world but most of his points are so unhinged.
Like, how did he get through school without plagiarizing? If he has this memory problem? Surely he would have developed a habit/workaround for that due to the necessity? (I'm autistic and ADD, not diagnosed until college, but I had long since created ways to get stuff done because the alternative was... unacceptable to me.)
Most people don’t begin plagiarizing as adults. It’s actually why my 3rd grade teacher warned us not to cheat on tests, because eventually we would get caught or run out of people to copy off of, and by then we wouldn’t know how to do things ourselves. A lot of kids write essays by slightly changing the wording from sources and just listing a few things in the bibliography. Not a huge deal for elementary school students, but typically those people who keep doing it in high school and college don’t go on to try to build a career as a writer
james is a business major.... #notallbusinessmajors but back in college, it wasn't uncommon to run across people who cheat their way to the top in that major.
This "apology" is about what you would expect from a serial liar and plagiarist who had already attempted an apology where he emotionally manipulated people with his suicide attempt and blamed his "best friend". The whole thing from start to finish was absolute dog shit, and just extremely painful to watch. Especially how when he talked about Telos he basically blames Hbomberguy for that not working out because apparently he was FINALLY going to start making all of the dozen or so movies he promised(for which he raised $60,000, so each movie would have, what, a $5000 budget??) when, oh no, the plagiarism video came out. Then he couldn't do it anymore. Like what a blatant fucking lie. You can tell this whole time he's been looking for a way to make SOMETHING Hbomberguy's fault. The way he talks about him also bothers me. He never addresses him directly, he always says "hbomberguy's team" and I'm not sure why but it just bugs the shit out of me. But the whole video, start to finish was just a god damn train wreck. The fact he says he's going to monetize the apology video, meaning he's essentially telling everyone he's going to profit off his shitty behavior, the fact that he's going to put videos back up(and monetize them!) so 'Nick can have a portfolio? What the fuck? Like even if that were true, Nick would never fucking point to that channel and associate himself with it by choice. "oh yeah there was this huge plagiarism controversy but these videos don't have any plagiarism in them. I mean, that's what I thought about the first videos but no these ones are clean, I promise". And then he tries to MAKE A COMEBACK????????? Like dude. Leave. I'm sorry, I know it must suck to be in the position you're in, and I'm not here to say you didn't actually attempt suicide, but you DON'T use that as an excuse to 'get back in the saddle'. He lost any goodwill he will ever have on this platform. It's bananas. Edit - ok so I don't know why but every now and again in the shower or whatever I'd think about that thing where he would always use the term "hbomberguy's team" instead of "Harrison" "Harry" or just "hbomberguy" directly and I know this is such a stupid petty thing to dwell over but for whatever reason it just rubbed me the wrong way and I'm interested in the mindset behind lies and liars and I think, I THINK it was an attempt to use language to once more try to slide back in to "being a RUclipsr" and kind of side step being cancelled. I think from the perspective of someone who does not make RUclips videos, professionally or otherwise, we engage with the one person we see behind the camera. We know it's a team behind the video, there are credits (I mean, not in James' videos but) but from the perspective of an insider, you tend to look at it from that insider perspective, thinking about the whole of the team instead of just referring to the one person who was on film. I think James keeps using "hbomberguy's team" like that in an effort to still "talk the talk" and it's telling because he was doing it in his first video with the 40 minutes of crocodile tears. Or maybe it's not and it's just a habit or something. Either way I think I can finally stop thinking about it.
@@crazyinsane500 Yes. And actually, Dan Olson pointed out that Somerton bought at least 2 cameras, and used the second best one merely as a prop. Cameras that were needlessly expensive, and for which the intended use would make no sense for Somerton to need. Dan obvs does a better job of explaining all this, and I'm pretty sure you can still google it and find his entire post about Somerton's mismanagement of his money. That one wasn't a Patreon exclusive.
from what I remember, the main guy who was REALLY pushing the HBomb is responsible for Somerton thing is another youtuber who FUCKING HATES HBomb. Like after the plagiarism video came out he made a video pretty much exclusively bitching that HBomb didn't come with a ready to go 100% effective solution to permanently destroy plagiarism forever more (slight hyperbole on my part) and how you can't make a video like that without one.
@@celisewillisfrom what I seen, most of the time it's pretty much entirely politically motivated. They're on opposite ends of the political spectrum and the one hating sees that as reason enough to declare war.
I remember after the Plagiarism video went live, there was thread bouncing around the Internet Historian-favored subreddits putting out a cash bounty for 'evidence that HBomb is a pedo'. Not people who had those allegations looking for backup, mind you, just people really wanting that to be true because it would be 'good revenge'. I remember the threads being full of jilted righty fans flooding in, eager to learn about how Harris was about to get cancelled and then finding out there was no actual basis for it it was just 'what you accuse youtubers of when you're mad at them'.
I got 4 concussions before I turned 15 playing school sports two of those knocked me out for longer than 5 minutes each, a simple “head injury” isn’t a catch all for every single sin you commit. I don’t loose memory forget morals and make a fall guy because of my head injuries I just can draw anymore.
I wish I could remember where I saw this, but someone had screenshots of Hbomb's team confirming Sommerton had not yet reached out, and one of the plagiarized parties revealing a correspondence in which sommerton offered to compensate them with exposure. I wasn't surprised by this but it angers me every time I see clips from sommertons measured response now. Dude just needs to stop. The only thing he can do now is full length features on the artists he stole from.
This is the first video of yours I’ve ever seen, and I love it! You’re so funny yet concise, and it helps that you have a delivery similar to John Mulaney lolol
as someone who has a head injury that often makes writing and reading difficult, i’m pretty insulted by his “oh i can’t remember what i’ve written” excuse. like maybe he does but if there was a single chance that i would be plagiarizing someone’s work in my own writing ESPECIALLY if i was going to submit it on the internet, i would keep a detailed list of my sources and put things into quotes and such. like having this injury sucks and it makes things so much harder but there are ways to work around it that do not involve stealing the work of other creators??? or just. don’t be a video essayist at all if you have this problem???
Literally no one would have cared if he had just credited the people he stole from. Most of us don’t have the time to read or watch as much as we’d like to, and it’s fine to watch a YT video summarizing the topic. James just wanted everyone to think that he was the smartest boy who had all of these big ideas on his own.
There was a moment during the Hbomb video that always stuck out to me. It was in the part where it was showing the video James made, his "About Those Death Threats" video, where he goes "I would NEVER have had the time to do THAT amount of research...for a youtube video". The way he said "for a youtube video" came off as having such contempt for the very fucking field he had chosen to wander into. It demonstrated immediately he absolutely does not care about video essays or even LGBT media discourse, he holds no genuine passion for research or filmmaking. He just wanted to enter the field and do the easiest amount of work possible in order to garnish the fastest amount of viewership and money.
100%. If he had any respect for education, video essays, his audience, or the LGBTQ community he wouldn't have done what he did. You don't spread misinformation if you care about educating. You don't half-ass video essays if you respect the craft. You don't sic your audience like a pack of wild dogs on anyone who criticizes you if you appreciate their support. And you sure as hell don't steal from queer creators, spread lies about the ace, bi, and lesbian experiences, or make up dumb shit like "the Nazis were gay" if you care about the LGBTQ community.
The things he "cares" about are merely tools that he uses to make money and play the victim. Nothing less and certainly nothing more.
may edit the he to james
The extra funny part is that the apology video also proves James is awful at putting in as little effort as possible for the sake of money. If he had just lived modestly, slowly amassing a pile of money earned from manipulation and plagiarism, then the hbomb video dropped, he could've easily just disappeared himself off the internet, move somewhere else and have made a nice profit for as long as the charade lasted. Instead he's continuing to put himself in the internet's crosshairs, floundering to rebuild his image so he can scam more nickels and dimes out of people who don't know any better, and basically inviting further consequences for his actions.
Learning that his pre-RUclips education and experience was predominantly based around marketing instead of humanities or social sciences was absolutely no surprise to me.
@@camithepokefan2492 "You don't half-ass video essays if you respect the craft." That's the thing - so many video essayists just don't respect the craft. They don't understand what it is to describe things in their own words. They don't get what it is to have a "style." I'm writing my thoughts out on the recent Dune movie and it's just 8 pages of my thoughts out in writing. If I were to ever consider making a video essay out of it, I'd have to go through those pages of writing and think about how I want to change it to best fit a script. If I want to use in person comparison to prove my point I'd have to go find articles from reputable sources. If I want to make a comparison to the original movie I'd have to go watch it and write my own thoughts about that. If I want to bring up the cultural zeitgeist and changes Villeneuve made I'd have to cite the books. There's so much work and effort that goes into creation of something *meaningful,* that it *shows* how much passion the creator has for what they do.
James does not *have* any of that. Just about every single video he's ever made, he uses the same joyless monotone. You could *tell* he didn't really care much about anything he said. Passionate creators have a voice that is unique, that sets them apart, tells you how they feel about what it is they're talking about.
"No, no, man, I'm not trying to kill people, it's my autism!" made me fucking cackle
Autism stands for "Ah, Uwilldie Tbymyhands I'm Super Mserious".
as someone with autism it made cackle with how out of left field it was
The most well crafted rebuttal in my repertoire
big black manta vibes
Right before that joke he actually stole a joke from bo burnhams inside special about a sock on his hand "being stuck in a liminal space etc"
I have ADHD so I am embezzling millions of dollars 😊
Wait, we could do that? We could just do that, the whole time?
The fuck am I doing scrolling RUclips, papa needs a new pair of shoes 👀
Hell yeah, now this I can get behind
I have ADHD AND epilepsy, I'm goin for billions!
You say this as a joke, but didn't SBF try to use almost exactly this in court?
That's so quirky of you
Not many people talk about the fact that right after Hbomb video dropped (it was around for like 2 hours at that point, so people didn't have time to watch the whole thing yet) James was YET AGAIN writing on his Patreon about how all these accusations are totes fake and also he's being harassed by homophobes and haters over them. Only after he realized how DAMNING the evidence in the video was he deleted it. He was trying to weasel out as he usually did. And it didn't work this time.
i remember that! it made me wonder how james saw it so quickly. it's not like james is in the title or thumbnail 🤔
@@celisewillis the chapter of the video is titled "James Somerton" and also its a topic close to James' heart so I assume that's why he checked the video. ;)
I thought at first too, but he actually is in the thumbnail (in the background and visually edited, lmao)@celisewillis
Jimmy watched the video, heard Hbomber say "This video is about James Somerton", and then his fight-or-flight reaction kicked in lmao
I love that several times throughout Hbomb’s video he states how bisexual he is, cause he just KNEW James might try the “homophobic hater” bit again
Still cannot get over “you called me out for this so you’re gonna be the one to fix it” bullshit. It’s the brattiest response to being called out for plagiarism that I’ve ever seen
Second only to being called out for plagiarism and accusing the woman who noticed of sending him death threats, and slandering her to his giant platform to the point she _left the internet_
Real “you can’t catch me if you’re dead” energy
how DARE you compare somerton to Ursula the Sea Witch. Ursula is a gay icon and does not deserved to be mentioned in the same sentence as a plagiarist!!!
he contradicts himself so much in this video. I wanted to be a voice for the voiceless so I plagiarized! But also I just forgot what was written by me! But I'll also definitely take out the plagiarized portions of my work! like pick a lane dude. the biggest tell of most liars is overexplanation. so obvious.
Ursula deserves better!
Schaffrillas energy (/pos)
I at least believe Urusla wrote all her own contracts
is Nick those black eels? just stupid evil yet useless henchmen
HBomber said somerton didn’t reach out to his team, and a number of people somerton plagiarized spoke up and said they heard nothing. At this point he should just leave, he’s already done irreparable damage and doesn’t deserve the good faith a RUclipsr kind of really really needs to operate in the video essay space.
No you don't understand, he totally wanted to reach out, he just forgot to hit send on those emails because of his adhd
@@radioxerox7698his head injury from when he was a kid flared up again
@@radioxerox7698and his totally real brain damage that... conveniently only makes him forgetful and impacts nothing else in his life.
As someone who's had ADHD for the better part of my entire 19 years of life, I have never once committed plagiarism
I once was accused of it, despite not having done it.
@@thecreatoroflaziness truly breaking free from your username
@@hairlessgrizzly559 they couldn't be bothered to plagiarise.
This. My ADHD drives my curiosity, which drives my perfectionism in work requiring referencing because I Have To Know Everything And Prove It.
Also as someone w ADHD, i once tried to panic plagiarise a paper (in middle school) and got so interested in the topic i wrote the paper in two days
"I'm not trying to kill people, its just my autism" is my new catchphrase
All of us have fallen short at some point
@@danielprofeta
we all have our moments of weakness and mine just happened to be in front of a small group of people going about their day
Ah yes. The Craig Defense.
My asd ass telling this to my government
The A in the circle on my flag stands for autism, officer
“Is it controversial to say u want to unalive fascism”
“I don’t care if it is and it’s wild you would ask”
Anyway free 🍉
Wait James Somerton is autistic like me? 💀
I have clinically diagnosed severe depression. I am yet to accidentally steal other people's work due to my depression. I am also yet to weaponise my mental health against other people in a pursuit not to hold accountability by gaslithing internet audiences. I am really scared for these symptons of depression to happen guys 😢 Wish me luck 😔
James had really productive depression fugues, when I ask people what I was up to then they 90% answer, and the 10% I remember, I was mostly asleep
@@Lucifersfursona Right?? Like most depression fugues are spent lying on (insert surface of preference, usually bed) unable to want to do anything. But James? Not at all. He is taking someone else's work as his own 24/7. Talk about productivity! He is really into his craft ❤️
🤞 I wish you luck.
Update on James's fake suicide: directly after he posted the suicide note on twitter he went to his alt account and kept posting.
He mainly posted mild tv fandom things and nudes. So that gives you a picture of his "mental decline" through all of this.
Where?
Lady Emily documented it @@seacatlol831
Not his own nudes! Plagiarized hole.
And the nudes weren't even his
13:09 - 14:21 also, as someone with adhd, something widely known to cause short term memory issues, I find this entire section of excuse so insulting. You don't just get to say "Oopsie, I forgot!" when it comes to tests, essays, house keys, and cell phones, because it doesn't fix your problem even if people are understanding. You set up safeguards so that when you do inevitably forget an important thing, you're reminded of it before it's too late.
If it were me I would have immediately stopped and just started an entire new document the moment I realized I didn't know what was what. This time with a dedicated quote section. This isn't juggling chores and bills and appointments and friends and hobbies, it's media reviews. People already think enough that adhd folks are stupid without his help.
And it wasn't just once either, it was nearly the entire channel.
He never once forgot. Because when people (in one instance, the person he stole from even) pointed out he """""forgot"""""" to cite his sources he blocked, harassed, and bullied them off the internet. And claimed they sent him death threats. And then did it again. He didn't forget.
As somebody with ASD, a part of me dies every time a RUclipsr blames their autism on absolutely insidious behavior.
Exactly. More people need to learn the difference between explanations and excuses.
Not to mention that his defense is that he was going to change some words so they were less obviously plagiarized. That is worse! He has no moral qualms at all about stealing other people's hard work and passing it off as his own.
James claiming to be a "voice" for the LGBT community despite his notorious history of pretending bisexuals don't exist really gets under my skin as a bisexual. Where's our voice, James?
James "Voice of the LGBT Community" Somerton: bisexual and afab trans people dont exist, lesbians have never ever faced discrimination, the only ace person that exists is my buddy nick
Let not forget the misogyny
@@Nadia1989he's an insecure dickhead, I fear what he says to women when the cameras off.
I find it so funny that he claimed that when he clearly only gives a shit about white cis gay men like him and thinks that everyone else is making their oppression and/or identity up for attention
@@ohboy-zi1yfoh so my entire being doesnt exist to him lmao
yeah, im misinformation, i sneak into james somertons videos with an elaborate scheme that will take 21 minutes and something goes wrong midway .
HOLY MOLY, Hi Misinformation, CAN I GET YOUR AUTOGRAPH??
Ms. Information, if you will
It would have been so easy if James, instead of stealing whole books, have actually platformed that people and interview them about their points of view and their work
But then he paints himself as the poor victim bc how can he face consequences of stealing, that’s not fair :(
The entire argument that he used other people's words to "represent" them is honestly evil lol
Right? Plenty of channels are dedicated to doing book reviews and interviewing people. It’s a perfectly legitimate and beneficial contribution. He could have just been like “hey everyone, I read this cool book, lemme tell you a bit about it so you can go read it too!” Like. That’s actually easier than plagiarism.
See but that would require him to actually care about them or the things they’re saying and not just see it as a gateway to money
Exactly! I had this thought about the Internet Historian section too. In fact, Papa Meat did an article read about a cave incident, citing the original article and making it clear he was reading it word for word, and it did really well. I was like damn it, IH, there's no reason to neglect to give credit to the original article. The video would have been just as successful. It's baffling to me.
A very measured response. Get out my ruler
Maybe the real response was the measure we somered along the way
Alll I got to say is it better be in metric
📏
@@404maxnotfoundiambic?
I love when Somerton calls himself the voice of the queers because like, I am very lgbt (yes every letter at once :P) and I never heard of him until the Hbomberguy video.
It would be like if the Lorax said he spoke fir the trees and the entire Amazon rainforest said a unanimous "who?'
As the voice of short people named Daniel... I must agree
I christen myself the voice of all tall people named Elke, sounds reasonable to me since I’m almost 4’11”.
I feel he was “the voice” for cis gay guys, and that was really it. Like I am bi and trans, and I also never heard of him until that video, and I felt like he was very much not speaking for me. Hell he’d probably call me a slur if he was drunk enough.
@@metronicmagician1816 My current friend group has multiple cis gay guys, and none of them had heard of him either lmao
Real voice
@@danielprofeta a real voice indeed. One made from so many other queer content creators and writers.
Can't believe we've come this far from "severe lapse in judgement" of quality apologies
The type of apology changes, but the quality always stays the same.
Strange that his memory issues only happen in this one specific area of forgetting he stole material, and not in every other part of his life. Stealing is a choice you make over and over again. His explanation sounds like justification, which is probably how he excused it in his mind every time he made that choice to steal someone else's material.
Yeah he didn't have any memory issues
When he needed to describe to the detail where he was and what he was doing during the Telos filming debacle
Exactly. Folding Ideas has a really good patreon video debunking the whole "apology", and says the levels of memory loss James is describing is like forgetting where you live and what your name is levels of amnesia😆
Ohhh he knew. He wasn’t looking for justification, and if he was, it wasn’t the “I just need to get something because I forgot” and then ripped it directly.
He actively doesn’t see art as having worth unless it is tied to making (him personally) money. I have seen, and lived, this around business and marking people. As well as “that one family member who managed to actually make a small business work before the entire economy tanked itself in the 2000s” because they’re that one family member that insists that the “really talented” people (be it academic papers, prose writing, drawing, sculpting, whatever else) should _only_ keep doing what they’re doing (reviews, art, hobbies, etc) if it’s able to monetized.
They lack the entire _concept_ of being creative and so don’t appreciate or care, what happens if they wholesale lift something. I have seen those same people try to scam small graphic design firms for getting free logos they then tweak and get as their “own” and claim it was actually their original and not that they were being shady.
I absolutely resent the heck out of most business majors and business/marking departments, because if someone is creative there, they will be sucked so dry so fast that they might as well drop out. You either become incredibly cold and paranoid and don’t publish anything anywhere, because you are too scared to have more of your work stolen out of hand and for their own bottom line, or worse, a _grade_ as well, so it should have also been protected but in the states we don’t tend to bother doing that even though it’s the law and why academic material can reprint things in places like their copy writers and artists for the English/fine arts magazine. It’s horrific.
As a tall Daniel myself, I kneel before Lord Profeta.
I'm sure if you get down to my level, we'll see eye to eye
And as a small man named Kevin, I endorse this product.
I'm antifeta and other fancy cheese.
I never heard of him till now.Wish I had still never heard of him 😂
more like daniel propheta
his body language in that video gives me flashbacks to when I confronted a guy at an anime convention for stalking and being creepy to my friend for almost the entire weekend we'd been there, he did the exact same avoidance of actually stating what he'd done wrong and instead just repeating empty apologies, same kicked puppy act (which p quickly turned into scorned bitch when I called him out on said act "WHAT YOU WANT ME TO LOOK HAPPY? SHOULD I BE SMILING???")
so fucking gross
That scorned puppy act... when they use that you can tell that they lie a lot, and are used to getting away with it. Drives me insane when people expect me to believe that bs.
Felt that. Had that exact same thing happen with an ex-friend.
It's pathetic :/
ew! glad your friend had you there! same thing happened to me, and i had a badass friend defend me too :)
Thanks for protecting your friend, I’m glad y’all are safe, that sounds really fucking scary 😟
James Somerton saying "I had to plagiarize, otherwise i couldnt release enough videos to make a living!" is the same as me saying "I had to break that shop window, otherwise I couldn't have that expensive pair of shoes that I really really wanted!".
Dude. My guy. My absolute fucking brother. If you have to break the law and/or an ethical norm in order to get what you want, then you're not supposed to get it, at least not the way you're planning on getting it. James Somerton was not entitled to a career as a RUclipsr and that he justified stealing someone else's work as "well I couldn't have a career as a RUclipsr if i didn't" is absolutely gobsmacking.
Love your use of the word gobsmacking.
Hbomberguy and some of the independent writers Somerton plagiarised have confirmed that James did not reach out to them.
13:29
One word: *HIGHLIGHTER.*
So, I suffered a traumatic brain injury in a major accident several years ago, and it tore my elephant memory (right along that edge of photographic) to shreds. Short term especially, but long term is still affected, excluding major events.
I say this because if I’d been writing scripts the same way James was, I would also not be able to tell what was copy/paste and what was my original words…and multiply that by like 100 if a few days or more have passed since I was writing it up.
BUT THERE’S SUCH AN EASY FIX FOR THIS THAT’S SO OBVIOUS! So much so that it honestly makes me doubt his life-long memory issues, because as you also mentioned, when you have something affecting your life like that, you develop tools and routines to get them managed as much as possible.
If he was so fkn dead set on using large chunks of other people’s work…all he had to do was make habit of *copy - paste - select all of the text just pasted - highlight tool*
Boom. Now you know for sure which parts you pasted in and need to rewrite in your own words. If somehow his memory issues are sooooo bad that he just couldn’t possibly have remembered to highlight immediately after pasting (which is obviously not true, because then that would apply to every other aspect of his life and he wouldn’t remember how to do anything at all) then put a sticky note on your computer frame. Foolproof way to make sure no one ever gets confused on whose words were which, and takes a literal second to do. Especially since most writing programs will continue to keep the pasted paragraph selected until you click off, so it’s literally clicking *just one more* obvious button on the formatting bar.
Besides, it’s common practice for writers to mark any other materials they plan to include -everything from direct quotes to using it as a source to then rewrite in summary & add their own thoughts- as soon as they paste them in to avoid accidentally plagiarizing and help easily gather who to add to the source list at the end. It’s taught in high schools and definitely in higher education writing, so he definitely knew this. He just simply didn’t want to. His memory problems are nothing but a[nother] red herring.
I havent got memory issues beyond like adhd but thats what i was thinking. When i saw thatnimage of his script from hbomberguys video where the different sources and blocks of texts from other sources are highlighted it reminded me of what my essays would look like BEFORE i started writing them and was just gathering quotes. my essay writing technique was to have each source a different colour with the citation obvious and underneath each quote id write my thoughts on it and how it related to my arguement. Then id open a new word document and copy and paste whats relevant from the old one. Im not saying he needed to do my exact same essay writing technique but when youve always suffered from a problem you learn to adapt. No university would ever take adhd and memory issues seriously as an excuse if you were found plagarising
My job involves a lot of writing, and I’ve used the copy-paste-highlighter-note source approach since high school. It’s never failed me, and as far as I can tell I’ve not plagiarized yet.
Exactly!!! People who genuinely face issues like this _find ways to deal with them_
On a side note: I don't know if copy&pasting stuff just to rewrite it in his own words would be any better. Contentwise that's still plagiarism and you can do this very easily with AI today. Just give a text to the AI and tell it to rewrite it with different words, proof read, done. Takes almost zero effort.
Somerton should just start to watch and read queer media himself and talk about his very own thoughts and interpretations, plus publish his own media (movies, series) he's planing.
Additionally, he has to quit his "I'm the voice of the LGBTQ people". He can and needs to be his own voice and certainly he'd gain a crowd to agree with him and that'll do.
James claiming "He'll do it right this time" when there was literally nothing stopping him doing that before!
I'm glad James seems to be safe, but the narrative some people tried to spin about Harry being guilty for causing James' reaction is totally insane if even made in good faith (i doubt it). So is the right thing to do just... not report on bad things public figures are doing because they might react poorly to being caught?? Should Harry have been "nicer" about stating the things James did? Baffling
In other words, we can't call out toxic behaviour or even give constructive criticism without fear someone will react with contemplating ending themselves? Is pretty much my take from seeing those types of comments, what was HBomb supposed to do? Let Somerton carry on without saying anything? We were given plenty of examples of people confronting Somerton either in comment threads or privately through message about his plagerism and his response would be blocking, bullying and setting his fans on them claiming they were harassing him! HBomber Guy said himself to NOT go after Somerton, and while I have no doubt he has had some mob mentality after him (similar to the ones he would sent onto other people when called out) the majority of comments I've seen left on his channels re uploaded videos are people suggesting he leave RUclips for good or pointing out the videos are still full of misinformation (lies) - no death threats!
@@gRinchY-op5vr no one is saying you cannot call someone out for bad behaviour however the truth is if that person then potentially tries to game over themselves you are technically partly responsible
If that were the case, then the US court system was “technically partly responsible” for Fred West’s “game over.” Thats not how this works.
@@NeloBladeOfRanni as long as you are being respectful, you are in no way responsible for the way that another person decides to react to your good faith criticisms, they are adult people who are entirely responsible for their own reactions and decisions. just like in emotionally abusive situations how you have a responsibility to yourself to end the relationship even if they are threatening suicide over it because it isnt your fault if they make their own decision to go through with it, people have a responsibility to call out bad behavior and it is not their fault if the one accused decides to end it to get out of the consequences because that is the accused's decision and no one else's
@@NeloBladeOfRanni what about the dozens of people who have called him out for plagiarism, would they all be responsible? what about Nick leaving him, his "only friend"? is Nick now responsible? what about what about what about. At what point is James responsible for for his own actions? For plagiarizing? At what point is he responsible for siccing his fans on the people who fact-checked him?
11:24 DONT FORGET! latter toddintheshadows ended up blowing The lid that all of the non plagirazed content was misinformation, when he droped his video talking about this
Dude pulled that out so fast yet had all the receipts ready! I actually saw it before I'd seen the HBomb video. Very impressive.
and a lot of the misinformation *was* due to nick making things up, he showed screenshots of nick admitting to it. ppl are letting them off scot free
@@ScarfgirlTodd's video was in the works at the same time as HBomb's video. Todd agreed to let HBomb release first, but had recorded his video by August 2023. There was a brief bit, recorded after HBomb released his video, where he goes after Nick after finding HBomb had largely let Nick off.
I really cannot stand his whole psychological tactic that he uses by starting it off with a trigger warning related to self harm.. This entire thing just used emotional tactics to distract others and or eventually wear the viewer out, or gain sympathy for him as if he's the victim here but trust me guys he feels really bad, and never wanted to be a victim.. He never would use that as a tactic to subconsciously manipulate others NO WAY!! He's just sad he got caught and isn't praised to the max. He's just too emotionally and mentally immature and manipulative to admit that..
exactly. a warning at the start of the video is fine, but it's more useful right placed before you actually talk about the thing.
Anyone who calls themselves the face of anything without an ounce of irony is a waving red flag of narcissism.
Exactly, you don't claim such a title. People put that title upon you when you earn their trust and respect to be deemed a representation of their community for those on the outside to look to
I know I committed multiple acts of terrorism both foreign and domestic but I'm just a little guy with dyslexia, you have to forgive me
I used to be a fan of james somerton so was really shocked at hbomb's video. My absolute favourite video of somerton's was his one on how he, as a lifelong harry potter fan, realised that he couldn't support anything harry potter anymore because JK takes literally any monetary support as support for her views and it was something I really struggled with at the time as harry potter really shaped who I am. I thought it was a really heartfelt and personal account but it was plagiarized. Then todd in the shadows' video opened my eyes to James committing what I consider one of the worst lgbtq+ sins possible, and disparaged people who died of AIDS. I wasn't the biggest fan of his and didn't really sit down and listen to James' videos so I didn't note much of his bigotry, misogyny, and misinformation but now I know and will never support him again. It's also why his apology is so full of shit. Just partially apologise for plagiarism and nothing else he did wrong. I'm glad he apologised specifically to Jessie Gender as she's actually a great queer video essayist whom he treated horrifically but, like she said in her response, it seems like it wasn't done in good faith as shes such a good, forgiving person that if she could forgive him it'd make him look like everyone should forgive him. Sorry for ranting but he really bothers me in so many different ways 😂
Ur good. Better have it out than carry it around inside
@@TheDrLeviathan Thank you so much for saying that! I have a tendency to rant a lot which my family puts me down a lot for doing so and it's resulted in me having actual anxiety about writing comments online so I always feel like I need to apologise for doing so. Thanks again for reading my comment and saying what you did as it's very meaningful for me!
@@LunaBeth97 Yes, definitely no need to apologize and thank you for sharing!
I also feel like he named Jessie specifically so he could bring up the death threat and get more sympathy
The whole "apology" comes across as, "I'm sorry that YOU feel that way" or "I'm sorry YOU were offended" like it's not his fault at all 🙄
The memory issues bit...as someone who has memory issues if you're not sure if you wrote something yourself then google it??? I do it all the time. It's not an excuse. Do better.
fr, like I know james was just trying to find ANY excuse, but y'know what I do to help myself remember stuff? hundreds of phone notes and screenshots lmao. disclaimers in bold and nonsense in parentheses (that makes sense to me) in documents that lay out info I might've forgotten. voice memos. man was a BUSINESS major and has the gall to act like he doesn't know how to write smthn down for future reference.
@@fiery_scream exactly, and with all the money he was making he could have paid someone to proof read his work
Seriously tho. I have shocking memory so I always carry around a notebook with me and write down anything important so I never forget and always have my writing as a reference if my memory starts to blur. My memory started causing problems in my personal and work life, so I found a solution that works for me. Excuses are useless when you can just try harder
Also like, even a person with memory issues should know their own voice and what their writing looks like. If there are words there that you’d never use, it’s probably not your writing. Google def helps tho
@@fiery_scream judging from many business majors i went to school with, plagiarism was part and parcel of the program. Like they would complain about getting caught plagiarising, saying stuff like "i used like 12 different sources!" i guess the more sources, the less plagiarism lol
Somerton knows so little about apologizing it actually created the first instance of "should've had chatgpt write it".
TBH Somerton is probably cursing the sky that he started his career just a couple years to early. Because if he'd gotten into video essays more recently he'd have certainly been able to pull a fake apology 'reveal' that he was totally using ChatGPT the whole time and the plagiarism was just the AI doing it without his knowledge. Confessing to a lesser sin to deflect, you know?
As someone with a head injury, if I can’t get away with doing shitty things, neither can anyone else. I also have memory issues and it’s my responsibility to write down things that are important and/or are pertinent to me. Disabilities are an explanation. Never an excuse.
As the Voice of the Deeply Confused But Aspirationally Cool Elderly, I must admit this is all new to me. Thanks to Short Daniel's trenchant analysis, I am now up to speed. Merci pour l'analyse de ce tas fumant de crottin de cheval.
ha! love this. "Voice of the Deeply Confused But Aspirationally Cool Elderly," would be a cool band name
15:50 As someone from Toronto, if James was still living in the city at the time this seems HIGHLY unlikely. Hospitals here tend to have pretty tight security and visitors need to check in, I don’t think angry strangers would be able to just wander in and berate him? Not saying it’s impossible, but given his track record he’s probably full of shit.
“Have you ever seen this guy before?” God I wish I hadn’t. I deeply wish I hadn’t.
I know they felt it was their responsibility to do so, but I can't help but feel uneasy at people discovering that James Somerton is okay and then telling everyone "okay, that's enough talking about it, you guys took it too far" like... That's exactly what his fake suicide note was for. That's what he wanted.
are you saying that james wanted people to stop talking about him? we can't know what's in his heart, i guess, but in my experience with similar people, they generally follow the "any press is good press" approach to life 😅
@@celisewillis I guess I don't know, I just feel like he would want people to stop talking about the bad stuff. And either way, I don't think they should silence other people and not let other people say what they want to say just because he is in a bad headspace right now and can't handle being held accountable for his actions. If he is sensitive and can't take anymore criticism right now, the onus is on him to stay away from the internet, not for the internet to stop talking about him. That's how I feel.
I don't know I feel like at this point, everyone knows what he did. He has been exposed, and shown that he isn't going to be accepted back on RUclips. I do think that honestly, yeah, we have talked about him enough.
@@geekygecko1849 That perspective is fine. If the comment from the Hbomberguy producer was "I think you guys have made your point" I wouldn't have said anything.
That's not what I'm commenting on. What I'm commenting on is the sentiment that the internet should be quiet because James is in an unstable state of mind. It's not right to try to make people feel guilty for voicing their thoughts on his behavior. If seeing that stuff upsets him so much, I think it should be his responsibility to ignore it. It's the least he can do after what he's done.
Somerton is so desperate to both wallow in the drama and pretend like it's not happening. Makes several "apology" videos but doesn't make any meaningful changes to his scripting methods or video style. Makes those apology videos long as fuck but never even mentions the more meaningful issues like his sexist and queerphobic comments. He used to be one of my go-to background noise channels, so it's embarrassing to see this all revealed and him double down in the worst way possible.
Even if I he actually has memory issues, I seriously doubt those memory issues made it impossible for him to write the source of a quote before forgetting where he took it from, or just even write a simple note to remind him later "hey, this quote is copy and pasted, at least rewrite it"
Using threats of self-harm as a means of emotional abuse is holding yourself hostage. If someone in your life is doing this to you, treat it exactly like they were holding someone else hostage. Call in the professionals. Trying to do it yourself does a disservice to you and to the hostage.
yeah, as soon as someone resorts to that, that's way outta your paygrade. and if you enable this behavior by doing whatever they want, they'll it again in the future next time they don't get their way... and it'll only get more intense and dramatic over time.
To quote Todd from Bojack Horseman, which I think would be fitting to say to James: "Dude, just stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It's not the drugs or the alcohol or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career or when were a kid. It's you."
Today the reveal that James is in fact alive, created another account to hide his identity where he was mostly just defending himself and hornyposting, and when it was revealed it was him he started hiding all his content.
I mean, a bunch of people close to him said he was okay immediately after the original post a few months ago
That he's alive is really not new information
It is kinda funny that he made an alt to defend himself and call hbomb fans a "cult" lol
this was uploaded just in time for my morning coffee! we are legion
FOOLS FEST
Good morning, fools fest is going to be epic
@@danielprofeta hello legion leader??
Hbomb himself says it best. "When someone implies something _they did_ happened by *magic,* they make it pretty clear they are trying to deceive you!"
I feel like the biggest tell about Somerton is that HBomb's callout was, to be quite frank, insanely gentle relative to how much evidence he had accumulated. He calls him out for his misbehavior using purely his own work as evidence. There's no great leaps on logic or stretching accusations. HBomb just... points out things Somerton did and admits to having done. Like a lot of creators could have turned that same body of evidence into the launching off point for a massive, spurious character assassination. HBomb just presented it without a raised voice at the backside of a longform video essay on several other creators. Somerton had just gotten so used to ignoring allegations from smaller creators and quashing larger ones with accusations of homophobia that he had no recourse but to take it on the jaw when a video too large to ignore came down the line.
I have ADHD and I cannot stop plagiarizing my entire artistic portfolio
The "suicide note" was fake. Right after he wrote it, he changed his alt account into a sock puppet account and started attacking Hbomberguy and his fans through it. He always intended it as a way to weaponise tragedy to attack those who criticised him. Credit to Lady Emily for discovering this.
as a short Daniel myself, I beg you to be the voice of our large community & speak for everyone since we all think the same
It will be done
this is the simpson's "stop stop hes already dead"
I forget who said it, but someone pointed out that James Somerton would have won all apology videos if he’d sat down and said “I’m sure you’ve heard the news about me, here’s an original song I wrote about how I’m feeling” and then just sang the entirety of ‘Toxic Gossip Train’ 😂
“It feels less like an excuse video and more like emotional manipulation towards his audience.” EXACTLY. You summed up his bullshit exactly.
In the words of another generational embarrassment, Lena Dunham, "Ok maybe not the voice of my generation... Maybe just *a* voice? Of *a* generation?"
I was struggling most of my life after one day suddenly not being able to talk when I discovered I was gay! So glad James bravely took it upon himself to talk for me 😊
As someone with epilepsy, it really ticks me off that he uses it and memory issues as an excuse. I've had loads of seizures, concussions, etc and never once have I confused my work with someone else's. It's a cop out that throws the rest of us under the bus. Screw you dude
There is a recent update that shows he was intentionally faking self harm and was actively playing online with his sock puppets and posting as a concerned random person.
Short people called Daniel, or as I like to call them, Danlets
why do these people keep trying to come back to youtube. like colleen ballinger. just get a different job good lord
I have memory issues. So when writing a piece that includes works of others I'll colour code quotes to their sources so I make sure I give credit correctly amd have an organized bibliography.
I figured out that strategy in high-school... Before I knew I had ADHD. Now I know I have ADHD I'm even more careful of things I know I tend to forget about or confuse.
Exactly. Granted, my experience is primarily in writing academic papers, not video essays, but I think my perspective is applicable. As a neurodivergent person, most likely ADHD, I use index cards. I labelled where it would go in the paper and then wrote what I was quoting and the proper citation. (I also wrote the basic bibliography first and completed it after the paper was drafted.) I don't think anyone has to do exactly what I do to write but you definitely have to do something. If your two choices are "work through your issues in some way to properly credit those whose work you have used" and "plagiarism", then actually you only really have the first choice.
Gof fucking damn, James using ADHD as an excuse for blatant theft enraged me so much. I'm auDHD and my memory is really bad, but you know what I do? I keep notes, I use my phone's calendar, I set alarms, I ADAPT. And I certainly don't steal from those with smaller platforms. It's an explanation, but it's never an excuse.
and you certainly don't do it *every single time*! you would take steps, if you gave a single fuck, to not repeat the issue
The part of me that is a mature adult that has attempted suicide in the past wants to say that suicide is truly awful and that darkness is so evil that I would not wish it upon anyone but the absolute worst possible dregs of human society.
The part of me that is an LGBT person that feels betrayed by Somerton and that part of me that is a suicide survivor that feels he's weaponizing my trauma to garner sympathy wants to say that James is one of the worst possible dregs of human society.
God, every time I stumble upon a video about Somerton, I can't help but think he and my ex-husband were separated at birth. It freaks me out how similar their MO is, despite not being at all the same with regard to subject, or their lives in general....it's just *eerie.*
oof, sorry you had someone like that in your life. glad you're safe now.
I've let people down terribly due to my memory issues. It looked absolutely nothing like tripping over and accidentally putting 45mins of someone else's content into a video. The kind of thing that DID happen was getting badly wrong a train timetable and being so sure I'd got it right as to reassure others beforehand, because me remembering to check it got mistaken in my mind for me having checked and confirmed it. The kind of thing that did happen, was also, spending half a week off my meds, leaving the gas cooker on (and after that, not being able to cook for myself due to that risk). Combine that fear with having been in two house fires and anxiously sometimes waking up in the night and having to go around checking nothing's on fire.
This bastard thinks that's some "free real estate" style apology content right there, to throw out and see if it sticks on the giant excuse shield. I hate that so much. The sheer disrespect! Memory issues are bloody TERRIFYING. This guy isn't terrified, he's slouching there bored out of his skull going "so hey does that one work? if not lemme move on to the next one, whatever gets me out of this". Before this video I thought ugh what a scumbag. After seeing that clip, I have a real loathing. Yuck. What's more, he can't even be happy with the money he's grifted so-far and call it a day? Even that's more than he deserves, but he actually wants to come back? Equally as insulting in its arrogance as it is deluded in its likelihood.
He has no respect for the job he actually COULD do, either. Presenting. Like he doesn't realise that's an established thing already? Like guy, you don't have to pretend you wrote something you didn't write. You absolutely CAN just be a voice if you want to. All that's required, is to be honest about that. Plenty of channels doing that, plenty of folks making careers out of it (and being damn good at it, some of them). It's not rocket surgery. I've done sports announcing and it never even once crossed my mind to pretend like I wasn't copying the folks I admired growing up for my own vocal style and wording style, which was hugely derivative (as per tradition), and very proudly so. I just don't get this impetus to fake it, I really don't. Why would you? Boggles the mind. People do this all the time in music and it's an entire category, they call it "covers", and folks love it. What's wrong with that?
On a separate note, my autism has never caused me to murder either! Not a single one of them was for that reason specifically. :P
That socko "inside" reference you did is dope tho
I am infact trying to be funny (while being, infact, stuck in a room)
@@danielprofeta im sorry that im late but i would like to know if you have something more to say about it
Anyone blaiming hbomerguy for James trying to end things is basically saying that it's the allied powers fault that Hitler shot himself. Obviously the scale of crimes commited by each is not even comparable. However, just as it's not the allies fault that Hitler decided to end everything instead of facing the punishment, it's not hbomerguy's fault if James tried to do the same. Especially since it's clear to me James knew what he was doing was wrong, but tried to get away with it anyway.
There's also a worryingly large part of me that wonders whether the whole message was just another way to try to gain sympathy. Partly because of the apparent lack of worry from the writer and partly because most of what James has been saying seems to be lies.
Really? A Hitler comparison? James was just lazy.
yeah, when I read Nick's tweet, I wondered if James had pulled things like this before with Nick :(
So not to be "that guy" but having had friends self delete, and having survived 2 attempts myself, 90% of the time, you put the suicide note in a place where people wont find it til after you are gone, not in a place where people can stop you...
Dude the head injury thing is such BS. Im a recovering heroin and meth addict, I used for ten years, I've also had multiple serious head injuries ranging from mild concussion to severe concussion resulting in 12+ hour periods where I have complete and total memory wipes, literally waking up and suddenly wondering why I was in hospital or being driven home from the hospital. After all this my memory is fine. Fine. So the memory loss excuse is total bollocks.
I used drugs with guys like James Somerton; serial liars and total narcissists, only able to consider themselves and their needs. In my experience these people are unable to change because they simply can't "think" like most people, they just can't. It's not who they are, it doesn't matter how many times they go to rehab or how much time they spend in therapy, they just can't change. It's like it's biological, it's part of their DNA. Im aware that this is all conjecture and totally subjective, this is just my experience.
James can't recover from this, because he can't empathise, and because he can't empathise he can't apologise, he can't learn, he can't change. It's over Jimbo, move on dude. You've got marketing qualifications, move into that, RUclips is over for you man.
Edit: ok after some thinking I just want to say that although what James did is awful and he deliberately hurt and endangered people and their livelihoods it isn't beyond forgiveness. Although I don't think he'll ever truly change, he might. None of us know, including himself right now. And even if he doesn't change he can still learn to live with the problems he has and can be a good person in spite of them. He can't rebuild a RUclips career but really that's not what is important right now. The important thing is he can rebuild a life, he can work on himself and change and be a decent, honest human being. And people will forget this and, provided he makes amends, the people close to him will forgive him in time.
"This too shall pass" is a saying that stuck with me during my drug withdrawal and early recovery. I say all this because I did some truly terrible things as an addict. I lied, stole, hurt people, I ruined my life, very nearly ruined the lives of many other people, i lost my family, my partner, i developed and suffered a prolonged period of florid psychosis and very nearly died multiple times. My life was in absolute ruin, I Fd up my family's lives, my kids lives, nobody trusted me, or even liked me, I was an insane, sick, lying thief and nobody ever expected me to change. 3 years later I have my family back in my life, my kids, I've rebuilt old friendships and new ones, I have my own business, I work hard, I have a future, I'm sane and happy and fit and healthy. I'm a good person, I am not the thing I was when I was sick. And James is sick, in his own way. But he can recover, and we should all remember that. And I think it's really important to keep in mind what hbomb said: "anyone who goes after James and harrasses him is worse than him and will never see the light of heaven" (or thereabouts). James did some bad, bad sht, absolutely, and he hasn't made amends, yet. But he might, he might use this to become a good man, at least a decent one and one day this might all seem very, very different. It is bad now, absolutely, but it doesn't always have to be.
If someone who was like I was can recover then I truly believe anyone can.
Sorry for the rant people, love you all x
I have a lot of complicated feelings about what James did, and you spoke to just about all of them in this video. I agree with your POV regarding his non-apology and emotional manipulation of his audience. Also about the gravity of plagiarism in academia... a lot of people on Twitter are like so what, but James came from an academic background, he knows better.
I appreciate your rambling... it's hard to speak about the issue if you're not coming at it with an agenda. But I think you have a good understanding of what his motivations are and zeroing in on what he did wrong and why. I've been following this semi-closely and really just want to applaud your take on it. 👏👏 Plus your jokes are great 😂👌
I feel bad for whoever’s tumblr post on Neuro divergence James Somerton stole to rephrase for his video
It’s wild to me that people like this exist. He just has no problem stealing other peoples work and calling it his own. Meanwhile, I delete nearly half of the music I create because it sounds too close to some other song or riff I’ve heard from another artist.
The idea of appointing yourself as a worthy candidate to "speak for queer people" is a shitty thing to do in of itself.
Let queer people speak for themselves, we don't need one individual who only has his own limited experience to do it for us.
And he, in turn, can speak for himself and his personal experiences instead of forcibly drowning out the voices of other queer people.
Claiming to speak for those you're actively stealing from is insane, I don't know what else to say.
And that last bit? What a scumbag.
Great video anyway, Daniel
The concept of a "voice" for any community lost a majority of its appeal the second the internet came out. There is so few things that could ever need a voice that a person couldn't go do themselves. It would be better to say "I'm the voice of my own experiences as a queer person"- but that doesn't really get all the clicks now does it?
@@entwixed3406 yeah I agree 100%, very well said
@@harley5.7bviews5secondsago6
Adding onto my thoughts here... I seriously think that James doesn't genuinely respect the queer community as a whole. His primary reasoning that he uses at one point in the video is that because as a "white cis gay male" (his words), he can't provide a proper context into things about queer culture and media, so therefore, he uses the words of other queer creators, because he's supposed to be the voice of the community. Yet, he somehow forgot to give proper credit when making the videos because of his bad memory.
There's also the fact that during plenty of the previous other attempts where a much smaller content creator attempted to get awareness towards James's actions, it ended up with them being accused of being "homophobic." Even if I'd bet some of those individuals are queer themselves.
If James truly was trying to present a direct and transparent view of how the world treats the queer community as a whole, he has done a rather *awful* job at it, as the self proclaimed "voice" of the community. Ignoring just the plain plagiarism, the defense of "I can't be wrong, the people who are calling me out must be homophobes", and just the general lack of care to provide proper information about things that- taking in from H. Bomberguy's video, is rather common knowledge show the reflection of a incompetent if not inherently malicious drive to gain notoriety and monetary support out of a viewer base who actively wants to support queer creators.
Ironically, H. Bomberguy's video while it focused a lot on him (2 out of the 4 hours roughly)- he isn't that much different from the other people on the video. James has proven himself to be a man who seems to prioritize getting the paycheck over the actual content, has weaponized the community that he's garnered through years of self proclaimed authority on certain topics (even if in retrospect there are many other people who can be cited as much better authorities on these kinds of topics, many of which would entirely deny that sort of title too), and proceeds to attempt to gaslight and manipulate in order to attempt to get away from accountability.
Frankly I find his most recent behavior to be indicative to show that he hasn't had any semblance of wanting to change, and he's just waiting for the heat to die down, before coming back. He's likely not wanting to go down the path that Blair/Illuminaughti is currently going through.
Isn’t, like, the whole… core theme, for lack of a better term, of the queer community about the breadth and diversity of the human experience? No two people experience gender or sexuality or any number of other things the same way, that’s the whole point, right?
Wouldn’t a single, all-encompassing spokesman defeat that point entirely? Wouldn’t it lowkey go against most everything our community stands for?
The ego on this man, to think he or anyone could ever occupy such a position, to think such a position ever SHOULD be occupied. Good GOD, James.
I hope he keeps making more and more apology videos because this is gold.
I had a housemate once who treated all the rest of us like shit and anytime anyone would call him out he would complain that we were discriminating against him because of his mental health.
I’m like dude, we all have mental health issues so why is it okay for you to use it as an excuse when the rest of us manage to still treat each other reasonably well?
The thing that bothers me the most about James...
He had the privilege of a powerful platform--and squandered it.
But when given multiple opportunities to do so--he seems to be incapable of taking the obvious route--to directly atone for his actions and not try to make a pity party for himself. He put himself on such a false pedestal, that he's unable to be humble and let go of his ego.
i literally clicked on this to find out if anyone knew if he was okay or not cos i've not seen anyone mention since the last debacle so thank u for including the info and i'm glad that he's still around but dude seriously needs to go see help cos he's causing a lot more harm dangling his wellbeing in front of people who don't wish harm to him, only accountability and for him to realize the damage his actions have done to others. i know that's prolly like a huge weight on him to come to this realization but like. he ultimately brought it on himself by piling the lies up so high and he could've stopped it at anytime and had control over his reputation, finances, livelihood etc. it sucks but that's the consequences of the things he's done and he really needs to stay off, get himself help and situated and figure out a different game play for a career path bc this one is over for him.
same, i'd seen the original note and speculation after the fact, but nothing concrete either way. He complains about "death threats" every time someone offers mild criticism, he's such a baby.
It literally makes me seethe that he claims to be the voice of an entire group when he legitimately STOLE THE WORDS OF DEAD AUTHORS. He ERASED THEM. Writers who died horribly of AIDS or whose words werent monetized due to their niche topics. How fucking dare you, Somerton
"Now there's a huge accident on I-85."
As someone commuting from the suburbs to Atlanta for work, I feel this in my BONES
How was he able to do essays for college with a childhood brain injury then? 🙄 or even high school? Was he plagiarizing then?
His excuses dont add up bc he lies so much. And I’m disgusted with everything he’s done.
He genuinely needs to realize what he’s done wrong and take real accountability. Everyone I’ve seen talk about it didn’t even attack him personally, just his actions. Ugh. I really do hope he gets help bc I hate this.
I don’t know why but Somerton always looks like he’s on the verge of tears, which just really weirds me out
As someone with ADHD, Dyslexia with words and numbers and general reading comprehension problems, his reasons are bullshit
That Ursula comparison was spot on, actually! 😂😂
Ooh Daniel Profeta posted a new video, just in time for my 3:00 AM cleansing.
Get cleansed
The other thing about the Evil Queens video is, the author gave him permission but he also steals a whole other article in that video and he never got permission for that! The Mulan article that Hbomb was able to find. He just doesn't bring that up as if it didn't happen. Manipulative.
that's what got to me, like....my dude, Hbomb already debunked this lie. did Somerton not even watch his whole segment from the callout video?? it's baffling.
I trusted him. Sure he was aloof, but I thought that was part of being a film student.
Instead of roasting him, I want to recommend a Great channel. Matt Baume! He is a gay historian who loves, and connects with his audience. If the subject is something you're into, please give him a look see!
Thanks for the recommendation:)
OOOO i love Matt Baume!
I feel like the title "a measured response" is a joke, because despite him being such a well-researched essayist, Harris is absolutely unhinged through major portions of his videos.
Not much of a point, just wanted to say like most material he steals from, i doubt James understood this when he copied it lol
Yeah his response is anything but normal or 'measured' in literal sense of word, but almost all of his arguments were backed by research and facts. James on the other hand make a very plain / normal response that is in line with literal meaning of the world but most of his points are so unhinged.
As someone with ADD, I can confirm, I frequently plagiarize as a coping strategy. Its the only thing that works! /s
Like, how did he get through school without plagiarizing? If he has this memory problem? Surely he would have developed a habit/workaround for that due to the necessity? (I'm autistic and ADD, not diagnosed until college, but I had long since created ways to get stuff done because the alternative was... unacceptable to me.)
Most people don’t begin plagiarizing as adults. It’s actually why my 3rd grade teacher warned us not to cheat on tests, because eventually we would get caught or run out of people to copy off of, and by then we wouldn’t know how to do things ourselves.
A lot of kids write essays by slightly changing the wording from sources and just listing a few things in the bibliography. Not a huge deal for elementary school students, but typically those people who keep doing it in high school and college don’t go on to try to build a career as a writer
james is a business major.... #notallbusinessmajors but back in college, it wasn't uncommon to run across people who cheat their way to the top in that major.
@@celisewillis I have also heard that it is rampant in business degrees.
Oopsie doopsy, my ADHD and Autism made me commit numerous financial crimes!
i love the commentary style! and i would’ve never known about this had you not talked about it🤌🏼 good video
Hell yea, thanks for watching!!
That judge/courtroom gag was fucking primo
Made me laugh , quite ingenious 😂
This "apology" is about what you would expect from a serial liar and plagiarist who had already attempted an apology where he emotionally manipulated people with his suicide attempt and blamed his "best friend". The whole thing from start to finish was absolute dog shit, and just extremely painful to watch. Especially how when he talked about Telos he basically blames Hbomberguy for that not working out because apparently he was FINALLY going to start making all of the dozen or so movies he promised(for which he raised $60,000, so each movie would have, what, a $5000 budget??) when, oh no, the plagiarism video came out. Then he couldn't do it anymore. Like what a blatant fucking lie. You can tell this whole time he's been looking for a way to make SOMETHING Hbomberguy's fault. The way he talks about him also bothers me. He never addresses him directly, he always says "hbomberguy's team" and I'm not sure why but it just bugs the shit out of me. But the whole video, start to finish was just a god damn train wreck. The fact he says he's going to monetize the apology video, meaning he's essentially telling everyone he's going to profit off his shitty behavior, the fact that he's going to put videos back up(and monetize them!) so 'Nick can have a portfolio? What the fuck? Like even if that were true, Nick would never fucking point to that channel and associate himself with it by choice. "oh yeah there was this huge plagiarism controversy but these videos don't have any plagiarism in them. I mean, that's what I thought about the first videos but no these ones are clean, I promise". And then he tries to MAKE A COMEBACK????????? Like dude. Leave. I'm sorry, I know it must suck to be in the position you're in, and I'm not here to say you didn't actually attempt suicide, but you DON'T use that as an excuse to 'get back in the saddle'. He lost any goodwill he will ever have on this platform. It's bananas.
Edit - ok so I don't know why but every now and again in the shower or whatever I'd think about that thing where he would always use the term "hbomberguy's team" instead of "Harrison" "Harry" or just "hbomberguy" directly and I know this is such a stupid petty thing to dwell over but for whatever reason it just rubbed me the wrong way and I'm interested in the mindset behind lies and liars and I think, I THINK it was an attempt to use language to once more try to slide back in to "being a RUclipsr" and kind of side step being cancelled. I think from the perspective of someone who does not make RUclips videos, professionally or otherwise, we engage with the one person we see behind the camera. We know it's a team behind the video, there are credits (I mean, not in James' videos but) but from the perspective of an insider, you tend to look at it from that insider perspective, thinking about the whole of the team instead of just referring to the one person who was on film. I think James keeps using "hbomberguy's team" like that in an effort to still "talk the talk" and it's telling because he was doing it in his first video with the 40 minutes of crocodile tears. Or maybe it's not and it's just a habit or something. Either way I think I can finally stop thinking about it.
exactly. dan olsen made a great patreon video breaking down the plausibility of the film timelines, and how james spent like 15k on cameras lol
@@celisewillis 15k? Wait, hold on, did he do the Tommy Wiseau thing of *buying* the cameras instead of renting them as per industry standard?
@@crazyinsane500 Yes. And actually, Dan Olson pointed out that Somerton bought at least 2 cameras, and used the second best one merely as a prop. Cameras that were needlessly expensive, and for which the intended use would make no sense for Somerton to need. Dan obvs does a better job of explaining all this, and I'm pretty sure you can still google it and find his entire post about Somerton's mismanagement of his money. That one wasn't a Patreon exclusive.
from what I remember, the main guy who was REALLY pushing the HBomb is responsible for Somerton thing is another youtuber who FUCKING HATES HBomb. Like after the plagiarism video came out he made a video pretty much exclusively bitching that HBomb didn't come with a ready to go 100% effective solution to permanently destroy plagiarism forever more (slight hyperbole on my part) and how you can't make a video like that without one.
i'll never understand youtubers who make their whole personality hating like 3 people
@@celisewillisfrom what I seen, most of the time it's pretty much entirely politically motivated. They're on opposite ends of the political spectrum and the one hating sees that as reason enough to declare war.
I remember after the Plagiarism video went live, there was thread bouncing around the Internet Historian-favored subreddits putting out a cash bounty for 'evidence that HBomb is a pedo'. Not people who had those allegations looking for backup, mind you, just people really wanting that to be true because it would be 'good revenge'. I remember the threads being full of jilted righty fans flooding in, eager to learn about how Harris was about to get cancelled and then finding out there was no actual basis for it it was just 'what you accuse youtubers of when you're mad at them'.
I got 4 concussions before I turned 15 playing school sports two of those knocked me out for longer than 5 minutes each, a simple “head injury” isn’t a catch all for every single sin you commit. I don’t loose memory forget morals and make a fall guy because of my head injuries I just can draw anymore.
I wish I could remember where I saw this, but someone had screenshots of Hbomb's team confirming Sommerton had not yet reached out, and one of the plagiarized parties revealing a correspondence in which sommerton offered to compensate them with exposure. I wasn't surprised by this but it angers me every time I see clips from sommertons measured response now. Dude just needs to stop. The only thing he can do now is full length features on the artists he stole from.
This is the first video of yours I’ve ever seen, and I love it! You’re so funny yet concise, and it helps that you have a delivery similar to John Mulaney lolol
as someone who has a head injury that often makes writing and reading difficult, i’m pretty insulted by his “oh i can’t remember what i’ve written” excuse. like maybe he does but if there was a single chance that i would be plagiarizing someone’s work in my own writing ESPECIALLY if i was going to submit it on the internet, i would keep a detailed list of my sources and put things into quotes and such. like having this injury sucks and it makes things so much harder but there are ways to work around it that do not involve stealing the work of other creators??? or just. don’t be a video essayist at all if you have this problem???
great video as always :] perfect timing, came out just when i woke up!
Thanks for watching my friend, we are Legion
@@danielprofeta i once wrote it down on a piece of paper and tied it to a tree in the forest, it stayed there for a year and it was epic
Literally no one would have cared if he had just credited the people he stole from. Most of us don’t have the time to read or watch as much as we’d like to, and it’s fine to watch a YT video summarizing the topic. James just wanted everyone to think that he was the smartest boy who had all of these big ideas on his own.
No matter who the Taxes send, I'm not paying IRS.
We are Legion, thanks for watching!!