A YouTuber was accused of plagiarism. His apology highlighted a larger issue among creators.
A YouTuber was accused of plagiarism. His apology highlighted a larger issue among creators.
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A YouTuber was accused of plagiarism. His apology highlighted a larger issue among creators.
This whole thing is wild.
I honestly can't fully feel good about HBomberGuy's video. While it was important to point out a prominent plagiarist. While HBomberGuy always starts off his videos as "don't attack this person." Realistically his fans always seem to show up and bash on the person he's exposing or attacking.
He's kind of being a bully. I mean, a bully with a decent reason, but still a bully.Thinking about it, bully isn't the right term here.This is the most radical centrist take I've heard yet. The idea that exposing immoral acts is worse than the acts.
Yeah, what is anyone supposed to do with Somerton besides calling him out? Ask him politely to please don't plagiarise and scam people anymore?
Half of Hbomberguy's video is about Somerton having been accused of plagiarism for a long time and Somerton just kept doing it. Beside the fact that the very first anecdote about Somerton in the video is about him sending his fans after someone who dared to point out plagiarism, accusing them of doxxing him and sending him threats without any hint of that ever happening.
Somerton had no qualms to resort to harassment if it suited him.
Dog knows social media is a toxic hellhole which thrives on malice and there will always be enough toxic people out there to harass people for whatever reason they can find (and often flimsy pretext), but to insist that the existence of these people precludes exposing wrong-doing, ultimately means that nobody can ever warn anybody else of scammers and grifters like James Somerton.
Honestly, I feel like this concept is what underpins a lot of why society doesn't change. Sometimes you get more stink-eye from people rocking the boat trying to bail it out than you do from putting a literal hole on the floor and sitting on the bucket.
We need to be brave enough to save the things we value.
I'm not saying that at all. I'm just saying I can't feel good about the video. In fact, I covered this in my original comment. It needed to be done in some way but I am not sure it's the right way.
FWIW I don’t disagree with you, especially on the second paragraph. The direction of punching feels unavoidably lopsided.
But… Somerton and his fans had harassed and silenced others when called out for this type of behavior before. The only real difference here is that HBomb is big enough that isn’t feasible to whine and shout the criticism away. Plus all the evidence!
That's a great point too and does sway me a bit to feeling better about this all. Just feels like a huge bummer. But maybe it's a huge bummer that James needed to turn it around and be better.
What would you have expected as an alternative? What other way could the plagiarism have been addressed? It had been brought up in multiple other instances over the last year and James brushed it off saying it was not true and led harassment campaigns against those that questioned if he had stolen others work.
Frankly, I do not believe James' woe is me bit is anything other than an act and emotional manipulation of his audience. He still has thousands of subscribers on Patreon and it is to his personal benefit to keep them as in the dark as possible or to believe that he is still deserving of their money and attention. If he does have mental health issues stemming from this, then he should have just deleted all his accounts, accepted responsibility from his actions, and moved on to something else and work on his mental health.
James also did not only have 300 subscribers. He had almost 3,500 on Patreon. He was raking in tens of thousands of dollars per month using stolen work.
https://graphtreon.com/creator/jamessomerton
I guess I'm just cynical because the way he "apologized" and came back was called like play for play for how to do a fake YouTube apology/comeback. I just find it so hard to feel sympathy for the man or believe anything he says with what he's done (not accused cause there were screenshots in that video) outside of just being a huge YouTube grifter.
I mean, I think he's done that. He's deactivated his Patreon, deleted his YouTube channel, and said that he'll comment more when his mental health is better. Maybe I am a soft-hearted fool but it sounds like he's done just that.
That said it's important to remember everyone is human and makes mistakes.
As for what I'd do differently. I don't know, I don't think anything else could have been done differently I supposed but it just feels not great.
This is a problem with internet culture in general, tbh. If anything, hbomb is one of the good guys out there that is pretty careful about how he talks about these things.
Nah. What I noticed about hbomb is that he generally avoids talking about people’s appearances, and avoids judging folks for who they are as people. He also tries to give people the benefit of the doubt (including the writer for Somerton’s channel, which… idk, not sure how the writer could have not noticed all the plagerism but whatever).
Basically, Hbomberguy focused on this guys actions and words. It didn’t feel like bullying at all. It would be different if this was a small creator and/or if this dude was doing it for free. But, that’s not the case; Somerton was making money plagiarizing other people’s work and got lots of subscribers for it.
Somertons channel was about queer issues. I’m sure he’s at least somewhat prepared for online harassment or he wouldn’t have chosen to be a content “creator” on that topic. Doing shitty things on the internet draws heat, too, and it feels somewhat earned this time. Wish people were nicer online overall but hbomb did nothing wrong calling this guy out.
TL;DR, talking about someone else’s bad (and public) behavior isn’t bullying, as long as you’re not picking on some lil guy.
"330 subs". You talk as though 330,000 subscribers is a small number. To your other points, I figure most of the anger towards somerton is going to come from his own community and not people from hbomberguys community. (In fact IIRC Somerton was getting a lot of backlash on his pateron on day 1 of this story breaking). Perhaps Somerton shouldnt have plagarised and lied to people? Maybe?
Of course not, it's insane to think I don't place blame on him. To be clear, I do and his actions aren't excusable by any means. While you are right, 330k subs is not a little amount but it's about scales of community management. Maybe that's somewhat the goal though. The community that is pointing out the flaws needs to be larger than the community defending them. Perhaps that's exactly what needed to happened as people have pointed out that other smaller youtubers tried to create issues and James was very much lambasting them and undermining their message.
Other people already gave you on why it's not hbomberguy's fault and I don't have anything to add to that.
But I think maybe it would help you figure out, what you are sad about or what you feel bad for? And maybe this hasn't anything to do with hbomberguy? What I mean is, maybe you are seeing Somerton, his mental health problems, his situation and feeling bad for him. And I get it, I feel bad for his situation, too. But being raised by narcissists and having been in a long term relationship with an abusive chronic liar, I know that feeling bad for someone like this won't help neither you, the other person or anyone they've harmed. It only gives them more fuel to keep on continuing like they've done before. I don't know how to deal best with people like this apart from setting boundaries and keeping my distance. If you're only forgiving without setting boundaries, they will abuse and exploit you. James Somerton was already a mess before he was called out, now he has to face the consequences for his harmful actions and it is hard on everybody. But better to call him out and make him stop his abuse than keep going. You can have empathy with perpetrators but it doesn't help with making them stop.
mmm, let's not do this