What upsets me the most about the whole James Somerton scandal, of course aside from the actually terrible shit he did and what that lead to, is that people are calling others "idiots" for being "fooled".

I'm sorry to say, but the human mind can be fooled, no matter how hard you train it. Maybe not by James ofc, but anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can be fooled into believing ANYTHING when talked to by someone who seems legit. Especially since James stole from other actually good creators and writers, hid credits around, lied, showed SOME credit at times but sometimes not, his words seemed genuinely legit.

What sucks too is that this also belittles those who may be disabled. As someone who has severe ADHD and autism, it fucking sucks to hear "you shouldve been able to tell" or "how did you fall for it, his videos are garbage".

I never went on witchhunts, I didn't even know he got accused of stealing until a friend told me to watch the hbomber video (which I'm slowly working through).

I, a queer person, watched the videos on queer issues to learn more, the easy way (I have a hard time just reading things and like having the background noise of someone telling about incidents and events). It's a fucking accessibility thing for me. So God forbid I watched some of his videos and thought he was legit.

Insulting anyone isn't going to get you anywhere. Especially those that just watched his videos and didn't attack people. I hate that I easily fell for the ruse, I don't need people calling me stupid on top of it. I shouldn't feel ashamed for watching some godamned videos.

The thing that makes me angry about James Somerton’s apology is that he didn’t address one of the most insidious things he was called out for. And maybe everything he said in the video was the complete truth, but he didn’t address the misogyny. Because there was no way he could spin it in his favor. I said this when hbomberguy’s video first came out, he has no doubt done damage to the mindset of young queers both with his misogyny and his misinformation. (fuck he almost did it to me. The plagiarism is bad but the misogyny and misinformation is -in my opinion- the worst thing he’s done and you can tell he knows it too, because he didn’t even bring it up in his apology. I hope he does get better, suicide and doxxing is horrible and no one deserves that, but he needs to acknowledge ALL the bad he’s done.

watching someone cover the James Somerton apology and say "so they moved across the country with you!" about Nick I guess moving with James at some point in the travels from Nova Scotia to Ottawa to Toronto.

But now I'm just sitting here like "great, no one knows anything about Canada" because while that's definitely an undertaking for some people, it's *far* from across the country. They are still in Eastern Canada. Nobody has moved *across the country*. They have moved *to a new province* but also Nova Scotia is extremely small and I guess you have to go through like. Quebec and New Brunswick to get to Ontario, but like. it's a straight shot Ottawa and Toronto

sourced from wikipedia, the trip from Nova Scotia to Ottawa is basically a fun road trip. It's something people get excited about. It's tourism. It's the the other side of Ontario that is the part of driving through Canada that people talk about like it's a nightmarish fever dream from which you will never recover and never wake.

You have to pass Ottawa and Toronto to get to the part of Ontario where you drive for 5 days and never leave Ontario and the landscape never changes and you begin to question your sanity until you're nearly run off the road by a moose. At the point where it's Ottawa and Toronto, you're so south you're going to be run off the road by an American.

Honestly the scariest thing he probably experienced was whatever that freeway that Torontonians always complain about, which I don't blame them I've seen pictures and it has like 30 lanes and they're all full. it scares the shit out of me. fuck you demon freeway.

Did anyone save the video that James Somerton did on the manga The Summer Hikaru Died? I know he probably plagiarized the info in that vid too but I still really liked it. I wanted to rewatch it. If anyone has a link to that vid or knows what sources he plagiarized for that vid then I’d love to know.

So I decided to watch James Sommerton's plagiarized video essay on Disney villains having a history of queercoding and such just to really see what this guy's videos were like, and was immediately struck by how this guy, a millennial, so I'd assume he would have some understanding of this topic and thus would have touched on it, went on a tangent about Shere Khan from The Jungle Book, and how he could be read as queer coded because he acts dignified and has a British voice actor????? But meanwhile the literal stranger danger roofies snake that fucked with the minds of entire generations is RIGHT FUCKING THERE. And he says fuck all about it. Like in the original novel Shere Khan is clearly an anthropormorphization of the man-eating tiger phenomenon and a theme towards the overarching conflict between man and nature. That's an adaptation. That's just, what the character was tbh. But what Disney specifically added was taking a character that was originally one of the paternal figures of Mowgli in the novel and making him... well...

And Somerton does not touch on that AT ALL.

Which in hindsight yeah, he took his findings from a source that's older than him and thus likely wasn't in touch with the internet that I'm pretty sure a lot of people would understand now that makes Kaa way more of a red flag than "British tiger."

Like that just really struck with me you know? As someone who was affected in the childhood Disney snake incident. That's like, significant to me for a whole slew of reasons and he just... Didn't say anything about it.

do i really need to explain what this is about.

like witnessing the french revolution beheadings firsthand in the 1800s

I think referring to the James Somerton situation, or the hbomberguy and Todd in the Shadows videos in general, as "YouTuber Drama" is really underselling the level of academic dishonesty, intellectual theft, and malicious misinformation being discussed and spread by this man and others like him.

This isn't makeup gurus accusing each other of being inappropriate at a birthday dinner or a philosophy channel getting in hot water on Twitter for having a controversial queer celebrity do a voiceover line without fully vetting everything he's ever said.

It's large scale plagiarism and hundreds of thousands of dollars of profiting off other people's work without even credit.

(And 64k in scams. That too.)

And no, I didn't know who any of these people except Harry and Todd were until now, with the exception of MAYBE having heard of Internet Historian in passing, so I had that same "who even are these people" response as most of you.

People like James are why I cannot in good faith just Tell people my college major.

hot take: crying YouTuber apology videos are manipulative

crying while apologizing to someone in real life is a thing that happens. it's an emotional reaction you may be unable to control

chosing to film, edit, and post a video of yourself crying cannot be done in the heat of the moment. you want people to see your tears and feel bad for you

there's really no excuse for it, IMO. if you can't make the video without crying, do a text apology instead

In Sept/Oct 2021, James Somerton was called out for stealing Hannibal fanart. He made a poll, and reposted 4 Hannigram arts from various (uncredited) artists, and asked his followers what they thought was the best one to use for his upcoming video thumbnail. The problem? He didn't credit them, and never asked them beforehand posting their work. When a number of Fannibals VERY POLITELY suggested that he not repost artwork, and asked him if he'd contacted the artists, he got extremely defensive and aggressive. He went rage mode, was arguing, and blocking anyone who said it was a breach of etiquette. He threatened to not release the video at all, and apparently was rude to someone IRL?

He was upset about people calling him a thief and scammer, yet... he is one. As we now know. I personally did not see a single death threat. He was blocking people for just saying "You should credit the artists, this isn't cool." He posted THIS as a response.

This was his "apology'. Yes, he uses his sick mother as an excuse. His sick mother that NO ONE even knew about. People were literally just saying "Hey, credit the artists, don't steal ppls art" and he immediately went into anger and defense and excuses.

After this, he deleted this non-apology, as well as the hannibal posts, and pretty much all evidence of what happened. He scrubbed it all really shortly afterwards. So believe me when I say this is a PATTERN with him.

I'm really not surprised his "apology" video went how it did. I just feel salty that he was GENUINELY AWFUL to multiple friends of mine, wiped all the evidence and kept scamming.

Anyways, I just don't want people to fall for his crocodile tears. I understand he probably DOES feel shitty. Because he was caught. He is hoping everyone just feels sorry enough for him that they'll keep paying him, and he can just leave up his videos and patreon.

what really gets to me still about james somerton is when he called the author of love, simon straight. she's actually bisexual, and when called out on this, he said he talked about her in the "straight female authors" portion of his video but "never called her straight"

okay, cool. maybe try not to make it so obvious that you don't consider bisexual women to really be a part of the queer community. this kind of mentality is why i still (over a decade after coming to terms with my sexuality) sometimes feel like a fake because is being bisexual really queer enough? love that one of the most prominent queer voices on youtube up until last week was spreading this bullshit as late as 2022

It sucks how James Somerton was openly misogynistic for a number of years but no one really said anything until the hbomb video and plagiarism allegations. I’m glad hbomb brought it up because i feel like misogyny is very often overlooked in leftist spaces. I get the sense that misogyny isn’t viewed as that big of a deal compared to homophobia and racism because it doesn’t affect Real People (see: men). Hatred of women is not a joke and thousands of women are killed each year because of this hatred. Just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he gets a pass on his woman-hating.

Add it to the playlist, Harris. Do it.

“James Somerton is gonna bust out a ukulele for his next apology”

As if a business major/marketing guy could play an instrument.

This man has no value for the arts, he would never touch a ukulele.

Dan Olson has joined in. With receipts.

Edit: it's on Thread Reader now