#james somerton has posted an 'apology' | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

bemusedlybespectacled · 6 months ago

Text

what's happening with James Somerton right now: a probably-incomplete primer

TW: suicide, including suicide as a threat and a manipulation tactic.

The short version:

James Somerton is a former Youtube essayist who focused entirely on queer history, queer media criticism, and queer issues in general. He is also a flagrant grifter who has made tens of thousands of dollars via fraud, both directly (lying about his finances to beg for money and getting donations for films he never even started making) and indirectly (stealing whole essays and articles and books, reading them out loud verbatim for his videos without indicating they were anything other than his own work, and then using the prestige he gained from using their work to get Patrons and sponsorships).

The story as told James and James apologists was that James attempted to apologize twice, was hounded mercilessly on the internet for weeks, and then, driven to the end of his rope, he posted a suicide note on Twitter, was MIA for several days, and from then on has been avoiding the internet.

The actual story, as revealed yesterday, was that James used two sockpuppet accounts to defend himself and parrot his talking points (again, while publicly claiming to be trying to take responsibility for his actions), using one to try to rebrand the con under a different name and another to deliberately stoke the panic caused by his suicide note. He was not only aware of the pain and anxiety he was causing people, but he encouraged it on one alt while hornyposting about his favorite movies on the other.

He is an unrepentant con artist who successfully used a suicide threat to prevent further interference with future cons. The only reason he was caught is because he is apparently incapable of going more than a couple of weeks without trying to get back in the internet spotlight, allowing people to tie his alts back to him. He lies for fun and profit and he should not be taken seriously, ever.

The long version:

In December 2023, Youtube essayist Hbomberguy (Harry Brewis) put out a four-hour-long video about plagiarism on the internet, and devoted two hours to addressing as much of JS's plagiarism as he could. I strongly recommend watching the entire thing, as the first two hours build on the concepts that he uses later in the video.

He also blew the whistle on James' fraud surrounding Telos, a studio James founded using thousands of dollars of IndieGoGo money that never actually produced any films despite him definitely working on them! Any day now they'll be released! Don't you worry!

A day later, Todd in the Shadows, a guy whose entire thing is music reviews, posted his own video debunking multiple outright lies that James had told about history, especially queer history. A few more days later, The Ace Couple, who run a podcast about asexuality, released an episode detailing how they'd lost $1.5k donating to Telos.

I have put the videos, Twitter threads, Patreon posts, and Reddit posts by other people discussing different aspects of James' fraud under the cut.

Every other time James was caught plagiarizing, prior to Harry's video, he would lie about it. Either he'd have some excuse (easily proven to be a lie) or he'd retreat to his favorite deflection: "I'm just being harassed because I'm gay."

This last lie was one he'd use not only to deflect accusations of plagiarism, but all criticism in general, no matter how trivial. Every time, the critic or someone associated with them would somehow dox him, or harass him, or send him death threats, or threaten to falsely accuse him of sexual assault.

This happened to The Ace Couple (who'd tried to correct him on something extremely acephobic in one of his videos), Jessie Gender (who'd tried to correct him when he claimed that there were no queer content creators on Nebula, given that she and a bunch of other queer creators were definitely on that platform), and the person who first blew the whistle on him stealing from Tinker Belles and Evil Queens by Sean Griffin (who was accused of being behind death threats he'd received, and hounded so harshly they had to leave Twitter).

It is important to note that every time James faced potentially damaging criticism, or even just a threat to his ego, suddenly he would claim to be harassed by people connected to the critic, including threats to his life. There has never been any proof of any threats being directed at him, nor evidence that, if the threats were real, that they are actually from people connected to the critic.

In the original video by Hbomberguy, Harry makes a compelling argument that James brought on a friend of his, Nick, as a co-writer specifically as a shield against accusations of plagiarism. "How dare you accuse me of plagiarism! Nick would NEVER do that!" This is even more apparent given subsequent developments which I will get into.

When evidence started dropping about different aspects of his fraud (not only Harry's video, but Todd in the Shadows' video debunking his misinfo, The Ace Couple's podcast about their experience donating to his fraudulent film studio, and Dan Olson's tweet thread about James' obvious lies about his finances), he went into hiding for two weeks, and then put out the first of two apologies. He then deleted that one and put out another one a few weeks later. And then he immediately deleted that one.

While his first apology was rambling, vague, and dramatic (lots of sniffing/crying), and his second was more measured, thought-out, and totally batshit (lots of hilariously and bizarrely implausible excuses for why he'd done what he'd done), they had roughly the same points:

Not ALL of his stuff was plagiarized! Actually, a lot of it wasn't! No specifics as to what, though!

Most of the stuff that was plagiarized was just a failure to properly cite sources, as he had no idea that putting someone's name in your end credits or video description (without specifying what parts are attributable to that person or disclosing that you are using their words verbatim) is not sufficient credit,

Also, he totally had permission, in some cases, to use their work verbatim prior to publishing the video (this is not true, and is disproven both in Harry's video and his own screenshots);

He definitely didn't commit fraud with Telos and would soon have a good explanation for where the money went! (he did not)

He was going to keep the videos up so that he could either donate the funds from any monetization to the fund Harry had set up for his victims or to "help Nick's portfolio" by showcasing his work;

He lost his best friend (i.e. Nick) over these allegations, who absolutely definitely wasn't a scapegoat, except Nick was also responsible for a lot of the stuff James was being criticized for;

He was going to keep the videos up so he could either donate the advertising proceeds to Harry's fund for his victims (first apology) or to "help Nick's portfolio" by showcasing the work he'd done; and

As a result of this entire ordeal, he had attempted either self-harm or suicide (he merely alluded to "doing something stupid").

Again, his response was to 1) downplay the severity of his actions or flat out ignore allegations against him, 2) come up with ridiculous excuses for his behavior, 3) throw Nick under the bus, and 4) claim to be in mortal danger. As far as I am aware, he has never taken any concrete action to make amends to any person, not even donating money to charity.

This was coupled with some kind of attempt to profit: monetizing his apology videos, closing and then reopening his Patreon right before the monthly charge cycle happened (totally to let people unfollow him, not at all as a grab for that money), creating a new Patreon under a different name, and changing his Twitter and Youtube handles to distance himself from the controversy while gathering new followers.

At one point (I forget if this was on Twitter or Instagram), he also said that someone had broken into his apartment due to the notoriety he'd received from Harry's video. I believe that was after his first apology, when people started to point out that he'd just changed the name of his Twitter and Youtube channel and had restarted a new Patreon under a pseudonym. (BTW, the pseudonym he used for his new Patreon was "The Gay Raconteur"; this will be important later).

It had what I think was the desired effect: any attempt at pointing out that he was rebranding his grift now came across as weirdly fixated on minor things he was doing, which certainly wasn't worth putting him in physical danger. (Again, he has never provided any proof of this happening, nor provided any evidence that these people allegedly threatening him were, in fact, in some way inspired by Hbomb).

So along comes March 5, 2024, and James posts a suicide note on his Twitter, saying that he is going to set up his videos to automatically publish (for Nick's portfolio), provide in some way for the ad revenue to go to a suicide prevention nonprofit, and then kill himself.

The immediate response from the internet was compassion and totally chilling any further criticism, since you might be callously criticizing a dead person. Harry and Kat worked for a couple of days to get a wellness check for him while a substantial section of the internet called them murderers.

On March 6, a day after the note was published, Nick tweeted that that he had cause to believe James was fine. Kat confirmed that James was safe on March 11. Due to the drama of the "suicide attempt," however, the chill on criticizing James stayed in place for months.

And then yesterday Lady Emily, one of the cowriters for Sarah Z., drops two more bombs:

James has not one but two alt accounts that he was using to rebrand and start over.

The first one was created between his first and second apologies, and originally was for "The Gay Raconteur" until he changed it to "Will"/"thatgayyouknow" and, later, "The Achillean Boy."

The second one was much older, under the pseudonym "Mikey JB," and used stolen pictures from Grindr instead of his own face. However, it is pretty obvious that it is, in fact, a sockpuppet account and not just some other person who happens to like James, as detailed below.

Both accounts, both between apologies and after his "suicide," talked about how criticism of James was unfair because the plagiarized stuff was "like a decade old" and repeating the same excuses that James had also made.

The "Mikey JB" account not only supported James, but actively threw Nick under the bus, saying that a criticized part of a video "reeks of his co-writer."

On March 6, the day after James' main Twitter posted the suicide note, The Achillean Boy account was hornyposting about Ryan Phillipe. James didn't even take a day or two off of Twitter. If he had been completely off Twitter for a couple of days, that could have been an indication that he really had hurt himself and was unable to access his phone, or at the very least unaware of the panic. But he wasn't. He was aware of it and did nothing. Actually, no! Worse than nothing!

On the same day (March 6), the Mikey JB account was actively contradicting Nick saying he was okay (they "haven't spoken in months" so there's no way Nick could know if he was alive) and saying that "people like you" i.e. his critics, "drove him to it." Not only did he ignore the panic he'd intentionally created, he actively drove it.

He saw people going emotionally through the wringer over the idea that they might have somehow caused his death, and intentionally made them keep thinking it. He say people calling his critics "murderers" for "driving him to his death," and he joined in.

Why am I explaining all of this? I want to make a couple of things extremely clear, and the context is necessary to my ultimate points, namely:

James Somerton didn't merely "credit people improperly;" he conned his followers out of more money than some people make in a year with the Telos con, while raking in thousands more per month on Patreon and buying expensive equipment, while claiming to be near insolvency and in desperate need of money.

James Somerton has never taken full responsibility for his actions or attempted to make amends. He has only ever tried to dodge responsibility, particularly by throwing Nick under the bus.

Every time he has ever been criticized, for any reason, he has lied about threats to his life to gain sympathy and quell criticism. This is a standard part of his MO. He has done this over and over and over again. At this point, I think if he says the sky is blue, someone should go out and check first before doing anything.

"But BB, what if he really is getting harassed/threatened or really is suicidal?"

So, okay: people who are attempting to manipulate you may use legitimate problems as a tool. It doesn't need to be fake to be effective - in fact, it might be more effective if it it's true. An abusive ex who says "if you leave me, I'll kill myself" and genuinely means it and actually attempts it (and possibly even succeeds!) is a lot harder to leave than someone who says the same thing but is clearly just bluffing, because the threat is real.

My rule of thumb in these cases is to treat the threat like it's real, without caving to the intended manipulation. Whether your ex is lying or telling the truth when they say, "I'll kill myself if you leave me," the appropriate response in both cases is to immediately call a mental health service or supportive family member. If it's fake, it's inconvenient for them; if it's real, you reacted appropriately. Your response needs to be the same regardless.

You don't get back together with them because it's a real threat (presumably you wouldn't do that if you knew it was fake and they were never in any danger), and you don't tell them that they're a piece of shit who should be dead (HOPEFULLY you wouldn't do that if you knew for a fact that they were telling the truth).

In this case, I am extremely confident in saying that he was coldbloodedly lying the entire time and was never once threatened, and certainly not to the degree he claimed to be. But even if he wasn't, that does not and should not change anyone's behavior in terms of holding him accountable.

And I mean actually holding him accountable: making sure he doesn't try to start a new con on new people, continuing to point out that he hasn't paid anyone back for his previous con (so long as it's still true), that sort of thing. It doesn't mean people should tell him he should go die for real or, I don't know, try to get him fired if he gets a job at Tim Horton's or Target or something else that's not fraud. That would be wrong regardless of whether he's actually in danger or not. The point is to avoid being cruel without negotiating with terrorists.

Video sources and links under the cut:

youtube

Links:

It's like Breaking Bad, but backwards: a brief history of how Somerton successfully screwed himself Dan Olson's Twitter thread about the financial fraud My Year With James: Todd's post explaining the backstory of his video (Patreon-locked) DJSO#: Dan Olson's breakdown of James' second apology (Patreon-locked) Lady Emily's Twitter threads revealing James' alt accounts, part 1 and part 2

#hbomberguy #internet drama #personal #james somerton

3K notes · View notes

unicornlamps · 9 months ago

Text

James Somerton measured response summarized

the video is MONITIZED and he opens up with this fact -he has reuploaded all his old videos with monetization as well -says that any money from these videos will be donated either to Hbomerguy's team OR wikipedia and trans lifeline

-he's been reaching out and making apologies to people -says he has made an apology to Jessie gender -admits to calling the police on a local person who he claims had threatened him. James says that this local person is local to him and has a violent record but he filed a police report.

-says that he didn't initially intend to plagerize people - says that he and nick would put in blocks of text into their scripts and then continue writing -due to memory issues James would forget which parts of the script were written by him and which were not -says he has memory issues due to a childhood head injury that also caused him to develop epilepsy

-says that when his mother died, he took over the legal proceedings because his father cannot read or write - the life insurance payment did not go through -James didn't get the insurance payout that he claims his mother wanted him to have in order to make a movie (????) -once the insurance payout didn't come through he decided to start Telos

-openly admits that the reason he would have been able to make a short film with such little money was because he was planning on hiring his former classmates and not paying them union wages

-says that a lot of delays with Telos happened because of him and Nick moving around. -says he's working with a producer now so there should be A Movie Out This Year (Jesus christ) -Claims that he will not be making any money off of this short film he will be releasing

-calls his apology video from December "horrendous" -says that there was a small but dedicated group of people that showed up to his house while he was hospitalized

-says he will post edited videos of his old work that do not feature any plagerized content - is also releasing some videos that he never got the chance to release before everything went to shit -is Also releasing a BRAND NEW VIDEO written "entirely by me" and says it's more of a documentary -wants to make documentaries about gay history -says that misinformation "made its way into past videos" but that it was "never malicious"

-starting a NEW patreon

-says this could have all been avoided if he had stepped away from the channel when his mother died

#james somerton #oh my god

2K notes · View notes

whencartoonsruletheworld · 9 months ago

Text

*bitch literally not only used clips but edited them so that it looked like he got them from somewhere else like oh my god

** toddintheshadows literally came in swinging with "so you wanna tell us how you came under the impression that the nazis were gay"

#nazi mention /#hbomberguy #james somerton #mine

564 notes · View notes

starwikia · 8 months ago

Text

so like are we done with the idea that james is a victim of the internet harassment mob or whatever you guys like to call it when in reality no one like forced him to be part of the public eye again. he had multiple times to disengage but he threw himself head first into the spotlight with some half assed apology where he used his dead mom, illiterate dad, and like 293 mental illnesses that he was in the right to do a widdle plagiarism but it’s not his fault! it’s everyone else’s fault for not being nice to him about it!!! how dare these people bring these issues to the public not thinking how james would feel about it! like ppl are forgetting there was notable period of time james went off air entirely. and every time he’s jumped back it’s always attempts to paint himself as the victim.

like be real for a second if anyone was weaponizing the internet harassment machine it was james somerton. he knew what he was doing when he posted that note. he knew the shit his victims would get for having the crime of (checks notes) voicing out their issues with him. he knew there’s people out there who are foaming at their mouths to use anything they can get their hands on as a “gotcha!” at hbomberguy (right wing people yes, but don’t act like it’s just them i’ve seen plenty of lefties trying to prove they’re superior to harry). they don’t give a shit about james, not really. he’s the dude who hbomb did a “hit piece” (yes that’s a term i’ve seen people use) and that’s what matters.

not to mention the writing that’s also very clearly targeting nick who’s basically cut ties with him at this point. james pushed all the burden on nick by saying it’s their fault, actually. he’s one of the co-writers and everything going to shit was nick’s fault when they had the audacity to move. james is faultless! with james still trying to monetize stolen content on the blatant lie that he’s doing this for nick’s sake as a portfolio. acting as if nick isn’t an sentient human being who could upload their own content, as if nick would even want to be associated with james at this point. this isn’t a teenager being harassed for an honest mistake, this is a 35-year old con artist who’s stolen hundreds of thousands and peddled the most vile shit as actual history but realized he was in deep shit and weaponizes very serious mental health issues as a “i’m just a poor little gay baby!! my alter ego did it!!!”

for the record if you’re among the people who tried to wash down james’ crimes as “he just did plagiarism!! it wasn’t that bad of a crime!” fuck you, man. i’m not kidding.

the fact i’ve witnessed people whitewash his acts of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism and misogyny (in fact i’m probably still missing a few things here), and say he’s being harassed by the internet just because he stole articles makes it so clear they have no fucking idea what they’re talking about. his shit isn’t fucking erased just bc he realized that he has to handle the consequences. he’s grasping at anything he can at this point to make sure that even if he’s not coming back, he’s sure as hell trying to take anyone he fucking can down with him.

he doesn’t get a second chance to be a content creator at this point. he doesn’t get to show himself to do better. he needs to fucking leave. and if he tries to publicly make himself the victim then he better know that he’s going to get public backlash.

if anything situation proves to me that he can never be trusted with a public platform ever again because he will immediately guilt people into feeling sorry for him.

#i’m going to be bitchy about this for the record #james somerton #hbomberguy #the funniest option is if james fakes his death like a fourth time and someone takes a pic of him in like a burger king or something.#updated i’m not 100% sure on nicks pronouns but i’m using they them just in case #update 2: the way i was proven fucking right immediately after posting this. you people are not real.

518 notes · View notes

douwatahima · 11 months ago

Text

sorry to invoke james somerton again but i just watched his "apology" video and the way he addresses the criticism to his utena video has been scratching at my brain. for this who don't want to watch (which is so so fair), here's what he says:

"we ended up making a lot of videos we didn't want to make because people were asking for them and so there were a lot of videos we made that we didn't want to make and i think those videos are very clear on which ones those were. one of them never got officially released, it was released to patrons. some patrons have shared it to other people before all the videos went private and a lot of people hate the analysis nick and i did on it and so maybe it's good that that never got properly released because maybe it would have hurt people and i don't want that."

so, not directly saying he's talking about the utena video…but he's talking about the utena video lol. the thing that really gets me is like…look. full disclosure. i used to be subscribed to james somerton long before this whole thing blew up. i wasn't necessarily a big fan of his video style, but he talked about a lot of media i enjoy and i liked his analysis (that wasn't really his, but i didn't know that at the time) so i followed him.

the thing about him was he was always asking his followers for shows he should do videos on, especially anime, and then not long after making those posts he would post videos of "things to come" including like…every anime people suggested. not all of these shows ended getting videos made, but the point is james really set himself up as the queer anime video essayist; constantly promising videos about every show people told him they wanted.

and a lot of people loved that about him! a lot of the big names talking about anime on youtube are people doing season by season breakdowns or people talking about big shonen titles, and here was someone consistently pushing out long form analyses on less talked about shows! great! but to find out that not only was a lot of what he said plagiarized, but also that a lot videos were just shat out to appeal to his audience without any care or passion? just to get more views and more money on patreon? that's literally crazy when you're talking about something usually as involved as video essays.

on top of that i'm about 95% certain him doing an utena essay was a patreon tier goal (hence why that video was released there first). he literally heard queer anime fans asking him en masse for a video about one of the best queer anime of all time, decided to set it as a patreon goal, and then literally boxed himself into doing a video on an anime he didn't care about because he promised it to the people who payed him to be the "queer anime guy".

and the thing is he 100% didn't need to do that. he didn't need to "make a lot of videos he didn't want to make because people were asking for them". i follow a ton of video essayists who get requests for videos all the time! that doesn't mean they have to, or even should, make them if they're not passionate about the topic! video essays, when actually done well and with integrity, are hard work. that's why most good video essayists take a lot of time between videos! to think that this guy just took every possible suggestion, dangled them like carrots in front of his audience, that made a bunch of passionless, mediocre videos to solidify his station as the queer video essayist to watch is just…upsetting and disheartening tbh.

anyway if you want some actually good analysis of revolutionary girl utena, my favourites are "is revolutionary girl utena still relevant?" and "why revolutionary girl utena still slaps" by stushi, and "the shadow play gays" podcast (note: this podcast is run on the same feed as another podcast called "bitter jurors". you may have to scroll back a bit to find "shadow play gays", it started in 2021 if that helps, but i promise you it's worth it).

#anime: utena #james somerton #there's obviously more important things in the apology video than this #like him straight up not using the word plagiarism or him throwing his supposed best friend under the bus continually #but this just irked me in a particular way you know?

377 notes · View notes

chaosandstardust · 8 months ago

Text

First off, I really hope James Somerton is OK. And I fully intend for this to be my last post about him, at least until we hear news.

The conversation around this is around Hbomberguy's 'responsibility' over this. Which, he has none. If James chooses to take his own life, that is his decision at the end of the day. That is not hbomb's fault. I know that sounds harsh, but as a person who used to have a 'friend' who would constantly tell me that they were going to kill themselves if I didn't talk them out of it, I maintain that it's not his fault.

The narrative around it being his fault really just screams to me: how dare you call out a creator for causing harm? Don't you understand that you're causing harm? You need to be more responsible with your platform.

But I just rewatched the video today, and Hbomb is absolutely fair in his criticism. Harsh? Yes, extremely. But he's fair. He also goes out of his way to say that we should not be harassing James and nobody should go after him. And I've been in the Hbomb subreddit, there are very clear rules about posting about James (and they had died down before the second apology happened).

When people bring up larger creators responsibility, it always just seems to this abstract concept that nobody can really pin down. But what about James's responsibility for his behaviour? James was called out multiple times, not only by members of his audience but also by the writers he stole from. Clearly he wasn't going to stop unless it became impossible to ignore.

"Well, hbomb knows how the internet works! People were going to harrass him!" Well, so does James Somerton. He knew the risk he was taking, he knew that people were noticing the plagiarism, and yet he continued to do it. Plus being misogynistic and spreading misinformation on top. (And as pointed out by a lovely person in the replies, he regularly sent harassment campaigns against people who called him out.)

In his patreon post about making his video, Todd in the Shadows describes how this was basically an open secret among a lot of video essayists. If this was just going to remain an open secret among creators, isn't that also an irresponsible use of their platform? Shouldn't the audience of a creator be made aware of their bad behavior? Shouldn't creators hold each other accountable?

Again. I hope James is okay. I hope he logs off the internet for good. But it is not Hbomb's fault, and the answer of "well Hbomb shouldn't have done it because now James may kill himself" just feels manipulative to me. Like did y'all want him to just continue letting James steal from other creators?

#james somerton #hbomberguy #todd in the shadows #tw suicide #cw suicide #suicide

244 notes · View notes

eyecantread · 11 months ago

Text

In case James Somerton tries to release a second manipulative apology video, here's some stuff I haven't seen shared on Tumblr. In the initial wake of HBomberguy's video release on December 3, Somerton made the following post to Patreon that was quickly deleted:

Here he dismisses Plagiarism and You(tube) as "not bringing up anything new since the last time he was accused of plagiarism" and tries to pull the same victim card as before when he complained that a "big creator was unfairly targeting him." This is a rehash of previous controversies and criticisms he's received such as when he went after Nebula for "not wanting to platform him because he's queer (lol wut)" in 2022 and lashing out at Dan Olson on Twitter when Dan called him out for the Patreon shit in April 2023 (James begged his viewers to support him on Patreon because he claimed to be in dire financial straights and then bought a $5k+ camera). The man is very versed in DARVO.

The Ace Couple, a pair of Asexual podcasters (who you should totally listen to btw) detailed the Nebula debacle in a recent episode, as well as their own interaction with Somerton as financial backers of his film project who disagreed with the content of one of his videos. The issue? Aside from the shenanigans with Telos, the Indiegogo film studio the Ace Couple backed, Somerton had said in a video that asexual people don't get sent to conversion therapy, which is categorically not true. Naturally, he resorted to his tried and true tactic of accusing the Ace Couple of attacking him.

youtube

He then released a second statement later in the evening of the release of Hbomberguy's video:

All of this on top of him subtly throwing his cowriter under the bus for it in his apology video! Statements like, "I'm not trying to throw Nick under the bus" don't work when you also say things like, "things that weren't true I didn't write or believe made it into the videos!" What other conclusion are viewers supposed to make about shit like 'American soldiers lusting after Nazi bodies' and the snarking misogyny that can't be traced back to a source other than Nick wrote it? Somerton is using Nick as a fall guy and trying to gaslight everyone into thinking he's not and it's transparent and pathetic.

The man absolutely does not deserve another chance and any claims he makes that he is seeking money to reimburse the queer creators he erased by plagiarizing their work should not be trusted. The guy has zero credibility, don't give him the benefit of the doubt.

#lgbtqia #Hbomberguy #James Somerton #jenny nicholson #Dan Olson #Folding Ideas #Twitter #Reddit #Patreon #Todd in the Shadows #video essayist #Youtube

275 notes · View notes

bogunicorn · 8 months ago

Text

all of their bad writing and spreading of misinfo aside, i do genuinely feel for nick in this situation. the way that james has discussed nick - alternately fawning over them and using them as a shield, passively blaming them for "all the bad stuff in the videos" while trying about how they don't speak to him anymore - pinged to me as exceptionally manipulative and shitty from the very first "apology" video.

somerton's manipulation of his audience and mistreatment of other creators is pretty gross and obviously morally shit, but the way he's spoken about nick post-hbomb-and-todd-videos has struck me as exceptionally vile. naming nick in his suicide note as someone who's alternately to blame for his suicide (because he lost "his only friend") and also someone he's ~looking after even in death~ (scheduling videos/keeping videos up "for nick's resume", even when all things indicate that nick wants nothing to do with the videos or james anymore, let alone as points on a resume) is, in all honesty, abusive. it casts james as both victim and martyr in his (ex-)friendship with nick and implies that if nick had just stood by their friendship in this trying time, maybe he wouldn't feel the need to die, and don't you wish you'd managed to work it out, nick? aren't you sad that you weren't more forgiving and supportive before he died, or so he wouldn't have to?

i hope that nick has a strong support system and sets strong boundaries with james going forward. i hope they have access to a therapist, or at the very least close friends or family that they can lean on here. as someone who's had a partner who frequently threatened to commit suicide and attempted while i was present, i know how deeply traumatizing this kind of thing can be and how long it takes to get out of your system.

#bog post #cw suicide #james somerton

151 notes · View notes

robinsversion · 11 months ago

Text

So to recount everything that’s happened in the past 24 or so hours, give or take:

James Somerton releases an “apology” and reactivates his patreon

James almost immediately deletes said apology, deactivates his patreon again, and puts out a community post statement saying that he was obviously not in the right headspace to make that video

A major author in the self-publishing space, Mark Dawson, is accused of mass plagiarism in his books (hey James you have a friend)

Todd in the Shadows breaks records (well his own) by uploading his Worst Hit Songs of 2023 video earlier than he’s ever released a Worst list before despite putting it on hold momentarily to make a nearly-two hour video debunking a ton of misinformation spread in James’s videos. Oh, and this video has a reference to James in the intro.

#plus some personal discord drama but yall probably don’t care about that #someone who turned out to be 45 was masquerading as a 30 year old for no fuckin reason #and planned to meet another person in the server irl and not tell them their real age #damn discord drama you are like nothing else #except maybe author drama #James Somerton #hbomberguy #todd in the shadows #why are you booing me i’m right

208 notes · View notes

righteousdelusions · 11 months ago

Text

has anyone posted Dan's comment in James Somerton apology video

#james somerton #ajsjsj #highligjt #izzy.txt

212 notes · View notes

getvalentined · 11 months ago

Note

everyone seems to know something about James Somerton that i don't. the notes on your post are full of people saying "sigh THIS guy again", and i would like to know if he's done something other than make those queer theory youtube videos which seem extemporaneous in nature. i would google it but i trust some of you more than reddit

James Somerton was recently exposed as having completely plagiarized probably 90% of his work—from Wikipedia, news outlets, smaller queer creators, and at least two dead queer creators. (The last one is particularly egregious, in my opinion, given his extremely fucked up claim a while back that all the Cool Gays died during the AIDS Crisis, apparently including the authors whose work he stole.)

You can see the entire rundown in HBomberguy's video Plagiarism and You(Tube), which has a staggering runtime of almost four hours, a solid half of which is dedicated entirely to James Somerton. The first two hours of the video cover other cases, one in meatspace (Harlan Ellison and Ben Bova's landmark case against Paramount and ABC over the plagiarism in Future Cop) and then some smaller instances on YouTube (Filip, Internet Historian, iilluminaughtii). The second half, timestamped starting here, is exclusively about James—and while it goes over the plagiarism, touches on the misogyny and misinformation*, and briefly covers his various other grifts, it doesn't cover everything.

*For more on the misinformation aspect, Todd in the Shadows did a two hour video exclusively about that!

Assuming James Somerton's entire body of paying supporters on Patreon are at the $1 tier, that's around $3k per month. Since we know that isn't the case, it's probably closer to 5-10 times that amount. This doesn't include ad revenue from YouTube, any sponsorships, or his crowdfunding efforts to produce films that have never come into being. This man has been raking in over $100k per year, at minimum, by stealing words from other creators, pretending they're his own, and then lying every single time he's been called out for it. He claimed one person doxxed him and sent him death threats, although all they'd actually done was engaged in a firm but polite conversation on Twitter about how he needs to do more than plug in a credit at the end of a video description if he's just reading out of someone else's book.

Yesterday he posted a trash apology video where he started off by claiming he'd just gotten out of the hospital after making an attempt on his own life, talked about moving back home, referred to what he'd done as "poor citation practices," and said that he'd be reopening his Patreon and putting all his old videos back up so that he could donate the ad revenue to Hbomb's fund to compensate the authors that James himself stole from.

So yeah. Uh. Fuck that guy.

#james somerton #hbomberguy #todd in the shadows #youtube drama #I guess #plagiarism #how do I even tag this #I think I did more research on this write-up #than James has done in his entire career

154 notes · View notes

therecordconnection · 11 months ago

Text

Some Thoughts Regarding James Somerton

I know I'm rather late to the conversation and some of these points may have already been talked about in some form elsewhere on the site, but if you don't mind, I have some thoughts of my own regarding the subject of hbomberguy's latest video and I would like to take time to voice. This blog is normally dedicated to music and music writing, not posts about disgraced Youtubers, so I apologize for the detour in regularly scheduled programming.

First, I think it's important to make the distinction that Somerton isn't just a case of "problematic Youtube guy got owned... twice" but rather a genuine case of academic dishonesty, which is several grades above youtuber drama. This isn't something like Tati Westbrook getting angry at James Charles for sucking dick and cock at a birthday dinner. This isn't Ethan Klein and Trisha Paytas or whomever having beef. It's not Charlie Critikal talking about some stupid drama of the day or someone just using Youtube videos to say a bunch of gross and problematic stuff. No. This is a fucking grifter who not only lied, cheated, and stole his way to the top, but also did it by using a vulnerable community that has long had their voices snuffed out and their history completely rewritten or wiped from existence altogether. What history he didn't plagiarize, he twisted and outright lied about. He just made shit up to suit his own gross agenda.

A lot of things about James Somerton left me absolutely livid, and I admit that I didn't even know who he was until hbomberguy's video. I think what makes me the most mad is that I went to undergrad and grad school with a number of jackoffs that were just like him. People that didn't give a shit about the art of writing and research and just treated academia and the pursuit of knowledge and how to critically engage with art and media into a stupid game that only chumps take seriously. Somerton pisses me off because I AM a writer. When I write the Ranting and Raving series of posts on here, that stuff doesn't just fly out of my ass. I have to sit with a song, study it, research it, and make sure I know what I'm talking about so I don't look like a clown. I also have to make sure that I link and credit where I'm getting information from. It's not just important for my own satisfaction, but it's important for anyone who stumbles upon a post on this blog and takes time out of their day to read it and/or reblog it.

I think that's the part that makes me the most mad. That he and Nick Hergott have so little respect for the work that goes into researching and writing about a topic that other people are really passionate about. Spending time with something, studying it, and figuring out an interesting and unique perspective on it is a great feeling. Sharing what you find or how you see something with others and having them either like or reblog your work is an even greater feeling. That's my writing that somebody enjoyed and thought was worth sharing with others. Fuck fuck fuck Somerton for thinking you can take a million little shortcuts to get to that result.

While I'm on the topic, I don't think Hergott gets a pass for Somerton's actions. I've seen some people make the argument that he isn't complicit and there's a chance that he genuinely had no clue that Somerton was doing this... but I don't buy it. There's no way he didn't know and wasn't in on it in some capacity. Even if he wasn't, as Todd in the Shadows pointed out in his video on this situation, Nick is, whether you like it or not, an accomplice to Somerton's lies and he is complicit in the blame, due to his name being included in the "Written By" credit of a lot of those videos with Somerton. The way I see it, I find it hard to believe that he couldn't have known. I imagine part of Hergott's signing on with Somerton was that in the event that shit hits the fan, Hergott would be used as a fall guy to help deflect accusations of plagiarism.

To return to Somerton, in a way, he's almost worse than AI/Chat-GPT because, really, an AI has no morals. It can only do what someone punches in and tells it to do. Somerton is a guy who does have genuinely insidious ambitions and knows fully what he's doing. That shit about "only the boring gays who didn't mess around in the eighties survived the aids crisis" is the wildest and grossest accusation I've seen about gay people in some time. The wild takes about the Nazis (especially all the wrong things he said about fitness relating to Nazis) should also raise a lot of red flags. I'll say this though, I don't blame anybody in the slightest for not fully realizing Somerton was saying shit like that or doing all of what he was doing until hbomberguy and Todd presented it a certain way and made it all very clear. It's easy to not notice it when Somerton buries it by ripping stuff off from other, better writers. So, if you were someone who was a big fan and was genuinely shocked by the things Todd had to fact-check and debunk and worried that you're a bad person for having not caught any of them, trust me, you're not. Nobody should blame you for not catching it. <3

While I'm ranting about this, I want to say that Somerton's patreon grift was really gross to see exposed as well (through Dan Olson's really great thread, which can be read here). I understand the allure of wanting to buy expensive gear and thinking that's somehow needed in order to make Good Content™️, but there's a stark difference between someone saying "I think I need to shell out a little money in order to get something of higher quality" and "I need to have the appearance of looking like my stuff is being made with high quality stuff." As someone who has been experimenting with trying to turn his writing into video, I did some audio tests this weekend and realized that maybe (just maybe) the old Turtle Beach microphone my brother left behind when he moved out isn't going to cut it. If I want to record something I can be happy with, I'm gonna have to bite it and look at getting something decent, but somewhat affordable from a Best Buy or something. You don't need the best tech in order to make something great, but you can't use copper tools forever if you have the means to be able to enjoy using iron ones, you know?

Somerton's grift reminded me of guys like Onision and Spoony. Grifters who looked to Patreon and other creator donation sites for an easy pay day and would bitch and cry and complain that it's your fault when they don't get it. Somerton making poor financial choices ON TOP of it being money that he scammed from a community of people that were looking to invest in a voice that they genuinely thought was speaking for them in a meaningful way, only makes the grift more disgusting and foul. Even if he's just "some Youtuber," Somerton still had a responsibility to his audience to present queer topics in an ACCURATE manner. He didn't and we all have the right to be angry with him about it. This isn't just silly youtuber controversy, this is academic dishonesty in it's purest form and if it gets you expelled from any college program, it should get you expelled from being able to show your face on Youtube as well, which is how Somerton's story will end.

I've been on the internet for many years. I've seen some of the worst, most problematic creators of all time find a way to bounce back from all kinds of controversy and find some kind of success again. I don't think that will happen for Somerton. Not one bit. What he's done is something you can never come back from, no matter how much you try to reform. If two different youtubers can make two completely different videos about why you suck, I don't think there's any recovery. What happened this weekend is a now classic episode of World's Most One Sided Fist Fights Caught on Film.

This post has gone on for a while, so let me wrap it up. I mean this without hyperbole and without exaggeration: James Somerton is a disgrace to both media criticism and the art of video creation. I genuinely hope he remains propped up as a cautionary tale of what can happen when you fully decide you have absolutely no respect for the Humanities and decide that lying, cheating, and stealing your way to the top, all while scamming and being incredibly shitty towards a community that has long suffered and is STILL suffering greatly to this day, is better than any kind of academic honesty. I understand that Somerton is just "some youtube fraud" to some people, but the problem lies more in what Somerton's actions and motivations represent. I really think hbomberguy's video on plagiarism is going to do a lot of good. It's going to help a lot of people avoid doing it as well as help people become more aware of what it really looks like and all the damage it can do.

Thank you for your time.

P.S. It doesn't really need to be said at this point, but make sure you support the queer voices and writers that did the work Somerton thought was good enough to just copy and paste into a video. They're the ones that suffered the most through all of this and my heart goes out to them, from one writer to another. <3

#original post #plagarism and you(tube)#james somerton #hbomberguy #todd in the shadows

157 notes · View notes