Popular gay YouTuber deletes online presence after video accuses him of rampant plagiarism
Popular gay YouTuber deletes online presence after video accuses him of rampant plagiarism
James Somerset was making $170,000 a year with nearly 6 million views and 267,000 subscribers on YouTube, until...
James Somerton was making $170,000 a year with nearly 6 million views and 267,000 subscribers on YouTube, until...
I mean the video didn't just "accuse" him, it showed actual evidence and a metric fuckton of it.
Legal terminology
hbomb also included a playlist of smaller queer creators that i've really enjoyed!
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRGz5EMig3r2ZDgeGzwUlSz-PzF-L1Xu1
There was another aspect to this video, which was that when Somerset actually did try to write some of the material himself, it was complete garbage.
For example, he completely plagiarized from a book about Disney, but then, he had to transition between one plagiarized book and a different plagiarized article, and in that transition, he presented some facts about Disney organizing gay events at their park, and it was all outright lies. Disney did not actually have any official LGBTQ events at their parks until far after that.
There was a different YouTube video that came out the next day, from this musician who listed all of the outright lies that he discovered while watching Somerset's channel.
I think the plagiarism displayed by Somerset is atrocious, but personally, I find lying and spreading misinformation to be even worse.
I think the Todd in the Shadows video was the nail in the coffin. He might’ve been able to slither back by saying he didn’t realize he was attributing incorrectly (like Internet Historian fans are screaming), but he can’t come back from outright lying the times he wasn’t plagiarizing.
Do you have a link to that different video? I only saw the hbomberguy one I think
I have no issue with the content provided, but I wanted to give a little constructive criticism on the structure of your writing. Real small. When you say,
There was another aspect to this video, which was that when Somerset actually...
When you say there is a thing, the reader is going to assume the next thing you write to be that thing. So you don't need the "which is that." You can just launch right into what you're going to say, you already set it up. You basically said "I have a thing to say. The thing I have to say is this:"
Everything else is informative and well presented. No other notes.
HAHAHA holy fucking shit the level of comeuppance is beautiful. Good riddance. His blatant misogyny and narcissism is disgusting, I hope he finds a cozy stone to crawl under.
Profiting from the cause, nice.
Be careful. Even if the cause is just, there is never going to be a shortage of shitbags willing to exploit it for their own gain.
Is him being gay even relevant to what happened, or are they just trying to make this about something it's not?
It's very relevant. One of the big points in the hbomberguy video is that James was known as a prominent voice in the LGBT community, and he blatantly plagiarized other LGBT creators that might have otherwise gained a larger following themselves
It's core to Hbomberguy's video, really. The guy tried to make himself the gay YouTuber by ripping off other queer content producers, and as a persecuted community that's had to deal with a forever of social erasure, that's a whole lot extra shitty.
I think it's a little relevant. He's a gay focused YouTuber, in that he talked about gay topics in media, supposedly championing gay voices, while at the same time silencing those same gay voices, stealing their content and claiming it as his own.
For wanting to help the gay community, he really did a lot to hurt the community and help himself. All he had to do is give credit to the people he quoted, but when confronted with accusations, he would claim he's being silenced as a gay creator rather than admit the truth, and his followers would attack the accusers on his behalf, thinking he's being genuine.
He wasn't quoting people though, he was straight up reading other people's work and claiming it as his own. Like whole paragraphs at a time just copy/pasted with a couple words swapped out. Even with proper citations you would be kicked out of college for plagiarizing if you submitted something like that.
What he did was beyond quoting.
His channel was about LGBT issues, so it's actually relevant. It's a reasonable concern and the source material is a four hour long breadtube thing bordering on self-parody, so I don't mind responding to this one.
It’s posted on lgbtqnation. I’m pretty sure that for their audience it’s incredibly fucking relevant.
Read the damn article 😐
Why? There are plenty of comments explaining it
It's more than relevant. It's pivotal to the whole ordeal.
Ita an article from a website called lgbtqnation so its not that surprising. Also the guy stole a lot from queer people and was a misogynist.
Yes, very relevant.
I guess him being gay isn't exactly important. The important thing is that the content that he stole was mostly about LGBTQ media studies. So "gayness" is relevant, but strictly speaking his gayness is not.
Edit: I would also note that if the headline writer was just adding "gay" to be incendiary, the writer could have said "Gay youtuber taken down by bi youtuber" but that would needlessly putting in the "bi" label. The "gay youtuber" is "writing" about gay stuff.
I highly doubt someone writing for LGBTQ Nation is adding “gay” to the headline to be incendiary.
Somerton, not Somerset.
Lgbtqnation really needs a new proofreader. I hear James Somerset is looking for... no, I mean... fuck
Still not comfortable about him sleeping on those piles of money.
Nope. He was making six figures a year off other people’s hard work.
Just like most wealthy people, his wealth was stolen not earned.
Good riddance
He finally deleted his YouTube channel. It was about time.
Why does the article start with "Bisexual British YouTube essayist"? What does his sexuality have to do with anything?
Somerton has a bit of a history of weaponizing his fans to attack anyone bringing up issues by painting them as homophobic and attacking a gay man. Hbomberguy made a point of bringing up his own bisexuality in his video before he even brought up Somerton as a way a kneecapping that before it could start.
Fantastic answer and a good question at that.
It's actually very important to this discussion. He ripped off a bunch of LGBT+ ppl while promoting himself as one.
Likely to highlight this wasn't a homophobic incident.
Todd in the shadows took him to the shadow realm.
Came for Todd, stayed for H since I hadn't heard of him. Dayum that was a hardcore tag team.
Yeah I'm glad he stepped out of music for a moment to slam dunk this.
I wonder if Somerton's writer has offered any kind of response yet. It was suggested he may have been left in the dark about all of this.
He made a statement, yes. https://www.ntherrgott.com/responseto
Honestly a great response. That question he asks himself, "how did I miss this?" really strikes me as genuine. I can't imagine working with someone professionally and being let down so hard. You don't want to have to doubt your colleagues or your friends.
Todd in the Shadows' video about the many obvious errors and lies in Somerton's videos includes a bit about the cowriter Nick at 55:49.
Der is d
D
Popular YouTuber deletes online presence after video accused him of rampant plagiarism.
There fixed your head line.
Him being gay is actually relevant because he was profiting off of queer authors' works without attribution while proporting to support their cause. His whole shtick was being gay and analyising media through a gay/lgbtq+ lens, thus this highlights the hypocrisy.
Also this is an lgbtq+ focused publication so such a classification isn't unusual.
Not only that, lying AND being misogynist at the same time.
Permanently Deleted
So are you implying that if he weren't gay he wouldn't be plagiarizing?
Here, let's flip the script. A magazine about crime writes an article with the following title: black man is sentenced to 20 years in prison for murder.
The fact that the man is black is not relevant to the fact that he committed murder. The word black was put in specifically to make it sound more controversial. You know so more people would click on it.
Or for something more benign an automotive publication writes an article entitled: red car crashes into a wall.
The fact that a car is red has nothing to do with it crashing into a wall.
Moreover, the fact that the publication is LGBTQ+ already is enough implication of the possible orientation of the subjects in the article and does not have to be emphasized in the title of the article. If it needs to be brought up it may be in the article proper.
And, on the other side of this you'll never see an article titled: straight person so and so. Which is a whole other issue in and of itself.
It's relevant to the article you virtue-signalling dumbass
The relevant conundrum in the title is the fact that this person committed plagiarism not the fact that he's gay that was added in as pandering clickbait.
Plagiarism doesn't give a crap about what one's orientation sex or gender is.
Moreover the engagement in the comment section specifically mentions this on more than one occasion as in I'm not the only one talking about the word gay in the title. So now instead of discussing the intellectual crime this particular person committed we're now discussing the title in and of itself which takes away from the article.
But I wouldn't expect a narrow
sitedsighted idiot such as yourself to understand the nuance of all this stuff.However I do commend you on using your word of the day, you even hyphenated it correctly!