#plagiarism

[that-annoying-raven-the-sequel]

Is this a bad idea? Absolutely.

Do I want to do it anyways? YES, PLEASE!

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted���and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

PLEASE check my later versions of this post via my main page to make sure you have the latest version of this post before you reblog. All the information I’ve been able to gather is in my reblogs below, and it's frustrating to see the old version getting passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much!

[chaotic-neutral-knitter]

"well you see when I copied that passage word for word it was an honest mistake due to my bad memory" is not a new excuse btw

From The Cassandra Clare Plagiarism Debacle, Part V

nor is "but I thought citing it as 'inspiration' would be enough!"

From The Cassandra Clare Plagiarism Debacle, Part XI

[salty-hakuouki]

Plagiarism on my fic : my statement

A few weeks ago, widemushroom (may be reffered as Saya or Autumn since these are other pseuds of her) contacted me because she had a « hater » commenting on her fic and accusing her of Plagiarising my fanfic « Memoirs of a Sword » and especially the end of the first part « the Kyoto Chapters » and the beginning of the second part « The War Chapters ».

https://archiveofourown.org/works/39929310

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43357633

Her work, « Twenty-Three Nights » is a direct inspiration of my fic, with my consent. She also used my fic for her « Kazama Headcanons » because, as most of us know, she doesn’t play the game and so, she chose my fic as premise for her headcanons. For that, she didn’t let me know. Since the drama, she added disclaimers on AO3 for this fic as well, crediting the inspiration and denying that I associate with her fics. That was at my request, to not have further misunderstanding.

Since this is not dying out and is still discussed, and since my comments left on her « Kazama Headcanon » fic trying to clear the misunderstanding were deleted by Saya under her fic, I am posting here a copy of my statement, that I had screenshoted.

Hi, I’m Neo. Since this comment section turned into an argument, I decided, with Saya’s permission, to break the silence.

Indeed, the first paragraph here describe not the Saito route as stated, but event from « Memoirs of a Sword - Kyoto Chapters », my fan fiction.

The setting for the story depicted here takes its roots specifically in the five last chapters of this fic.

I agree a mention would have been a nice touch, since it originated from my work, and I understand you wanted to protect me and my intellectual property (although I am not sure this concept exists for fics). Still, I think a bit of politeness and respect would have been more civil.

To be completely honest, I do not like « Twenty Three Nights », and have been disappointed in its development. This is part of the reason why I don't mind having my name not associated with Saya's fics. Saya knows that very well since she's been working on that fic for years by now, and we've been in contact sometimes. But my opinion on her works doesn't matter. Because the author is Saya, and she writes the story SHE wants to read. I'm glad my fic inspired another author, and I don't feel like I'm « owed » a story I like because of it. I never commented on this fic past the first chapter (which I proofread for Saya, before she decided to continue on her own) because as my mom used to say « if you can't say anything nice, best choice is to not say anything at all ». Still, I reiterate that Saya and I are cool. It's her story, her choices, her writing style and headcanons. And I support all writers who are confident enough to share their stories with the world on this website.

I appreciate the fact you were defending me and my story, but if it happens again, I'd be really appreciative if we could discuss the issue before going on insulting someone else on my behalf. I don't need a knight in shining armor, and would rather open a discussion, and involve Saya in it, to clear any misunderstandings.

After this statement, the « hater » which turned out to be just a teenager girl with a strong sense of justice, understood the issue and just said that she didn’t like what Saya did with my story and the lack of credit given. She agreed to drop the issue.

Saya took that personally, and even though I asked her multiple times to drop it, and that she could disable « guest comments », she was set on finding out who the person was. It took a turn for the worse, and it escalated. The teenager was really uncomfortable and asked Saya to leave them alone multiple times too, and so I stepped in again, hoping, by sharing my socials, to have a conversation with this teenager and have this issue dropped. That’s when Saya decided to erase my comments, called me a bully and a hater because I wasn’t on « her side ».

Saya and I went no contact, at my request, following that event. I was tired of interacting with someone who sees only people and stuff as black and white, and felt like whatever I do for Saya, it would never be enough, by her standards. But she is still free, as stated, to use my fanfics for whatever she wants to do with them. Normally, she should be using a disclaimer on her all works which use my content to avoid further criticism and harassment. I hope she’ll continue to use them, for her own peace of mind, so that she won’t be accused of plagiarism again.

[penig]

Weirdly, my two results are The Ghost Sitter and the Italian translation of Switching Well. The Italian translation shouldn't surprise me so much - obviously you want your text generator to imitate more than one language semi-coherently - but I think it's that they got the translation and not the original. A side effect of their collection method, no doubt.

I doubt they were chosen in any meaningful sense. For one thing, we're talking about people who don't place any value on written communication and presumably don't read for pleasure. For another it's a lot less work and expense to scoop up whatever's handy - grab special offers on amazon, buy a shelf of remainders from Half-Price, do a search on some criterion at the library and borrow as many e-books as you can, hit the hole-in-the-wall where your mother-in-law buys a shopping bag full of Harlequins one week and turns them back in for store credit on the next shopping bag full Harlequins the next, some even cheaper and more random method that would horrify me if I knew it - than to actually spend time and thought selecting books.

Authors, you’re going to want to check this database…

Thank you, my dear @jtargaryen18 for sharing this info too. 💕 I’m sorry your books were stolen as well.

Meta, which is Facebook, Instagram and Threads, is now involved in a massive lawsuit. Internal memos have been released that prove Meta intentionally stole hundreds of thousands of books - including all of mine - to data scrape and train their AI. Here’s a link to see if they’ve stolen your work too: bit.ly/4iRK92t

There’s a class action suit just about to be launched, they’re waiting for the judge to determine if this is protected under the Fair Use laws, which it is absolutely not.

I am begging you to see that piracy is inexcusable, whether it’s a single person who doesn’t want to pay for the book to a despicable multi trillion dollar corporation who thinks they’re entitled to take your creative work for free. Authors write because we love it, because we love sharing these stories with you, because we love your reactions so much.

Because this is our community.

But we’re also supporting families, and piracy, plagiarism and theft are inexcusable, no matter what the circumstances. Here’s another helpful link to the Author’s Guild info: bit.ly/41S55zz

[sheafrotherdon]

I'm reading an article in The New Yorker about potential plagiarism in romantasy land and they talked to a number of authors to provide context. Including . . . . Cassandra Clare.

I just . . . you talked to CC in a story about alleged plagiarism in fiction? I have passed away from a terminal case of irony.

[one-time-i-dreamt]

I was forced to read a Donald Trump autobiography for one of my college courses. It was just the plot of Boss Baby. He thought nobody would notice. 

[robinsversion]

How I sleep knowing I always cite my sources:

(First image from the film Drip Dippy Donald (1948); second image from season 4, episode 3 of the Simpsons, “Homer the Heretic” (1992).)

[coffinwoodx]

like witnessing the french revolution beheadings firsthand in the 1800s

[gayshitanddadjokes]

Hbomberguy literally has me writing this assignment thinking "hey did I add any actual information to this topic or am I just rephrasing this article?" and now this fucking 12 slide PowerPoint has used eight sources that I'm using to draw from to get a varied sense of what actually happened and being able to make my own claims based off of multiple sources of information. This assignment would have taken three less hours if I'd done it five days ago. This is an improvement.

[oliveroctavius]

In Plagiarism and You(Tube), Hbomb says "If you consider something so obscure you can get away with stealing it, you do not respect it." Save that line for the next time someone tries to tell you that Roy Lichtenstein brought respect to comics as art.

It's since been pointed out that while Lichtenstein did copy one of Russ Heath's drawings of an airplane getting hit, the painting depicted above was actually copied off Irv Norvick, because Lichtenstein did this so many times to so many comic artists.

In Lichtenstein's defense, he was doing this in a time when comic artists frequently weren't even credited in the issues themselves. In his condemnation, he never even tried to check, nor has he made any move to pay or credit any of the comic artists who recognized their own work later on. Rather than elevating the "low art" of comics, he was widening the gap of financial success and respect even further.

The Hbomberguy of this story is art historian David Barsalou, who has now spent decades tracking down the original art and the names of the original artists used in Lichtenstein's most famous output. Here's the flickr gallery for the Deconstructing Roy Lichtenstein project. Frequently copied were Tony Abruzzo, Ted Galindo, Mike Sekowsky, Joe Kubert, Jerry Grandenetti, and dozens more Golden Age artists who aren't very well known in comics circles, let alone art history books. Many of them died in poverty. That's something that the Hero Initiative, mentioned in Russ Heath's comic above, aims to prevent.

Also, Lichtenstein didn't even paint Ben-Day dots. That's a specific thing.

[thetreetopinn]

Sources for Somerton's Plagiarism from Hbomberguy's Video (as much as I could get)

I went back through Harry's video, focused entirely on the sources James Somerton pulled from in the hopes of creating as much of a comprehensive list as I could--though my Google-Fu is not very strong. I did however find something I thought was forever lost and that made me very happy--specifically the magazine Midlands Zone containing the column by Steven Spinks that Harry poignantly used as an illustration of gay erasure... while Somerton uses it to sound like HE is waxing remorseful about the very subject.

This is not a complete list, I'm sure. For one thing, I was only able to attempt to pull sources that Harry himself mentioned in the video. Surely there's so very much more out there. I expect there to be a great deal more internet archeology to unearth just how much writing and culture Somerton has stolen like he's the British Museum of Natural History but for gay people.

- - - - -

Harry's list of mentioned youtubers:

Alexander Avila - https://www.youtube.com/@alexander_avila Matt Baume - https://www.youtube.com/@MattBaume Khadija Mbowe - https://www.youtube.com/@KhadijaMbowe Lady Emily - https://www.youtube.com/@LadyEmilyPresents Shanspeare - https://www.youtube.com/@Shanspeare RickiHirsch - https://www.youtube.com/@RickiHirsch VerilyBitchie - https://www.youtube.com/@verilybitchie

Harry created a convenient playlist of videos by these and other people he wants to bring to everyone's attention.

Please give them your support.

- - - - -

Midlands Zone Magazine - Column by Steven Spinks

After a great deal of searching, I found an archive of the "Midlands Zone" magazine, where you can read through past issues dating all the way back to February 2014. I have also found the issue from which Somerton took Spinks' poignant discussion of gay erasure: Overall archive Specific Issue - Pages 16-17

It will not allow you to download it, but you can read it exactly as it appeared in print form.

- - - - -

My best effort to find the exact book or article Somerton lifted from to be able to get attention to the original writers

Tinker Bells and Evil Queens By Sean Griffin

The Celluloid Closet By Vito Russo Wikipedia article about the book Wikipedia article about the documentary My weak google-fu could not find where you can access the book or documentary. Check your local municipal or university library for book or documentary, or if you know a good source for one or both, please reblog with it added

Camp and the Gay Sensibility By Jack Babuscio

The Groundbreaking Queerness of Disney's Mulan By Jes Tom Personal site with links to social media accounts

Why Rebel Without a Cause was a milestone for gay rights By Peter Howell

Why "The Craft" is still the best Halloween coming out movie By Andrew Park

Opinion: From facehuggers to phallic tails, is 'Alien' one of the queerest films ever? By Dani Leever

Women and Queerness in Horror: Jennifer's Body By Zoe Fortier

[Pride 2019] We Have Such Sights to Show You: Hellraiser and the Spectrum of Queerness By Alejandra Gonzalez

Revealing the Hellbound Heart of Clive Barker's 'Hellraiser' By Colin Arason

Queering James Cameron's Aliens (1986) By Bart Bishop

Demeter and Persephone in space: transformation, femininity, and myth in the 'Alien' films By David Greven

Fears of a millennial masculinity: Scream's queer killers By David Greven (Scholarly site, unable to access original work, offers a way to request a full copy of the text in PDF)

Queer Subtext in Stephen King's It - Part 1: 'Reddie' Character Analysis By Rachel Brands Rachel is the very unfortunate lady who found out she was being stolen from because she supported Somerton through Patreon and saw one of his videos early with her writing--lacking any form of citation or credit

How 'It: Chapter Two' Leaves Richie Tozier Behind By Joelle Monique

When Horror Becomes Strength: Queer Armor in Stephen King's 'IT' By Alex London

Why Queer People Love Witchcraft By Amanda Kohr

'The Favourite' Queers The Past And The Present By Giorgi Plys-Garzotto

(Wuko) Crush (Mako x Wu) By MoonFlower on YouTube

5 Terrible Movies With Awesome Hidden Meanings By J.F. Sargent

The Radicalization of Sexuality: The Queer Casae of Jeffrey Dahmer By Ian Barnard

Netflix's 'Dahmer' backlash highlights ethical issues in the platform's obsession with true crime By Shivani Dubey

The Possible Disturbing Dissonance Between Hajime Isayama's Beliefs and Attack on Titan's Themes Original Article by "Seldom Musings" (Author has made all posts not related to Attack On Titan private and has retired from the blog)

Everyone Loves Attack on Titan. So Why Does Everyone Hate Attack on Titan? By Gita Jackson

- - - - -

The following people are otherwise named in the video. There are no direct citations of articles or books by them in said video. I am unable to guarantee that I have identified the correct individual.

Darren Elliott-Smith Michaela Barton David Church Claire Sisco King Amanda Howell Jessica Roy

- - - - -

Telos announced and cancelled a film likely based on this book: The Final Girl Support Group - By Grady Hendrix

- - - - -

I refrained from including certain sources.

First off only focusing on Somerton's work.

Secondly not including anything that might be visible enough to not require amplifying their voice (I cannot speak for all of those I have found links to, but journalism is frequently a thankless job).

Thirdly any source that is of a nature that is antithetical to the very existence of the queer community, such as the right-leaning source that didn't make it into Somerton's video, but Harry was able to identify as a source he had considered using.

If you feel I have missed a mentioned source--or you know of a source from material that was not covered in Harry's video--please do not hesitate to reblog with added details.

- - - - -

Please share this information far and wide, and please add to it if you find more material that can be positively identified and linked to the creator/writer.

[sealpup9]

I'm not certain as to how many people checked the description of the new hbomberguy video but he linked a playlist to queer creators on youtube!

Your New Favorite YouTubers - Queer YouTubers you should check out, meticulously compiled by Kat.

It's worth a look! Please don't forget to support your fellow queer creators on YouTube whilst spreading memes and jokes about James Somerton and discussing the hbomberguy video!!

EDIT: @cursedgamerchild pointed out THIS REDDIT THREAD made by Kat

Which is a thread to share more discoveries of plagiarism and also to share more queer creators who could use some love! There's also a link to a google form if you don't have reddit and want to share said information.

[tofupixel]

plagiarism in writing: bad, unforgivable, 3 hour youtube callouts

plagiarism in art: nothing is original anyway : ) theres no such thing as artstyle theft : ) this 1 thing is a bit different so its not plagiarism : )

[rex101111]

I think Todd's video is actually the more impactful of the two for me. Like with Hbomber, that's like, his thing. He does extensive research about a specific topic and goes into great detail about it. He's in the same general "circle" as Somerton so he makes sense as someone who would like stand up and be like "hey something is WRONG here" and then just spend a very long while detailing exactly what is wrong.

Todd? Todd reviews music, albums and songs. That's his thing. Most of his videos are, at most, maybe half an hour long. His skill set and area of expertise are completely unrelated to Somerton's bullshit and yet even he can just stand up and go "something smells like bullshit" and just tear into Somerton's lies and nonsense for nearly two hours.

And most of Todd's research in that video is, by his own admission, fairly minimal. He googled, he looked up public documents, searched on forums, but nothing the average person doesn't have the time to do if something is bothering them and they want info on it. It's just testament that just about anybody can just...fact check. Look things up. It shows that there's no reason to just take things people say to you at face value if you think something is off. You can suss out bullshit by yourself.

And I just think that's a good thing to keep in mind.

Also of course when Somerton does start lying about something that Todd does have plenty of knowledge in, music, he actually gets mad and really lets the bastard have it. That's good too.

[prideprejudce]

youtube drama is very downplayed when it comes to its impact on tumblr (discussion of it usually ends as rapidly as it begins) so the fact that hbomberguy has been the top trending tag for several days now shows how much of an impact his video essay has made on the writing and video community as a whole. his video has spread so much awareness over the rampant plagiarism issue that has been festering under people’s radar for years now while dozens of youtube “creators” make six figure salaries off other peoples words and research. he effectively took off so many people’s rose tinted glasses and made us all blatantly aware of what an absolute shitshow this problem is now in modern media and how manipulated content has become