Hbomberguy- Plagiarism and You(Tube)

[El Pollo Guerrera]

Is this guy's goal to have the Dictionary.com definition of 'narcissism' replaced with his picture?

[The Dark Order Inferno]

May 11, 2024 0:39:57 GMT -5 El Pollo Guerrera said:

Is this guy's goal to have the Dictionary.com definition of 'narcissism' replaced with his picture?

No, he'll just have it replaced with a stolen picture of someone who looks kind of like him, with his name as a caption to keep up the theme he's going for.

[The Captain]

Mar 6, 2024 13:43:34 GMT -5 The Captain said:

It would be terrible if he committed suicide, but he also seems like the kind of person who'd fake his death for sympathy or to make other people look bad.

Boy did I call that. It's a sad commentary of how many internet scumbags I've had dealings with over the years, including someone who not only faked his death (though this was by a "tragic car accident" as opposed to fake suicide), but somehow roped other people into keeping up the pretense that he was dead.

[Final Countdown Jones]

May 10, 2024 17:26:24 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

He was using one of his alts to try to throw his writer under the bus some more because OF COURSE HE WAS.

Okay so this one is especially really beautiful and insane with some context but uh. This Todd in the Shadows post was made after Lady Emily exposed the first alt account he was defending himself on. Now, Todd and Lady Emily both run in the same online friend circle, I don't know how specifically close those two are, but it's not even speculation to think there's connective tissue between the two, there's explicitly established links on that front. So, Emily shows everyone that James is using sockpuppets to try and 'come back' and in particular is defending himself from criticism using these accounts. Then, someone who definitely shares a Discord group chat with Emily and made a video exposing and debunking a lot of James's fabrications, posts a new one he hadn't covered and just kind of vibe checks the room on the claim. James comes in on a new alt account and pops into Todd's replies to defend himself with the proof all over his old posts that it's just James again, thereby lighting up the interest of anyone looking, making it trviial for Emily to just get told "Hey yeah James is in my replies again". The dude had to defend himself so hard he burned another identity on impact. He's the master. He's unmatched. He's the best to ever do it.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

With Somerton, one should keep in mind dramamfarming wasn't a new thing, he posted videos before where he claimed it was all over and he'll have to stop being a youtuber to solicit donations which he spent on shiny new toys. He was called out publically for that too by respected content creators like Dan Olsen but didn't take the criticism on board, or change in any way.

[Gunhaver]

If you had told me when the video first dropped that Sommerton, of all the people featured, would be the one to keep digging himself into a deeper hole, I would not have believed you. How Internet Historian got through this unscathed is amazing.

[Confused Mark Wahlberg]

May 11, 2024 0:34:52 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

Oh man, I just saw this part where he argued, "Plagiarism is okay because it's old stuff people wouldn't see on their own anyway!" God this guy is just the worst.

[Final Countdown Jones]

May 11, 2024 9:51:14 GMT -5 Gunhaver said:

If you had told me when the video first dropped that Sommerton, of all the people featured, would be the one to keep digging himself into a deeper hole, I would not have believed you. How Internet Historian got through this unscathed is amazing.

I'm not surrpised he did for a few reasons, but honestly the main one is my theory that Youtuber careers only end when the controversy actually does damage to what people saw you as. Somerton postured himself as Youtube's gay male public intellectual, the 'only one talking about' things. He never was the only one and he built all of his intellectualism off of there peoples' words, but a lot of his fans believed his stuff to be authentic. When the video exposed Somerton as specifically hurting, disrespecting, and erasing (with the 'erasing' part in particular pretty masterfully underlined) the queer writers he was ripping off, it made an audience who actually cared about queer reads of popular media see him as a fraud who had taken advantage of them. Plagiarism exposed him as a charlatan to an audience who cared about plagiarism. Internet Historian makes the ha ha silly meme videos. A lot of his audience simply do not care. The image his fans have of him has nothing to do with originality or any sort of intellectual integrity. Him stealing from an article doesn't bother a lot of them. It's similar to how Logan Paul can shill scam cryptocurrency to his audience (and even run his own scams thatj ust take peoples' money) and it doesn't hurt his career in the eyes of a fanbase who don't watch him because he's an honest guy or has good financial advice, but The Completionist can run a charity for dementia research that it turned out hadn't yet given a decade of collected donation money to anyone (despite listing off organizations the money had already allgedly gone to in the past) and despite not stealing anything, his videos are now getting a fraction of the traffic they used to get. One is an unrepentant asshole whose image never wanted to be a good guy and so nobody holds him to any standard. The other built a reputation from his big fundraiser events raising money for dementia research after losing his mom to it, and finding out there was impropriety and that he lied to people in the process of running those charity events crushed him.

Now, if it turned out Internet Historian's in a relationship where his partner has sex with other people? Shambles. Man's audience would turn on him in a heartbeat.

[Lizuka #BLM]

Really I think the most telling thing about this particular leg of this whole controversy is that at least in previous cases, you could maybe give Somerton the benefit of the doubt that he was doing all of it as some kind of genuine delusion that he wasn't doing anything wrong and like his more manipulative behaviors weren't something he was necessarily cognizant of. But all of this stuff, especially the reply to Todd, are plainly demonstrating that no, the entire time there was no chance at all that any of it was an accident, dude is just a bad actor.

[Final Countdown Jones]

May 11, 2024 14:15:12 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

Really I think the most telling thing about this particular leg of this whole controversy is that at least in previous cases, you could maybe give Somerton the benefit of the doubt that he was doing all of it as some kind of genuine delusion that he wasn't doing anything wrong and like his more manipulative behaviors weren't something he was necessarily cognizant of. But all of this stuff, especially the reply to Todd, are plainly demonstrating that no, the entire time there was no chance at all that any of it was an accident, dude is just a bad actor.

If I had any doubt left, this is the one that really would have cinched it for me:


Faking his suicide was already an insane step, posting hole while a lot of people (including actual nazis who didn't care) tried to pin his 'tragic death' on the creators who exposed and criticized him or even just made a comment on things like hbomb, Todd, and Jessie Gender was another. But here, he's using his socks to actually try and keep pushing the idea he's dead and blaming people for it in a way that expresses that the fake death wasn't only about trying to duck responsibility for the movies he's never making or to start fresh on TikTok; he did that all specifically to hurt people and was trying to support that belief to sell the guilt. Genuinely sociopathic behavior from someone who only exists to cause harm.

[Gunhaver]

May 11, 2024 14:15:12 GMT -5 Lizuka #BLM said:

Really I think the most telling thing about this particular leg of this whole controversy is that at least in previous cases, you could maybe give Somerton the benefit of the doubt that he was doing all of it as some kind of genuine delusion that he wasn't doing anything wrong and like his more manipulative behaviors weren't something he was necessarily cognizant of. But all of this stuff, especially the reply to Todd, are plainly demonstrating that no, the entire time there was no chance at all that any of it was an accident, dude is just a bad actor.

I still feel... something for him (pity? sympathy?) because I've found myself called out for shit behavior before, and I know who easy it is to slide into defensive self0preservation, so I guess I feel bad that he doesn't recognize that owning his behavior is the first step to actually moving on. And while I don't regret erring on the side of caution during the suicide hoax (because again, I feel like it's always best to do that in such a situation), it's impossible to deny how deliberate the manipulation is, as you said.

I think there was a chance at coming back before, if he actually owned it and made amends. But now that his alt activity is public it really has to be over. Surely the people that could overlook the plagiarism won't give a pass for pinning your non-suicide on innocent people? 

I don't know anything about his co-writer and he shares in the guilt here. That said, Somerton continuing to throw him under the bus through alts really shows the manipulative nature you talked about. In one of the apology videos Somerton said he missed him, right? But here he is trying to feed him to the wolves like it would save his own skin.

I doubt the thread ends here, but this'll be my last post in it, I think. He doesn't make me mad so much as he makes me sad. Dude could learn. Dude refuses. The Wheel of Time turns, ending another age.