James Somerset was making $170,000 a year with nearly 6 million views and 267,000 subscribers on YouTube, until…

  • Xariphon@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    I’m so out of the loop I have no idea who any of these people are or why I should care. Or if I should. What is even going on?

    • Axolotling@beehaw.org
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      11 months ago

      So basically, James Somerton stole literally all of his content from other queer creators while positioning himself as the de-facto queer creator to support. And by “all his content”, it really means all his content. Every. Single. Thought. Was plagiarized from someone else’s writing. And the extremely few that didn’t revealed that James Somerton is a crazy misogynist Nazi-loving lesbophobic transphobe.

      Basically, he’s a massive piece of shit who’s comically evil to a mind-numbing degree.

    • sculd@beehaw.org
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      11 months ago

      You should care if you follow any YouTube creators. It is the biggest topic right now on YouTube. Everyone is affected because lazy creators and content farms stealing other people’s work is such a big problem on YouTube.

      • Turun@feddit.de
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        11 months ago

        “any YouTube creator” is a stretch. The video called out a few people, and I can imagine that quite a few more vlog style YouTubers are guilty of it. But the vast majority of channels I follow either properly cite their sources or don’t need to, because they present original work.

    • DarkenLM@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Essentially, Hbomberguy dug up every skeleton on this guy’s closet and went to town on them, identifying and tracking down most, if not all of the original authors of the works this fucker plagiarized. And the internet blew the video sky high, which made a lot of eyes turn to this guy’s actions, in the wrong way (for him).

    • alwaysconfused@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      I’m usually not into social media drama but I did watch the video. It’s set up in a way so you don’t have to know any of the people mentioned and don’t really have to care about the people mentioned afterwards either. It does take a really close look into modern plagiarism, specifically through YouTube and video essays. I thought the way all the information was really well presented.

      Hbomberguy starts off with an example of a plagiarist who responded poorly to his accusations. This was a set up for the following examples and call outs of plagiarists which further explored the various reactions and attempts at damage control to preserve a creators reputation. That was the main focus for the first half of the video. The second half then focuses on James Somerset which others have already explained in this thread. What I found interesting was how James Somerset was very much a culmination of all the prior examples. Yet he was able to navigate his way around the accusations while continuing to profit off other peoples honest work. The fact that James Somerset is removing himself from the internet shows how thorough Hbomberguy was in documenting the plagiarism.

      The video also touches on a things like Content Mills and AI Generative Art which still falls under the topic of plagiarism.

      I’m not an artist or creator in any capacity, I just found the video interesting. Especially how the examples or accused reacted to the discoveries of plagiarism. However, I think artists and creators could probably benefit from watching this video to understand the possibilities of what happens to your work once you release it to the internet. Plagiarism seems to cause a lot more grief and frustration once you start to look further past the act of a person simply taking someone else’s work.

    • JowlesMcGee@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Hbomberguy is a popular YouTuber who recently released a video on plagiarism on YouTube. You can watch it here. I haven’t watched it myself yet, but I’m assuming the person in the article is someone he calls out in his video

      • Unaware7013@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Like half of the video is about this douche, he’s the post-reveal topic if your familiar with hbomb’s style

    • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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      11 months ago

      I also didn’t know the guy. This is the first video, nay movie I watched of him. Found it randomly in Nebula. And somehow was lured in to watch the whole 3 hours.

      • Gamma@beehaw.org
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        11 months ago

        Definitely watch his OOF.mp3 video if you liked the style, it was last year’s release