EDIT 16/03/24: I'm re-listing this video for now, albeit with a more neutral title. I made the decision to take this down a couple weeks back as Somerton seemed to be entering a moment of personal crisis, and I didn't want to play any part, even a passive one, in fuelling the fire that was erupting online around that crisis. As I wrote in a reply under this video before that crisis began, I hope Somerton can achieve happy and healthy life outside of the UA-cam space, and I hope he's able to reach that state as soon as he can. It seems like that moment of crisis has passed, and the dust has settled for now. Sensitivity in difficult times is important, but that sensitivity should _accompany_ accountability and discussion, not replace it. And I do think that - 'rant' framing notwithstanding (hindsight is 20/20) - this video is a worthwhile contribution to the wider platform discussions Somerton's second apology prompted. ORIGINAL: I’ll uh just leave this here: www.patreon.com/pillarofgarbage (oh, and also - re 5:40. To clarify, I’m not at all trying to criticise Hbomberguy or his Plagiarism video more widely - he’s one of my favourite creators! - and I recognise here he’s talking about iilluminaughtii & content mills specifically, but I do feel now & I did feel back in December that the way Hbomb made this point - intentionally or otherwise - suggests far too sharp a distinction between _real, artistic_ videomaking and the commercial viewpoint most (semi)pro creators necessarily consider.)
Genuinely, that's why a lot of creators build channels on reaction/ commentary content, switching to more essays or deep dives as time passes, because they say that number of video and consistency of posting are more important than quality when it comes to building audience, or so I've noticed. That's why I was bothered by Hbombs point calling commentary channels content mills. It was only bad point in an othervise great videos.
Oh brother. If your video is on this situation with James, that digression you added about you was distracting. It has nothing to do with that man being a liar and a thief and a crybully who keeps trying to rise like a turtlenecked phoenix.
I get what you’re saying, but like you pointed out, James and all the UA-camrs HBomb talked about in that video are fairly big creators. I don’t think the “struggling artist” situation applies to them. Yes, keeping a schedule to appease the algorithm is hard, but that still doesn’t mean you can steal others’ works. YouTubing, like all gig economy jobs, is broken. Not everyone can do this full-time. Do what you need to do to make a living. If that means getting a day job on the side, then do it. If James can’t make videos, as he cries about in that Patreon promo video and tweet, then that’s just the way it is.
It's funny: Vaush pointed out that if he had just said "Look, my mom died and I stopped giving a shit," that would've been more understandable. Not excusable of course, but it could've at least come off as sincere. But because he kept layering it on and on instead, it just seems like he's lying and making up excuses and none of them feel genuine.
As a person with a traumatic head injury from age 2, I can confirm that, for me at least, does not interfere with plagiarism. In fact, because I’m paranoid about plagiarism, I make sure everyone is credited. Sort of like Jimmy Winterfield.
It's possible that even he, craven as he is, understands that the right wing would only "accept" him as an ally of necessity and would gleefully turn on him the second it is convenient to do so, since they want to exterminate the entire class of people he belongs to.
Considering the "Nazis were gay and sexy" shit and how he apparently called himself a "proto-socialist" (a common dogwhistle for nazism) in the past, I'm still kind of surprised it hasn't happened earlier.
The way I became "older hispanic mother yelling at her telanovella" levels of angry when James said he wanted to do 'documentaries with just the facts' after Todd in the Shadows spent OVER AN HOUR detailing how WILDLY INCORRECT his 'facts' were previously.
I don't trust James to get facts right because he can't tell the difference between facts, his own opinions, and shit he just made up. Okay guys I stopped plagiarizing, now here's my totally 100% original fact based documentary on how the Gay Rights movement in the 90's sucked because all the cool gays died.
He made 2 long apology videos and still "forgot" to apologize for saying that all the good talented gays died from aids and only the boring ones survived, that marriage equality was actually about rich white gays wanting fancy weddings, that most of the ss was gay, that fitness culture comes from americans copying the n@zis, that Disney had a pride event for decades before they actually did, for missgendering Rebecca Sugar and ND Stevenson, for constantly calling openly bi people heterosexual or homosexual, for so so so much misogyny (play close attention and you will notice that most of the time he uses the term "straight women" not "cishet white women". He is not complaining about women in positions of relative social advantages he just finds women that are attracted to men icky, and can't convince me he wasn't also including trans men and afab nonbinary people that are attracted to men in that category, specially with the "fetishizing gay men" bit, that is real close to the anti-trans "invading gay and lesbian spaces" and "fetishizing womanhood/menhood" argument) and that's just what I remembered from the top of my head. The plagiarism sucks but that's far from the only thing he did, and unlike stealing from other writers, there is no financial incentive for any of those things. I mean if you're a conservative pundit there is, but James was trying to present himself as a progressive, that's not him being pressured by the algorithm/his audience that's simply him being a shity person.
@@mhawang8204 You know what, and I'm not defending him here, seeing how he doubled tripled and quadruppled down I don't think he can stop comiting to the bit, because he is pathologicaly unable to change and he is just not smart enough to realize there is a more lucrative grift out there.
The plagiarism is seen as the big one bcuz it also contributed to queer erasure of all those ppl he was targetin all along... His misgenderin ppl and his refusal to see trans ppl as the ppl they are; that was itself only one small slice of the many ways he participated in queer erasure, perpetuatin harm to a community that he is a part of even Every bit of these actions feed off of each other and make the harm all that much worse; his efforts towards queer erasure thru plagiarism are alrdy bad enuf, but they become far worse when taken into consideration alongside all the ways he seemed to be targetin the queer community. Those who arent assimilationists and who arent cis gays whove "picked a side". The intersectionally marginalised queers; these are the ones he hurt the most with his efforts towards queer erasure, all out of some egoistic desire to be seen as the voice of the gays (when rly thats Matt Baume /jk ofc, there is no singular voice of the gays; and thats the best way)
I feel like him saying cishet white women would come off even worse than him saying straight women lol. Idk why but it seems like he’d throw that term around like a playground insult
@@tymondabrowski12 I do love how that works, like for Elon. He got accused of trying to get an employee to sleep with him for a horse. Then he literally just came out as a Republican and said the Democrats are going to attack him after years of him fake fence sitting. His plan actually worked and the GOP was throwing praise at his feet.
The thing that James seems committed to not understanding is that no one trusts him anymore. If really, REALLY wants to come back, he needs to stop making excuses and trying to make himself seem like a victim and actually acknowledge that what he did was wrong and that he did it on purpose. He needs to grow a spine and at least have the courage to admit to what HE (not Nick, not his ADHD, not his memory issues, not his father's illiteracy or his mother's health issues or the financial strain he was under) has done. Until he does that, his career is dead in the water.
I really loved how he said his therapist suggested his ADHD might've been a factor but he's hesitant to say that. Like... why even put it in the video then? You're not slick, James
There is no way he can come back as a video essayist, ever. If he wants to keep making videos, he has to start actually making the fictional movies from his scam kickstarter instead of youtube stuff.
Exactly. I also think that to really do that, he needs to get therapy and stick with it, and three months worth just doesn't cut that kind of reset. He needs years to address his personal demons, whatever those may be.
From receipts, Nick isn't completely innocent either, though he's clean of the plagiarism. Todd in the Shadows showed that he doesn't like to do any research or fact checking. Nick is blaming James, but not claiming the problems he created as part of it, and James is shadily blaming Nick by posting Nick's videos. But honestly neither of them are good. The hot takes filled with misinformation v. plagiarism.
My thesis advisor in undergrad had dyslexia, a rather serious case. Knowing that he did, he subscribed to a customized software program that helped make text on his computer more readable (seriously, he met a random guy at a conference once who wrote the program, and he still sends the guy an annual fee haha). Because, you know, he's a serious academic who believes in doing his job properly. James, you can look him up! Bob Brigham is his name, he's a highly respected history scholar, he's got lots of good advice.
I spent a year and a half doing a video essay all about the She-Ra reboot that ended up being four hours long and it hasn't been graced by the algorithm and not even at 10k seven months later. I'd never plagiarize as an alternative for getting more clicks.
@TheNerdWithASuit after seeing this comment I checked up your vid and I'll try and give it a watch later. I've been rewatching She-Ra so that sounds fun
If you make more content, YT tends to push those videos more. Unless it’s something like dark iceberg videos (I saw a new channel blow up after making 2 of those), media analysis takes a while to cultivate an audience since YT only likes to push videos belonging to channels with lots of content I’ll check it out tho! I’m not the biggest fan of She Ra, but I do enjoy video essays that’ll help me appreciate things more
4 hours is too long. 1 hour episodes, split in four would've been better for the algorithm This year is the 4 year anniversary of that show (I love it) so it can help For next time
Very generous of you to believe his memory loss story, which basically amounts to "I have a medical condition which makes me steal other people's work and claim it as my own"
As a progressive, that's why people don't take the left seriously, because too many of left-wing folks leave space to believe things from bad actors. Ridiculous.
He also contradicts it later in the video by giving a complete different reason why he did it completely unrelated to memory loss in the dead mom thing.
Then later he says he went back and removed all the parts of his videos that had plagiarized stuff... How did you know? How did you know that was the plagiarized stuff? You couldn't even remember at the time, let alone months or years later... Right?
I just want to tell someone because I don't know who else to tell and if I tell nobody I'll scream, but one of my favorite comic writers, Al Ewing (he wrote Immortal Hulk and Empyre and a bunch of other great stuff) has almost certainly seen the Hbomberguy video. In his newsletter today, he said "the last thing I want is for the reader to fall through a hole in my story like a caving mishap in a plagiarized UA-cam video" and I just need somebody other than me to know this because I'm almost certain there are probably like 10 people in the world who have read Ewings newsletter and also seen the Hbomb video. This just seemed like a relevant place because it's a youtube channel that talks about marvel and this video is about hbomberguy please just somebody other than me needs to appreciate that one of the greatest humans ever to write comics is also an hbomberguy viewer
i think the worst thing about the apology 2.0 was that it just felt like an ad for telos and his new patreon. just completely ghoulish to talk about how he's gonna make even more videos for money when he's ostensibly apologising for the harm he caused.
what's funny to me is, after all that talk about memory issues, he has the gall to talk about all his film projects and how those were tanked because he was caught out. Like, if the issues are so severe that it affected his UA-cam work, how in hell can he manage any kind of film project? absolutely ridiculous and painfully shameless.
I just don't understand how he can have memory issues but remember the exact times he lived and moved places. I can't even remember those details that well. Plus he blamed everyone but himself for Telos failing. Mostly Nick, which is insane he's still doing that
"My next film is about a futuristic amusement park where dinosaurs are brought to life through advanced cloning techniques! I call it, 'Billy and the Cloneasaurus!'"
I was one of Somerton's patrons. I learned a lot of interesting things from the videos and wanted to see him reach certain Patreon goals (back when Patreon had that feature). The revelations about Somerton's malpractice made me feel like crap for giving monetary support. Now, he has the audacity to continue downplaying the harm he has down. I said before that he is a real life version of Mammon from Helluva Boss, and I still stand by that statement. Especially after this second "apology".
The problem is even if I take James memory loss explanation at face value he's still plagiarizing. Copy pasting someones work and making slight alterations without any meaningful addition is still plagarising.
Yeah, professional documentaries and books bring something new to the table and license stuff they are using a large portion of. Just doing the bare minimum now doesn’t mean his future “documentaries” need to exist if they are just cobbled of other people’s ideas
It's especially ridiculous bc if you KNOW that you have memory issues, why would you EVER copy-paste someone else's work into your own script document without a method to differentiate which part is your original content? If you know you can't remember what you wrote or what you got from someone else, why are those two things EVER in the same document without specific notations?
And it's not something you do by accident. Copy pasting entire paragraphs and leaving them unedited could happen, but then he'd be found out immediately as soon as someone does a Google search on it - switching out words and rearranging sentences just enough to make it not pop as plagiarism at a casual glance, that takes conscious effort. I know this from experience, because I tried doing that in high school French class (which I failed miserably). You have to really think about how to edit the paragraph to make it look like your own, search for synonyms to replace certain words and arrange it in a way that not only preserves the original meaning, but also sounds like a phrase an actual real human would say. It's more work than you'd think - and not something you just "accidentally" do because you forgot.
Net worth is not public information, these sites do not have the means to even estimate it. The numbers are entirely made up, and most do not ever use a number below $1 million. You could be flat broke, but if your name is public enough for the site maintainer to have heard of you, they’ll put $1 million.
As a neurodivergent person my mind is all over the place, and I pull inspiration form all kind of sources, but it never occurred to me to copy and paste any text as placeholder into my work. I do it the exact opposite way around, I write down the author and the name of the work, and what then go directly to my thoughts, the element that I want to add to the conversation, the aspect that makes it transformative. Since with a brain that is causing issues, I have to keep track of what I want to contribute to any topic and cannot rely just on having the content others made before me.
Dang it breaks my heart to see that Derry Girls video sitting only at 10k. That's one of my favorite videos on Derry Girls from anywhere on the internet.
Here's my issue about James and the money thing - he DID have a patreon safety net. He also would cry poverty at them frequently, then run off and buy absurdly expensive cameras. James is a manipulator, pure and simple. He's lying about needing that money. He was as big a creator as Todd. He made his own choices.
I struggle with memory issues, that being a bit of a selective memory and general forgetfulness but like, I dont pass the buck i just go ‘my b, I’ll try to do better next time’ instead of pitching a bitch fit like James
also have memory issues + adhd so was *really* frustrated with james trying to use those as get out of jail free cards & *so* glad it was called out here!
I also have memory issues due to a car accident. I learned pretty quick to NOT trust myself when it comes to remembering stuff, and soon made a habit out of writing everything important down, appointments, deadlines, private things I just wanted to be sure to remember - while working on a novel (unpublished still) I even made a point of color coding EVERYTHING so I knew what belonged where and what paragraphs involved what content and what paragraphs are still incomplete. Because I know I forget things and take appropriate precautions.
The one bit that did stick out from Hbombs video is that he didn't think that money alone would be a plausible reason for someone to do what James did but like no people will do anything for money. It sucks being poor and getting rich makes a lot of people want to get richer.
How does money explain James erasin trans ppl by misgenderin them? How does money explain James' bigoted statements about asexuals? How does money explain James' erasure of bi ppl by labelin them straight or gay based on the relationship theyre in? Theres so many things that James said which suggest a lot more than just money at play; which seem to show he actively wanted to erase the works of other queers, and erase the identities of other queers; that he wanted to participate in queer erasure Why? Idek, but that cant all be explained away as he was just in it for the money
@@HappyGingerWolf Dan Olson said he (James, not Dan) doesn't want to make films, he wants to be a filmmaker. And that really has the ring of truth to it
I think there's reasons to be skeptical of his memory loss claim because he did go through the work he plagiarized and changed words and dates, so he definitely did try to obfuscate what he's doing. We also know he did take other people's video files, download them, edit them into his videos, provably lie about the source (because the original source was visible in his project file), and still not credit the people. He also did lie about why the original authors were angry at him and sent his fans to harass the people who caught him plagiarizing. He also refused to comply with the authors who told him he was stealing their material.
Or his ADHD claim, my sister has ADHD and yeah she has memory issues...as in she'll forget appointments or meal times or what time her work shifts will start. She deals with this by setting reminders on her phone, so she has an organised life despite her difficulty focusing...if Somerton were aware of his apparent memory issues why did he never have coping mechanisms for it and just accused people of attacking him instead of saying 'my bad'?
Really appreciate you touching on the differences between small UA-camr experience vs big Patreon experience. Of course none of that applied to James by the end but it’s an important conversation to have!!
I don’t even do UA-cam as a career and even I feel that pressure you talk about, to be making videos consistently lest I never have another semi-successful one ever again. To see James try to tap into that insecurity on the back of other people’s work truly is infuriating.
I have a neurological condition that fucks up my memory and cognition sometimes, I have late diagnosed ADHD (another thing he alluded to causing plagiarism) and I have always found it almost insurmountably difficult to finish anything, to actually get the work out of me and done, the fact that the memory loss is being presented in conjunction with the sheer speed of production is very confusing to me. My disabilities ... disable me. It feels like he so fully does not want to publicly consider that greed may very well be a cause of his theft of others work.
As someone with ADHD I used to feel self conscious about his channel seeing how many videos he was outputting which I thought were well researched videos. Meanwhile I haven't ever finished a proper project and hell I was feeling bad for failing to sit through even one of his videos without zoning out (god he is so boring and I thought it was my fault), I didn't watch that many, just a few that I put in the background which probably explains why I didn't catch on the more outrageous stuff, but yeah, I can't believe this channel was making me feel awful about myself and now he has the gall to use ADHD as a justification for taking advantage of his community.
Really appreciate this video! I completely relate to that financial pressure with youtube. For myself, I atarted off with a video miraculously doing stupidly well in my early days, and then I went on making whatever I felt passionate about,. not realising how temporary that early success was, and causing my channel to nose dive.Since then, I've had to learn to be more pragmatic about videos topics. I often have to cut down everything I want to discuss because I simply won't get enough time to edit the video if it gets too long. I have to work in a total frenzy with a lack of sleep, and I just wish for enough security to be able to put more time and research into my videos but, realistically, I can't afford to unless another video does miraculously well. None if that is complaining, it's the pitfalls of a job I love and am passionate about, but it's super frustrating to see someone rich using my constant weekly struggle as an excuse for stealing work from other people who no doubt know that struggle. It's so bizarre
I’m really glad you brought up the harsh UA-cam algorithm and was able to look at aspects of James’ apology and see that yes, a person may want to cut corners to get more videos out, and then you go into how this needs to be a personal sacrifice and not something that hurts other people. The hate bandwagon on James Somerton’s channel exists for a reason but you gave the benefit of the doubt and then explained why James’ apology didn’t work, in good faith. Big events like this online often mean that in people’s excitement to hate on something in a group they can miss out on details that are really important to the discussion.
Yup. Please leave the site and never come back, James. You are not trusted, and you are not wanted. Hope you saved up your ill gotten gains, because no self respecting person will ever give you a PENNY for the crap you pulled again!
James complaining about finances wasn't just an excuse for him stealing stuff - it's also his excuse for why he can't give any of the money he made off theft to the people he stole from, and is instead monetizing his apology and starting a new Patreon with vague promises of giving that money to the people he wronged.
FWIW I can totally believe that someone would goonscroll and doomscroll in the same day--we seek out intense distractions when we're spiraling--but, you know. God, what a trash fire.
Here's the thing: when you say "I feel bad for calling BS on the memory excuse", that's the point. James is appealing to empathy because he knows how to exploit it. He doesn't have an excuse that holds up to scrutiny, so he goes for one where "well if you doubt me, YOU look bad", because he wants people to give him the benefit of the doubt when he absolutely doesn't deserve it. "It's not my fault I was bad" is the go-to emotional abuser trick. That and a fake suicide threat, yknow, which James also did in his LAST apology video. I don't feel guilty calling BS on this. It's far too convenient and he would've mentioned it sooner if it was legit. Like in his previous apology video.
7:29: I love it when people show their UA-cam home pages, it is such an interesting insight into their viewing habits. You and I have a lot of shared space in this Venn Diagram, sir. Okay, back to the rant. For the record, I think your videos are really well done and I always enjoy watching them. I don't necessarily watch ALL of them because, for example, I haven't seen Derry Girls, but I have no reason to believe they're any less excellent.
Queer AuDHD-haver here. Weak memory is a symptom of all of my mental issues (including but not limited to ADHD, Depression, and autism) and I've never copy-pasted DOZENS OF FULL PAGES OF CONTENT from other people into a video essay and passed it off as my own "infinite wisdom." funny that. (I have also endured a couple of concussions that made memory issues a little worse and yet I still haven't Committed Queer Erasure 🤔) interesting how that works. Almost like he's been lying this whole time. Also this is a bit less relevant but I'm personally infuriated by him using his late mother as an excuse for shit. When the hbomb video came out I was at my grandmother's house, with my mom, helping sort through her belongings. Because she'd passed less than a month prior. So like, even though it's not at all the case, there's a bit of a degree of feeling PERSONALLY attacked by his excuses, even though I know he doesn't even know I exist.
The biggest thing that'll probably keep James from coming back and being a big UA-camr again probably isn't going to be moral outrage at his plagiarism, but the reveal that he is really just doesn't make anything. Celebrities and influencers have survived news coming out that they're terrible people. But UA-cam is one of the most competitive careers in the world and James Really doesn't seem to have the talent to be good without plagarising.
What I'm about to say is probably generalising but I leave notes to remind myself to add sources and fact check bits of information in my essays and I don't have a memory disorder so I assumed this was a common and intuitive thing to do
Also, when you paste in stuff from another source, it rarely comes in using the same font and size or even color so not being able to remember that you pasted it vs. wrote it is pretty much BS.
Yeah, it must be difficult to avoid plagiarism when you got long term memory issues. If only he had hired someone to help him like co-writer or something….
“Working in an exploitative system does not give you license to exploit others” That’s such a good line, I bet James will steal it and call it his own.
Frankly, I'm sick of hearing about Somerton and his endless excuses. For what it's worth I hope he's doing well, and that he eventually learns something from this mess.
You're 100% right about Hbomb's blind spot about financial pressure. His plagiarism video was great but there was at points a surprisingly old-fashioned perspective on the realities of content creation as a job. I remember seeing this attitude a lot back when UA-camr became a viable career, people actually trying to earn money would be derided as greedy e-beggars who don't want to get a real job and don't care about making quality content. Not saying that that's what Hbomb said or meant, I guess I just mean that not every creator's first and only consideration is "the joy of making something" because they have to, you know, eat. It's easy to forget that when you have a stable monthly income from Patreon.
It should be more how james should be transparent, its fine to beg for money just, be honest and transparent, ok. Well he didnt and thats why he cant be trusted, even if thats true.
Well, the finicky algorithm sucks, but then it means maybe UA-cam isn’t a viable job anymore, especially with the advent of AI-generated content. I believe the majority of content creators can’t make a living by doing this full-time. Heck, James himself cried about stopping making videos when he got “low Patreon income shock.” Getting a real job is not UA-cam boomer talk, it’s just an unfortunate reality.
Hey, this is a really great response. I am glad you put into words that no one is “entitled” to make a living doing UA-cam. All while explaining how hard you work to make your videos. Very focused, while also taking time to say things that haven’t been brought up in the conversation before. Excited to see more from you!
5:22 I like that you table the discussion about the creator economy from the pov of smaller creators - it is valid. Though I think Todd and hbomb are not as far removed from that as you think from the way they talk about it, ayou make good points. But don't forget: JS stole from exactly those small creators. This is a choice you get to make.
2:48 even if the cause of all this was "memory issues", the responsible thing to do is apologise profusely and step away from content creation until able to produce content completely transparently and with full attribution
You definitely bring up a good point about the drive to be a content mill. I hasn't thought of that. It's just one more way JS is trying to manipulate everyone.
I really enjoyed when James made a Freudian slip where he referenced Telos in the past tense, then paused noticeably before adding "and still is" to the sentence. We've got our eye on you, Jimmy Winterville...
Fun fact, the father of one of the people i knew at university was an extra in that group of storm Troopers where he hit head on the door (but not door guy)
Here’s why i can’t possibly believe the memory issues excuse: even copying and pasting someone else require some level of work and time investment, you need to search and read to find what you want, and you need to understand what you read in order to properly stitch together different texts in a way that they make sense. He put this work in it, you don’t do this because you “forgot” you do it very very intentionally. Second, im a video and sound editor, his videos are very high quality in image and sound, this level of quality can’t be achieved just trowing the footage on the software and calling it a day. They went back and forth multiple times listening and re-listening those copied words. He was constantly reminded of what was written. Third, i have a strong above moderate Adhd (on the Atention deficit side) and i do have severe memory issues, there’s no shortage of mechanisms to deal with it. Taking notes is the simplest and most effective. Ever heard of post-it James? Calendars? Agenda? Notepad? Nah, this dude have only one psychological condition: mythomania
James clearly is dealing with personality issues that prevent him from taking accountability. the way he attempts to weasel himself out of this situation by making excuse, garnering pity, and lying, highlights that very clearly. we actually cannot reasonably trust him on any of his claims, even the most serious ones. He also doesn't touch on any of his bad behavior, especially creating fictional death threats (or centering the conversation on those death threats) every time someone calls him out, and his biases against women and other queer identities. also he won't stop sharing the blame with Nick, I'm shocked he doesn't have anyone in his life with a bullshit detector to proof watch these apology videos.
I was annoyed at your video earlier on for bringing up the "financial pressures" argument, as if that justified James' wrongdoing, but then you nailed it later on by explaining how those pressures aren't exclusive to him and don't justify what he did.
The part that angered me the most was the way he apologized to Jessie Gender. He didn't message her to apologize in private, he did it on camera so everyone could see what a good boy he is. It's so manipulative. She wasn't even part of the thing everyone is mad at James for, and he didn't apologize to any other specific people, including the ones he actually plagiarized. He apologized to them as a group but singled Jessie out over some nonsense allegation he made against her that nobody ever believed anyway. Jessie made a really great response video and I recommend everyone go watch it.
Anatoliy Burgorsky literally stuck his head in a particle accelerator by accident and lived with brain damage for years afterwards and he didn’t plagiarize lol
If I had a nickle for every time a white creator blamed their lying on being neurodivergent, I would have two nickles. *Which isn't a lot, but it's strange how it happened twice.*
The memory issues bugged me cause I myself have memory issues, as a result I take lots of notes and look things back up if I am unsure if I am remembering wrong. I had to do a bunch more studying in college as I couldn't just memorize things like other students, worked through the school to be able to use notes and get extra time on tests. I can't trust my memory on things sometimes and I look things up so I don't spread misinformation on accident. It runs in my family too, mom makes spreadsheets of people she works with, those who work with the company she is at, and things about them. Notes like: has 2 kids in college, good to work with, awful to work with, if we work with them make sure to double check their numbers for X before turning in work. All the things those with good memories would just remember, she writes down, and quickly checks before going to an event. So this "memory" excuse sucks. Those I know with memory issues find workarounds, take notes, mark things up to go back to. You get over yourself and deal with it. You figure out how to work with what you got, not just use it as an excuse and never put effort into avoiding it from happening again.
this isn’t really related to your video - which was of course great, as per usual - but, as someone who’s been mostly avoiding this topic… oh my god, Somerton’s starting a new Patreon? really? let’s put aside the question of “why would anyone ever trust him again”; why would anyone ACTIVELY GIVE HIM MONEY ever again? hell, why hasn’t Patreon kicked him off for good already? I’d hope that plagiarizing so many times (and getting called out for it to an extremely wide audience) goes against their community guidelines or something. at the very least Somerton’s apology tour doesn’t seem to be working, which is good. but like… “only 11 members” is still 11 too many for that guy.
I really hate how James shot this apology video too. The background is all blurred out, soft focus, the lighting, the way he doesn’t really look into the camera at us but kinda just beyond the camera, the soft voice Like you’re doing an apology video for how you lied and tricked your audience , drop the artistry and talk to us like a human being.
James Somerton has shown himself to be a compulsive liar who seems to only feel remorse because his plagiarism was exposed. Somerton was aware that he was stealing other people’s work when he copied whole paragraphs of someone else’s work and changed individual words.
The pressure for consistent content is very much something HBomberguy just isnt attatched to anymore. Though i think Todd - I do feel like at least in Todd's case he is speaking directly to James specifically when he says "No you dont". But idk the guy. Folding Ideas has released a patreon video discussing the apology video and its so fucking cold. Absolutely filled with disdain for James. Also fucking wild he called the video A Measured Response
I also want to add, he still has not put out a list with all the victims of this malpractice. And he let's Hbomberguy deal with financially compensating them
admittedly I haven't written so many video essay scripts. But I have written my fair share of essays and grad level research papers for university. Never in my time (including those times when I had procrastinated and then needed to smash out the essay in a weekend) have I thought to, or heard of, copypasting whole paragraphs from other places into my essay for a first draft. It's such a horrible practice and especially if you know that you might have memory issues you're really just setting yourself up for failure. I don't think any of us are buying that it was an accident.
I don't wanna turn you into a channel of negativity, but if you ever have another off-the-cuff rant or critique, go for it. This felt really refreshing and even kinda inspiring
The thing that pisses me of is I am a PhD student, and I recently developed a condition that causes memory loss and brain fog. When I noticed my work was starting to feel like I was just paraphrasing other people, I did what anyone should do, I took a break and paused my studies. Will it affect me financially? 100%. But it’s the right thing to do, and so I stopped. James was in a place where he had the financial comfort to take a break and slow down production, and he chose to carry on anyway. You can’t blame an illness on something that is easily preventable.
If you had memory issues and you knew you had memory issues. Surely when copying things over to reword, you'd highlight it or have it in a different colour. I don't have memory issues and I do that. Maybe he forget which colour was which.
I write academic papers and I'm quite forgetful (nothing diagnosed, my brain just doesn't like to keep information unless I make an active effort to remember it). I very quickly learnt that whenever I find a paper I might need to reference in the future, I need to keep some reminder, or I will inevitably waste an hour trying to find it again. It's particularly easy if I'm already writing the paper, as I can just put the citation where it needs to go and forget about it. I just don't believe that anyone who knows they have diagnosed memory issues wouldn't realize the same. And it doesn't matter if he intended to change what the text said, that's still paraphrasing and needs to be cited. If he intented to make it different enough that it could count as his own writing, having copied the text would make the process harder, as it's very difficult to say something in your own words when you have a text that's talking about the same thing right in front of you.
I wonder if James is feeling like each attempt at a comeback is just another shovel to dig himself deeper into the hole. This should have been a wakeuo call, but it seems he's just going to attempt more desperate apologies waiting for one that sticks
I think another thing James is forgetting is that everything people liked about his videos was plagiarized. If he wantes to come back, what would he even have to offer.
i have memory issues as well (adhd or traumatic) and i'd call bs on the "i forgot" part. i'm not goiong to say james doesn't suffer from them, i mean in more in the "my memory issues are the reason why" sense. sometimes i witness information that sticks in my head and i have trouble recalling where exactly have i seen it. i tend to not share this though because i know i can't source it. i know this is like a personal stance thing but doesn't that also make it kinda worse?
The memory issues is not what made him plagiarize other people. That's as he described so well: a bullshit excuse. Note how he also blames winter, Ottawa, his dead mum and illitterade dad for him scamming and plagiarizing. I really wonder why he would talk about his parents like that. I also heavily question if someone in Canada really would ever need to start working before finishing school like he claimed his dad did. Canada is a civilized country so I'm assuming his dad is just fine but a bit pissed off by how he is portrayed on the interwebz by his liar narcissist of a son.
This popped up after I finished a Schaffrillas video and was really confused what it could be about. Makes a lot more sense to see we’re talking about a different James haha.
Got recommended this and it’s the first vid I’m seeing of yours. I’m sure you’d rather I see some of your other content; but I’ll be checking that out so no worries. I think you got solid takes here and I’m glad you pointed out the BS in the way you did.
6:25 I know it's not the point but I'm always super interested about which videos my favorite content creators are most proud of, and even would like updates after significant amounts of time if things have changed. Though, I understand that for anyone who's not into that stuff or just isn't a fan yet would see putting that info out as self centered so I get why I really only see it brought up in context like this where it's actually relevant to a different topic.
Love how James said he did UA-cam because it was a job "he could do". My brother in christ, you categorically could not do the job if you had to plagiarize this much to accomplish anything.
This one hurt! And the "rant" felt cathartic, thx Speaking of Grifters Leverage Redemption is fab and even wo... que... wokweerier than it's predecessor;o) Semi hidden gem, gotta promote
EDIT 16/03/24: I'm re-listing this video for now, albeit with a more neutral title. I made the decision to take this down a couple weeks back as Somerton seemed to be entering a moment of personal crisis, and I didn't want to play any part, even a passive one, in fuelling the fire that was erupting online around that crisis. As I wrote in a reply under this video before that crisis began, I hope Somerton can achieve happy and healthy life outside of the UA-cam space, and I hope he's able to reach that state as soon as he can.
It seems like that moment of crisis has passed, and the dust has settled for now. Sensitivity in difficult times is important, but that sensitivity should _accompany_ accountability and discussion, not replace it. And I do think that - 'rant' framing notwithstanding (hindsight is 20/20) - this video is a worthwhile contribution to the wider platform discussions Somerton's second apology prompted.
ORIGINAL:
I’ll uh just leave this here: www.patreon.com/pillarofgarbage
(oh, and also - re 5:40. To clarify, I’m not at all trying to criticise Hbomberguy or his Plagiarism video more widely - he’s one of my favourite creators! - and I recognise here he’s talking about iilluminaughtii & content mills specifically, but I do feel now & I did feel back in December that the way Hbomb made this point - intentionally or otherwise - suggests far too sharp a distinction between _real, artistic_ videomaking and the commercial viewpoint most (semi)pro creators necessarily consider.)
Genuinely, that's why a lot of creators build channels on reaction/ commentary content, switching to more essays or deep dives as time passes, because they say that number of video and consistency of posting are more important than quality when it comes to building audience, or so I've noticed. That's why I was bothered by Hbombs point calling commentary channels content mills. It was only bad point in an othervise great videos.
Oh brother. If your video is on this situation with James, that digression you added about you was distracting. It has nothing to do with that man being a liar and a thief and a crybully who keeps trying to rise like a turtlenecked phoenix.
Your point was clear, mate. Good video, as always!
@@LadyAstarionAncunin Read the title of this video. This video is specifically about why PoG is annoyed. What did you expect?
I get what you’re saying, but like you pointed out, James and all the UA-camrs HBomb talked about in that video are fairly big creators. I don’t think the “struggling artist” situation applies to them. Yes, keeping a schedule to appease the algorithm is hard, but that still doesn’t mean you can steal others’ works.
YouTubing, like all gig economy jobs, is broken. Not everyone can do this full-time. Do what you need to do to make a living. If that means getting a day job on the side, then do it. If James can’t make videos, as he cries about in that Patreon promo video and tweet, then that’s just the way it is.
Please tell me James didnt literally try to defend plagirism by saying "I forgor on a traumatic level"
nono nooo ofc not.he had a head injury in childhood and his mom died so that's why he cheat and steals
The video was just an hour and a half of every excuse he could dream up of why he didn’t steal the cookies
And his ded mom
It's funny: Vaush pointed out that if he had just said "Look, my mom died and I stopped giving a shit," that would've been more understandable. Not excusable of course, but it could've at least come off as sincere. But because he kept layering it on and on instead, it just seems like he's lying and making up excuses and none of them feel genuine.
As a person with a traumatic head injury from age 2, I can confirm that, for me at least, does not interfere with plagiarism. In fact, because I’m paranoid about plagiarism, I make sure everyone is credited. Sort of like Jimmy Winterfield.
“I’m not here to make excuses”
He’s technically correct, he’s also here to shill his new Patreon
>"I'm not here to make excuses"
>*makes a ton of excuses*
And Telos
Reminded me of the "There were not 2 or 4 cases of plagiarism" accidental half truth in the Hbomb vid.
@@realMacMadamehe’s still pushing Telos?!
@@MarceldeJong There's a big section on Telos in the video including a request to fund it.
How long till Somerton starts saying he was canceled for refusing to bow to wokism, and try to run a right wing grift?
I am surprised that wasn't his first response after this...
I am giving it a year or two.
It's possible that even he, craven as he is, understands that the right wing would only "accept" him as an ally of necessity and would gleefully turn on him the second it is convenient to do so, since they want to exterminate the entire class of people he belongs to.
Considering the "Nazis were gay and sexy" shit and how he apparently called himself a "proto-socialist" (a common dogwhistle for nazism) in the past, I'm still kind of surprised it hasn't happened earlier.
This is probably his last shot and the next move will be a major pivot.
The way I became "older hispanic mother yelling at her telanovella" levels of angry when James said he wanted to do 'documentaries with just the facts' after Todd in the Shadows spent OVER AN HOUR detailing how WILDLY INCORRECT his 'facts' were previously.
I don't trust James to get facts right because he can't tell the difference between facts, his own opinions, and shit he just made up. Okay guys I stopped plagiarizing, now here's my totally 100% original fact based documentary on how the Gay Rights movement in the 90's sucked because all the cool gays died.
He made 2 long apology videos and still "forgot" to apologize for saying that all the good talented gays died from aids and only the boring ones survived, that marriage equality was actually about rich white gays wanting fancy weddings, that most of the ss was gay, that fitness culture comes from americans copying the n@zis, that Disney had a pride event for decades before they actually did, for missgendering Rebecca Sugar and ND Stevenson, for constantly calling openly bi people heterosexual or homosexual, for so so so much misogyny (play close attention and you will notice that most of the time he uses the term "straight women" not "cishet white women". He is not complaining about women in positions of relative social advantages he just finds women that are attracted to men icky, and can't convince me he wasn't also including trans men and afab nonbinary people that are attracted to men in that category, specially with the "fetishizing gay men" bit, that is real close to the anti-trans "invading gay and lesbian spaces" and "fetishizing womanhood/menhood" argument) and that's just what I remembered from the top of my head.
The plagiarism sucks but that's far from the only thing he did, and unlike stealing from other writers, there is no financial incentive for any of those things. I mean if you're a conservative pundit there is, but James was trying to present himself as a progressive, that's not him being pressured by the algorithm/his audience that's simply him being a shity person.
This is why I’ve seem a significant number of people predicted he would take a right wing turn and start complaining about cancel culture.
@@mhawang8204 You know what, and I'm not defending him here, seeing how he doubled tripled and quadruppled down I don't think he can stop comiting to the bit, because he is pathologicaly unable to change and he is just not smart enough to realize there is a more lucrative grift out there.
The plagiarism is seen as the big one bcuz it also contributed to queer erasure of all those ppl he was targetin all along...
His misgenderin ppl and his refusal to see trans ppl as the ppl they are; that was itself only one small slice of the many ways he participated in queer erasure, perpetuatin harm to a community that he is a part of even
Every bit of these actions feed off of each other and make the harm all that much worse; his efforts towards queer erasure thru plagiarism are alrdy bad enuf, but they become far worse when taken into consideration alongside all the ways he seemed to be targetin the queer community.
Those who arent assimilationists and who arent cis gays whove "picked a side". The intersectionally marginalised queers; these are the ones he hurt the most with his efforts towards queer erasure, all out of some egoistic desire to be seen as the voice of the gays (when rly thats Matt Baume /jk ofc, there is no singular voice of the gays; and thats the best way)
I feel like him saying cishet white women would come off even worse than him saying straight women lol. Idk why but it seems like he’d throw that term around like a playground insult
You forgot a big one - weaponizing his fan base to harass someone who was (rightfully) criticizing him.
Twice. At least.
James next step, he red pills and claim the UA-cam matrix is out to get him.
It's honestly better than what he's doing now😓
If he isnt doing weird fanfics going full fiction, yeah@@Urmumlel7025
Give it time. Lol
@@Urmumlel7025 no, because that could actually work. Everyone loves a converted ex-critic. It "proves" that your ideology is correct.
@@tymondabrowski12 I do love how that works, like for Elon. He got accused of trying to get an employee to sleep with him for a horse. Then he literally just came out as a Republican and said the Democrats are going to attack him after years of him fake fence sitting. His plan actually worked and the GOP was throwing praise at his feet.
The thing that James seems committed to not understanding is that no one trusts him anymore. If really, REALLY wants to come back, he needs to stop making excuses and trying to make himself seem like a victim and actually acknowledge that what he did was wrong and that he did it on purpose. He needs to grow a spine and at least have the courage to admit to what HE (not Nick, not his ADHD, not his memory issues, not his father's illiteracy or his mother's health issues or the financial strain he was under) has done. Until he does that, his career is dead in the water.
I really loved how he said his therapist suggested his ADHD might've been a factor but he's hesitant to say that. Like... why even put it in the video then? You're not slick, James
There is no way he can come back as a video essayist, ever. If he wants to keep making videos, he has to start actually making the fictional movies from his scam kickstarter instead of youtube stuff.
Exactly. I also think that to really do that, he needs to get therapy and stick with it, and three months worth just doesn't cut that kind of reset. He needs years to address his personal demons, whatever those may be.
From receipts, Nick isn't completely innocent either, though he's clean of the plagiarism. Todd in the Shadows showed that he doesn't like to do any research or fact checking. Nick is blaming James, but not claiming the problems he created as part of it, and James is shadily blaming Nick by posting Nick's videos. But honestly neither of them are good. The hot takes filled with misinformation v. plagiarism.
My thesis advisor in undergrad had dyslexia, a rather serious case. Knowing that he did, he subscribed to a customized software program that helped make text on his computer more readable (seriously, he met a random guy at a conference once who wrote the program, and he still sends the guy an annual fee haha). Because, you know, he's a serious academic who believes in doing his job properly.
James, you can look him up! Bob Brigham is his name, he's a highly respected history scholar, he's got lots of good advice.
I might look him up just because!
Is that opendylexia font? I have it on my PC and it help me so much
I spent a year and a half doing a video essay all about the She-Ra reboot that ended up being four hours long and it hasn't been graced by the algorithm and not even at 10k seven months later. I'd never plagiarize as an alternative for getting more clicks.
@TheNerdWithASuit after seeing this comment I checked up your vid and I'll try and give it a watch later. I've been rewatching She-Ra so that sounds fun
@@emilystewart6175 Thank you!
I’ve put your video in my watch later. I may listen to it tonight as I make dinner :D
If you make more content, YT tends to push those videos more. Unless it’s something like dark iceberg videos (I saw a new channel blow up after making 2 of those), media analysis takes a while to cultivate an audience since YT only likes to push videos belonging to channels with lots of content
I’ll check it out tho! I’m not the biggest fan of She Ra, but I do enjoy video essays that’ll help me appreciate things more
4 hours is too long. 1 hour episodes, split in four would've been better for the algorithm
This year is the 4 year anniversary of that show (I love it) so it can help
For next time
Very generous of you to believe his memory loss story, which basically amounts to "I have a medical condition which makes me steal other people's work and claim it as my own"
As a progressive, that's why people don't take the left seriously, because too many of left-wing folks leave space to believe things from bad actors. Ridiculous.
Yeah, like what?!
I love how this memory issue involves regurgitating information perfectly, but by accident i guess? Lol
He also contradicts it later in the video by giving a complete different reason why he did it completely unrelated to memory loss in the dead mom thing.
Then later he says he went back and removed all the parts of his videos that had plagiarized stuff... How did you know? How did you know that was the plagiarized stuff? You couldn't even remember at the time, let alone months or years later... Right?
"I needed the money" is not generally an accepted explanation for stealing.
Unless you’re a big corporation
@@markedwards6457 Nah. They don't "need" the money. Their explanation is: whatcha gonna do 'bout it?
I just want to tell someone because I don't know who else to tell and if I tell nobody I'll scream, but one of my favorite comic writers, Al Ewing (he wrote Immortal Hulk and Empyre and a bunch of other great stuff) has almost certainly seen the Hbomberguy video.
In his newsletter today, he said "the last thing I want is for the reader to fall through a hole in my story like a caving mishap in a plagiarized UA-cam video" and I just need somebody other than me to know this because I'm almost certain there are probably like 10 people in the world who have read Ewings newsletter and also seen the Hbomb video.
This just seemed like a relevant place because it's a youtube channel that talks about marvel and this video is about hbomberguy please just somebody other than me needs to appreciate that one of the greatest humans ever to write comics is also an hbomberguy viewer
expected Al Ewing W
Great W spotted here. 🙂
@@CapitalismSuxx I just have an unhealthy parasocial relationship with al ewing and his newsletters are the only thing i have to feed it
i think the worst thing about the apology 2.0 was that it just felt like an ad for telos and his new patreon. just completely ghoulish to talk about how he's gonna make even more videos for money when he's ostensibly apologising for the harm he caused.
And he monetized his apology video!
what's funny to me is, after all that talk about memory issues, he has the gall to talk about all his film projects and how those were tanked because he was caught out. Like, if the issues are so severe that it affected his UA-cam work, how in hell can he manage any kind of film project? absolutely ridiculous and painfully shameless.
I just don't understand how he can have memory issues but remember the exact times he lived and moved places. I can't even remember those details that well. Plus he blamed everyone but himself for Telos failing. Mostly Nick, which is insane he's still doing that
"My next film is about a futuristic amusement park where dinosaurs are brought to life through advanced cloning techniques! I call it, 'Billy and the Cloneasaurus!'"
I was one of Somerton's patrons. I learned a lot of interesting things from the videos and wanted to see him reach certain Patreon goals (back when Patreon had that feature). The revelations about Somerton's malpractice made me feel like crap for giving monetary support. Now, he has the audacity to continue downplaying the harm he has down. I said before that he is a real life version of Mammon from Helluva Boss, and I still stand by that statement. Especially after this second "apology".
Don’t beat yourself up about getting conned - he was able to trick thousands of good & trusting people. That’s on _him_
Dont be too hard on yoiurself, everyone can fall for scams that are honestly everywhere.
literally "im not gonna lie, women just aint funny"
No Somerton apology would be complete without an ad for Telos 🙄
_sad laughter_
The problem is even if I take James memory loss explanation at face value he's still plagiarizing. Copy pasting someones work and making slight alterations without any meaningful addition is still plagarising.
Yeah, professional documentaries and books bring something new to the table and license stuff they are using a large portion of. Just doing the bare minimum now doesn’t mean his future “documentaries” need to exist if they are just cobbled of other people’s ideas
It's especially ridiculous bc if you KNOW that you have memory issues, why would you EVER copy-paste someone else's work into your own script document without a method to differentiate which part is your original content? If you know you can't remember what you wrote or what you got from someone else, why are those two things EVER in the same document without specific notations?
And it's not something you do by accident. Copy pasting entire paragraphs and leaving them unedited could happen, but then he'd be found out immediately as soon as someone does a Google search on it - switching out words and rearranging sentences just enough to make it not pop as plagiarism at a casual glance, that takes conscious effort.
I know this from experience, because I tried doing that in high school French class (which I failed miserably). You have to really think about how to edit the paragraph to make it look like your own, search for synonyms to replace certain words and arrange it in a way that not only preserves the original meaning, but also sounds like a phrase an actual real human would say. It's more work than you'd think - and not something you just "accidentally" do because you forgot.
He only forgot to hide the plagiarism
Wait... He was pulling in $170,000?!
(Does a google)
Most sources put his net worth at around one mill. Well, that's a slap in the face.
in fairness, online net worth figures are rarely close to accurate
@ofGarbageTrue... Still, if even the lowest figures are real, he's worth a whole lot more than me. lolsob
networth is often vastly overrated, though still, not bad if he made that.
Net worth is not public information, these sites do not have the means to even estimate it. The numbers are entirely made up, and most do not ever use a number below $1 million. You could be flat broke, but if your name is public enough for the site maintainer to have heard of you, they’ll put $1 million.
As a neurodivergent person my mind is all over the place, and I pull inspiration form all kind of sources, but it never occurred to me to copy and paste any text as placeholder into my work. I do it the exact opposite way around, I write down the author and the name of the work, and what then go directly to my thoughts, the element that I want to add to the conversation, the aspect that makes it transformative. Since with a brain that is causing issues, I have to keep track of what I want to contribute to any topic and cannot rely just on having the content others made before me.
Dang it breaks my heart to see that Derry Girls video sitting only at 10k. That's one of my favorite videos on Derry Girls from anywhere on the internet.
one day it will reach 11k 📈📈📈
@@PillarofGarbage 💪
The irony of hom talking about how the insurance company didn't pay them out after people gave him money for a product that never happened.
Here's my issue about James and the money thing - he DID have a patreon safety net. He also would cry poverty at them frequently, then run off and buy absurdly expensive cameras. James is a manipulator, pure and simple. He's lying about needing that money. He was as big a creator as Todd. He made his own choices.
we are in agreement
I struggle with memory issues, that being a bit of a selective memory and general forgetfulness but like, I dont pass the buck i just go ‘my b, I’ll try to do better next time’ instead of pitching a bitch fit like James
also have memory issues + adhd so was *really* frustrated with james trying to use those as get out of jail free cards & *so* glad it was called out here!
I also have memory issues due to a car accident. I learned pretty quick to NOT trust myself when it comes to remembering stuff, and soon made a habit out of writing everything important down, appointments, deadlines, private things I just wanted to be sure to remember - while working on a novel (unpublished still) I even made a point of color coding EVERYTHING so I knew what belonged where and what paragraphs involved what content and what paragraphs are still incomplete.
Because I know I forget things and take appropriate precautions.
The one bit that did stick out from Hbombs video is that he didn't think that money alone would be a plausible reason for someone to do what James did but like no people will do anything for money. It sucks being poor and getting rich makes a lot of people want to get richer.
I suspect it's also the reason he keeps trying to come back lol
Idk, he also seems really enamoured with looking like a filmaker/documentarian, without putting in the effort
How does money explain James erasin trans ppl by misgenderin them? How does money explain James' bigoted statements about asexuals? How does money explain James' erasure of bi ppl by labelin them straight or gay based on the relationship theyre in?
Theres so many things that James said which suggest a lot more than just money at play; which seem to show he actively wanted to erase the works of other queers, and erase the identities of other queers; that he wanted to participate in queer erasure
Why? Idek, but that cant all be explained away as he was just in it for the money
@@HappyGingerWolf Dan Olson said he (James, not Dan) doesn't want to make films, he wants to be a filmmaker. And that really has the ring of truth to it
@@HappyGingerWolf Yeah I don't doubt that he had other reasons too but the money is most likely the biggest factor
I think there's reasons to be skeptical of his memory loss claim because he did go through the work he plagiarized and changed words and dates, so he definitely did try to obfuscate what he's doing. We also know he did take other people's video files, download them, edit them into his videos, provably lie about the source (because the original source was visible in his project file), and still not credit the people. He also did lie about why the original authors were angry at him and sent his fans to harass the people who caught him plagiarizing. He also refused to comply with the authors who told him he was stealing their material.
Or his ADHD claim, my sister has ADHD and yeah she has memory issues...as in she'll forget appointments or meal times or what time her work shifts will start. She deals with this by setting reminders on her phone, so she has an organised life despite her difficulty focusing...if Somerton were aware of his apparent memory issues why did he never have coping mechanisms for it and just accused people of attacking him instead of saying 'my bad'?
Really appreciate you touching on the differences between small UA-camr experience vs big Patreon experience. Of course none of that applied to James by the end but it’s an important conversation to have!!
I don’t even do UA-cam as a career and even I feel that pressure you talk about, to be making videos consistently lest I never have another semi-successful one ever again.
To see James try to tap into that insecurity on the back of other people’s work truly is infuriating.
I have a neurological condition that fucks up my memory and cognition sometimes, I have late diagnosed ADHD (another thing he alluded to causing plagiarism) and I have always found it almost insurmountably difficult to finish anything, to actually get the work out of me and done, the fact that the memory loss is being presented in conjunction with the sheer speed of production is very confusing to me. My disabilities ... disable me. It feels like he so fully does not want to publicly consider that greed may very well be a cause of his theft of others work.
As someone with ADHD I used to feel self conscious about his channel seeing how many videos he was outputting which I thought were well researched videos. Meanwhile I haven't ever finished a proper project and hell I was feeling bad for failing to sit through even one of his videos without zoning out (god he is so boring and I thought it was my fault), I didn't watch that many, just a few that I put in the background which probably explains why I didn't catch on the more outrageous stuff, but yeah, I can't believe this channel was making me feel awful about myself and now he has the gall to use ADHD as a justification for taking advantage of his community.
Really appreciate this video! I completely relate to that financial pressure with youtube. For myself, I atarted off with a video miraculously doing stupidly well in my early days, and then I went on making whatever I felt passionate about,. not realising how temporary that early success was, and causing my channel to nose dive.Since then, I've had to learn to be more pragmatic about videos topics. I often have to cut down everything I want to discuss because I simply won't get enough time to edit the video if it gets too long. I have to work in a total frenzy with a lack of sleep, and I just wish for enough security to be able to put more time and research into my videos but, realistically, I can't afford to unless another video does miraculously well.
None if that is complaining, it's the pitfalls of a job I love and am passionate about, but it's super frustrating to see someone rich using my constant weekly struggle as an excuse for stealing work from other people who no doubt know that struggle. It's so bizarre
I feel this comment deep in my bones
Best of luck with everything 👊
omg, mylittlethoughttree knows PillarofGarbage? My two faves intersecting 😮💅🏿
I’m really glad you brought up the harsh UA-cam algorithm and was able to look at aspects of James’ apology and see that yes, a person may want to cut corners to get more videos out, and then you go into how this needs to be a personal sacrifice and not something that hurts other people. The hate bandwagon on James Somerton’s channel exists for a reason but you gave the benefit of the doubt and then explained why James’ apology didn’t work, in good faith. Big events like this online often mean that in people’s excitement to hate on something in a group they can miss out on details that are really important to the discussion.
The only thing James Sommerton can do to fix what he's done is disappear from UA-cam forever and find a different job.
Yup. Please leave the site and never come back, James. You are not trusted, and you are not wanted. Hope you saved up your ill gotten gains, because no self respecting person will ever give you a PENNY for the crap you pulled again!
Thank you, this wasn't just cathartic but very insightful
James complaining about finances wasn't just an excuse for him stealing stuff - it's also his excuse for why he can't give any of the money he made off theft to the people he stole from, and is instead monetizing his apology and starting a new Patreon with vague promises of giving that money to the people he wronged.
With everything that came out about James Somerton faking his death and horny posting the same day, his apology appears in a new light.
FWIW I can totally believe that someone would goonscroll and doomscroll in the same day--we seek out intense distractions when we're spiraling--but, you know. God, what a trash fire.
Here's the thing: when you say "I feel bad for calling BS on the memory excuse", that's the point. James is appealing to empathy because he knows how to exploit it.
He doesn't have an excuse that holds up to scrutiny, so he goes for one where "well if you doubt me, YOU look bad", because he wants people to give him the benefit of the doubt when he absolutely doesn't deserve it.
"It's not my fault I was bad" is the go-to emotional abuser trick. That and a fake suicide threat, yknow, which James also did in his LAST apology video.
I don't feel guilty calling BS on this. It's far too convenient and he would've mentioned it sooner if it was legit. Like in his previous apology video.
Exactly this. Everything in his second apology (and his first) is specifically meant to emotionally manipulate and gaslight anyone that will listen.
Jimmy Winterville. I am deeply troubled it took me so long to get that.
OOOOOOH, that's clever
7:29: I love it when people show their UA-cam home pages, it is such an interesting insight into their viewing habits. You and I have a lot of shared space in this Venn Diagram, sir. Okay, back to the rant.
For the record, I think your videos are really well done and I always enjoy watching them. I don't necessarily watch ALL of them because, for example, I haven't seen Derry Girls, but I have no reason to believe they're any less excellent.
Queer AuDHD-haver here. Weak memory is a symptom of all of my mental issues (including but not limited to ADHD, Depression, and autism) and I've never copy-pasted DOZENS OF FULL PAGES OF CONTENT from other people into a video essay and passed it off as my own "infinite wisdom." funny that. (I have also endured a couple of concussions that made memory issues a little worse and yet I still haven't Committed Queer Erasure 🤔) interesting how that works. Almost like he's been lying this whole time.
Also this is a bit less relevant but I'm personally infuriated by him using his late mother as an excuse for shit. When the hbomb video came out I was at my grandmother's house, with my mom, helping sort through her belongings. Because she'd passed less than a month prior. So like, even though it's not at all the case, there's a bit of a degree of feeling PERSONALLY attacked by his excuses, even though I know he doesn't even know I exist.
The biggest thing that'll probably keep James from coming back and being a big UA-camr again probably isn't going to be moral outrage at his plagiarism, but the reveal that he is really just doesn't make anything. Celebrities and influencers have survived news coming out that they're terrible people. But UA-cam is one of the most competitive careers in the world and James Really doesn't seem to have the talent to be good without plagarising.
What I'm about to say is probably generalising but I leave notes to remind myself to add sources and fact check bits of information in my essays and I don't have a memory disorder so I assumed this was a common and intuitive thing to do
Also, when you paste in stuff from another source, it rarely comes in using the same font and size or even color so not being able to remember that you pasted it vs. wrote it is pretty much BS.
Yeah, it must be difficult to avoid plagiarism when you got long term memory issues. If only he had hired someone to help him like co-writer or something….
"You have a spending problem."
*Bingo-Bango.*
I ended up watching Derry Girls over Christmas.
Your video pointed me towards it.
:)
“Working in an exploitative system does not give you license to exploit others”
That’s such a good line, I bet James will steal it and call it his own.
Frankly, I'm sick of hearing about Somerton and his endless excuses. For what it's worth I hope he's doing well, and that he eventually learns something from this mess.
Agreed. At this point there is nothing he can say or do that will make it better. The floundering is just so sad to look at.
I don’t even expect him to make amends with all the creators/writers he stole from. I wish he would just leave the internet.
I'm so disappointed tbh. I expected more from him tbh
You're 100% right about Hbomb's blind spot about financial pressure. His plagiarism video was great but there was at points a surprisingly old-fashioned perspective on the realities of content creation as a job. I remember seeing this attitude a lot back when UA-camr became a viable career, people actually trying to earn money would be derided as greedy e-beggars who don't want to get a real job and don't care about making quality content. Not saying that that's what Hbomb said or meant, I guess I just mean that not every creator's first and only consideration is "the joy of making something" because they have to, you know, eat. It's easy to forget that when you have a stable monthly income from Patreon.
very relieved to see I wasn’t alone in thinking this!
It should be more how james should be transparent, its fine to beg for money just, be honest and transparent, ok. Well he didnt and thats why he cant be trusted, even if thats true.
Well, the finicky algorithm sucks, but then it means maybe UA-cam isn’t a viable job anymore, especially with the advent of AI-generated content. I believe the majority of content creators can’t make a living by doing this full-time. Heck, James himself cried about stopping making videos when he got “low Patreon income shock.” Getting a real job is not UA-cam boomer talk, it’s just an unfortunate reality.
@@mhawang8204 I'm glad somebody said it!
It doesn’t excuse plagiarism though.
Hey, this is a really great response. I am glad you put into words that no one is “entitled” to make a living doing UA-cam. All while explaining how hard you work to make your videos.
Very focused, while also taking time to say things that haven’t been brought up in the conversation before. Excited to see more from you!
5:22 I like that you table the discussion about the creator economy from the pov of smaller creators - it is valid. Though I think Todd and hbomb are not as far removed from that as you think from the way they talk about it, ayou make good points. But don't forget: JS stole from exactly those small creators. This is a choice you get to make.
This just came up randomly
You earned a subscription from me. No idea what else you make but if it is on this level I will enjoy
pretty good media related videos
2:48 even if the cause of all this was "memory issues", the responsible thing to do is apologise profusely and step away from content creation until able to produce content completely transparently and with full attribution
You definitely bring up a good point about the drive to be a content mill. I hasn't thought of that. It's just one more way JS is trying to manipulate everyone.
Oh my GOD the “I hit my head” excuse is straight out of a cartoon. I cannot believe such a comically obvious liar exists.
I really enjoyed when James made a Freudian slip where he referenced Telos in the past tense, then paused noticeably before adding "and still is" to the sentence. We've got our eye on you, Jimmy Winterville...
This was a great analysis and I loved hearing it!
I did my Masters degree with both long and short term meory issues and shoclingly did not plagiarise once. James has no excuse.
He didn't forget to quote others, he just forgot to hide his plagiarism better
Fun fact, the father of one of the people i knew at university was an extra in that group of storm Troopers where he hit head on the door (but not door guy)
Here’s why i can’t possibly believe the memory issues excuse: even copying and pasting someone else require some level of work and time investment, you need to search and read to find what you want, and you need to understand what you read in order to properly stitch together different texts in a way that they make sense. He put this work in it, you don’t do this because you “forgot” you do it very very intentionally. Second, im a video and sound editor, his videos are very high quality in image and sound, this level of quality can’t be achieved just trowing the footage on the software and calling it a day. They went back and forth multiple times listening and re-listening those copied words. He was constantly reminded of what was written. Third, i have a strong above moderate Adhd (on the Atention deficit side) and i do have severe memory issues, there’s no shortage of mechanisms to deal with it. Taking notes is the simplest and most effective. Ever heard of post-it James? Calendars? Agenda? Notepad?
Nah, this dude have only one psychological condition: mythomania
James clearly is dealing with personality issues that prevent him from taking accountability. the way he attempts to weasel himself out of this situation by making excuse, garnering pity, and lying, highlights that very clearly. we actually cannot reasonably trust him on any of his claims, even the most serious ones.
He also doesn't touch on any of his bad behavior, especially creating fictional death threats (or centering the conversation on those death threats) every time someone calls him out, and his biases against women and other queer identities.
also he won't stop sharing the blame with Nick, I'm shocked he doesn't have anyone in his life with a bullshit detector to proof watch these apology videos.
I finished 2/3rds of a Ph. D. with fibromyalgia and ADD. He is full of shite.
Genuinely don’t know why this dude won’t just go away.
He wants that sweet sweet money that suddenly went away only a few months ago.
I was annoyed at your video earlier on for bringing up the "financial pressures" argument, as if that justified James' wrongdoing, but then you nailed it later on by explaining how those pressures aren't exclusive to him and don't justify what he did.
The part that angered me the most was the way he apologized to Jessie Gender. He didn't message her to apologize in private, he did it on camera so everyone could see what a good boy he is. It's so manipulative. She wasn't even part of the thing everyone is mad at James for, and he didn't apologize to any other specific people, including the ones he actually plagiarized. He apologized to them as a group but singled Jessie out over some nonsense allegation he made against her that nobody ever believed anyway.
Jessie made a really great response video and I recommend everyone go watch it.
Proud to be one of your supporters! Keep up the thoughtful analysis!
It is hugely appreciated, thanks so much!
Anatoliy Burgorsky literally stuck his head in a particle accelerator by accident and lived with brain damage for years afterwards and he didn’t plagiarize lol
I think they make a cream for that
If I had a nickle for every time a white creator blamed their lying on being neurodivergent, I would have two nickles.
*Which isn't a lot, but it's strange how it happened twice.*
10 whole cents, wowie!!
I'm curious, who was the first?
@@zacheryeckard3051 Cait Corrain.
Serious note, I'm pretty sure it's in the above a dollar now.
A Somerton? *puts a hat on*
James the plagiarising Somerton?!
The memory issues bugged me cause I myself have memory issues, as a result I take lots of notes and look things back up if I am unsure if I am remembering wrong. I had to do a bunch more studying in college as I couldn't just memorize things like other students, worked through the school to be able to use notes and get extra time on tests. I can't trust my memory on things sometimes and I look things up so I don't spread misinformation on accident.
It runs in my family too, mom makes spreadsheets of people she works with, those who work with the company she is at, and things about them. Notes like: has 2 kids in college, good to work with, awful to work with, if we work with them make sure to double check their numbers for X before turning in work. All the things those with good memories would just remember, she writes down, and quickly checks before going to an event.
So this "memory" excuse sucks. Those I know with memory issues find workarounds, take notes, mark things up to go back to. You get over yourself and deal with it. You figure out how to work with what you got, not just use it as an excuse and never put effort into avoiding it from happening again.
this isn’t really related to your video - which was of course great, as per usual - but, as someone who’s been mostly avoiding this topic… oh my god, Somerton’s starting a new Patreon? really? let’s put aside the question of “why would anyone ever trust him again”; why would anyone ACTIVELY GIVE HIM MONEY ever again?
hell, why hasn’t Patreon kicked him off for good already? I’d hope that plagiarizing so many times (and getting called out for it to an extremely wide audience) goes against their community guidelines or something.
at the very least Somerton’s apology tour doesn’t seem to be working, which is good. but like… “only 11 members” is still 11 too many for that guy.
he’s just a li’l guy
I really hate how James shot this apology video too. The background is all blurred out, soft focus, the lighting, the way he doesn’t really look into the camera at us but kinda just beyond the camera, the soft voice
Like you’re doing an apology video for how you lied and tricked your audience , drop the artistry and talk to us like a human being.
Todd in the Shadows also made a video detailing moments in which he has given false information in his video essays.
James Somerton has shown himself to be a compulsive liar who seems to only feel remorse because his plagiarism was exposed. Somerton was aware that he was stealing other people’s work when he copied whole paragraphs of someone else’s work and changed individual words.
The pressure for consistent content is very much something HBomberguy just isnt attatched to anymore. Though i think Todd -
I do feel like at least in Todd's case he is speaking directly to James specifically when he says "No you dont". But idk the guy.
Folding Ideas has released a patreon video discussing the apology video and its so fucking cold. Absolutely filled with disdain for James.
Also fucking wild he called the video A Measured Response
I also want to add, he still has not put out a list with all the victims of this malpractice. And he let's Hbomberguy deal with financially compensating them
A very tasteful and detailed roast. Get that bag! Hope you're doing well these days
i will say that derry girls video made me cry so i hope you know i appreciated it :)
Thank you so much! I’m going to do my best to make some more videos in that vein this year, even if they can’t be every one
admittedly I haven't written so many video essay scripts. But I have written my fair share of essays and grad level research papers for university.
Never in my time (including those times when I had procrastinated and then needed to smash out the essay in a weekend) have I thought to, or heard of, copypasting whole paragraphs from other places into my essay for a first draft. It's such a horrible practice and especially if you know that you might have memory issues you're really just setting yourself up for failure.
I don't think any of us are buying that it was an accident.
I don't wanna turn you into a channel of negativity, but if you ever have another off-the-cuff rant or critique, go for it. This felt really refreshing and even kinda inspiring
really fantastic video. You made me think about a lot of different perspectives and realities I hadn’t thought about much before.
The thing that pisses me of is I am a PhD student, and I recently developed a condition that causes memory loss and brain fog. When I noticed my work was starting to feel like I was just paraphrasing other people, I did what anyone should do, I took a break and paused my studies. Will it affect me financially? 100%. But it’s the right thing to do, and so I stopped. James was in a place where he had the financial comfort to take a break and slow down production, and he chose to carry on anyway. You can’t blame an illness on something that is easily preventable.
If you had memory issues and you knew you had memory issues. Surely when copying things over to reword, you'd highlight it or have it in a different colour. I don't have memory issues and I do that. Maybe he forget which colour was which.
I really didn't want to watch his newest video after seeing that it was out, so thanks for summarizing what was in it.
I write academic papers and I'm quite forgetful (nothing diagnosed, my brain just doesn't like to keep information unless I make an active effort to remember it). I very quickly learnt that whenever I find a paper I might need to reference in the future, I need to keep some reminder, or I will inevitably waste an hour trying to find it again. It's particularly easy if I'm already writing the paper, as I can just put the citation where it needs to go and forget about it. I just don't believe that anyone who knows they have diagnosed memory issues wouldn't realize the same. And it doesn't matter if he intended to change what the text said, that's still paraphrasing and needs to be cited. If he intented to make it different enough that it could count as his own writing, having copied the text would make the process harder, as it's very difficult to say something in your own words when you have a text that's talking about the same thing right in front of you.
I wonder if James is feeling like each attempt at a comeback is just another shovel to dig himself deeper into the hole.
This should have been a wakeuo call, but it seems he's just going to attempt more desperate apologies waiting for one that sticks
I think another thing James is forgetting is that everything people liked about his videos was plagiarized. If he wantes to come back, what would he even have to offer.
i have memory issues as well (adhd or traumatic) and i'd call bs on the "i forgot" part. i'm not goiong to say james doesn't suffer from them, i mean in more in the "my memory issues are the reason why" sense. sometimes i witness information that sticks in my head and i have trouble recalling where exactly have i seen it. i tend to not share this though because i know i can't source it. i know this is like a personal stance thing but doesn't that also make it kinda worse?
The memory issues is not what made him plagiarize other people. That's as he described so well: a bullshit excuse.
Note how he also blames winter, Ottawa, his dead mum and illitterade dad for him scamming and plagiarizing.
I really wonder why he would talk about his parents like that. I also heavily question if someone in Canada really would ever need to start working before finishing school like he claimed his dad did. Canada is a civilized country so I'm assuming his dad is just fine but a bit pissed off by how he is portrayed on the interwebz by his liar narcissist of a son.
“My Totally Original Essay”
😂😂😂😂😂
Wow even you're talkin bout this. Glad people are calling the bs
I really do appreciate that you don’t take short cuts and shill problematic sponsors.
This popped up after I finished a Schaffrillas video and was really confused what it could be about. Makes a lot more sense to see we’re talking about a different James haha.
Also remember that James is a pathological liar
Got recommended this and it’s the first vid I’m seeing of yours. I’m sure you’d rather I see some of your other content; but I’ll be checking that out so no worries. I think you got solid takes here and I’m glad you pointed out the BS in the way you did.
"I bumped my head. Please forgive my plagiarism."
LOL best summary 😀
6:25 I know it's not the point but I'm always super interested about which videos my favorite content creators are most proud of, and even would like updates after significant amounts of time if things have changed. Though, I understand that for anyone who's not into that stuff or just isn't a fan yet would see putting that info out as self centered so I get why I really only see it brought up in context like this where it's actually relevant to a different topic.
This was interesting! Thank you for your thoughts! You're easily one of my favorite creators rn
Love how James said he did UA-cam because it was a job "he could do".
My brother in christ, you categorically could not do the job if you had to plagiarize this much to accomplish anything.
This one hurt! And the "rant" felt cathartic, thx
Speaking of Grifters Leverage Redemption is fab and even wo... que... wokweerier than it's predecessor;o) Semi hidden gem, gotta promote
thank you for making a video about Somerton that is short enough to watch in less than a geologic age
I CANNOT BELIEVE HE RETURNED I CANNOT BELIEVE HE UNPRIVATED OLD VIDEOS IM SCREAMING. THE WAY IM GOING NO NO NO NO NO