#thanks hbomberguy

[changing-my-username]

Everytime I hear about James Somerton, it just gets worse

[lil-miss]

When that one content creator you didn't like because he was low-key misogynistic and is frequently incorrect about basic queer history despite being a "queer media analyst" is also a plagiarist and your gut feeling about hearing his work somewhere before was totally right.

[antikate]

My creative output might be trite, unoriginal, and slow, but at least I’m not a plagiarist in a turtleneck who passed off Wikipedia articles as his own insights and stole everything that he said except for the gross misogyny and weird infatuation with nazis

[babydrummer]

bored enough with life that im watching 4 year old videos on long-dead youtube drama

[lacewise]

Part of the reason my video ended up taking so many months (starting around mid-March) was because I was worried as soon as it was uploaded, a bigger creator would just steal it for parts.

Now I’m much more worried people will interpret it as the last word instead of the beginnings of a conversation-starting opinion piece and immediately try to debunk it and I feel much better about that!

[rudolphsb9]

I low-key think the Stenza kept the Earth a secret.

From "The Ghost Monument":

From "The Battle of Ranskoor av Kolos":

(Included bc it's kind of implied that Stebble is in the same galaxy as where the Stenza are from.)

[therainbowwillow]

hbomberguy’s latest video on plagiarism has made me completely rethink literature and writing. I have never once so much as considered intentionally plagiarizing anyone or anything, but I think there’s something more that has come out of this: the names of the people who created the works Somerton (and others) ripped off.

Plagiarism isn’t only bad because it is lazy and disrespectful, it’s bad because it buries the truth. If you can’t find a source, the conversation is over. Somerton’s sources are fairly easy to find by simply searching his plagiarized lines, but that isn’t true in most cases. Most of the time, the line from statement to source is a lot less clear.

Today, I was writing a report on English Ivy, which is an invasive species here in the US. I wanted to know when it was introduced and I at last found a source claiming it was introduced to the Americas “as early as 1727” on a .net website that seems quite reputable (it has multiple major universities credited in its home page), but there is no citation for where this date came from. I dug deeper and found a pamphlet created by a city government in Virginia that made the same claim, only to discover the first source linked in their bibliography. Another website (a botanical garden’s page) gave the same date with the same source hyperlinked. Of course, I have classes to attend and things to do and probably not enough time to follow the lines back to where this 1727 date came from, but if I had not just watched this video, I wouldn’t have given that date a second thought.

Of course, it doesn’t matter in the long run exactly what year hedera helix was introduced to the Americas, but it makes you wonder how many facts have been so vaguely attributed that it becomes completely impossible to figure out where they originated (and further, whether or not they’re true at all).

[annebonnydyke]

new fucking video just dropped babes 

[teagosworld]

I’m crying at the James Somerton and hbomberguy hashtags having the bisexual flag color gradient on them

[avesseloflanguage]

mike flanagan looks like if hbomberguy had seen 30% fewer of the horrors and agonies

[bibibitchery]

shh babe, not now, i’m rewatching a four hour long video essay about plagiarism for the [number redacted] time

[lemonberry-conda]

Hbomberguy finally went bald and said "The second I finish strategically burning this lab coat, it's over for you bitches."

[trans-leek-cookie]

Also accidental plagiarism is a Thing That Exists. Like just so y'all know that is what it's called when you take a source without credit by accident. Literally covered this beginning of a class.

(screenshot from the "Types of Plagiarism" section of https://guides.library.unt.edu/plagiarism/welcome )

like you probably don't have to worry about it (or self plagiarism) too much if you're not in a class or academia or whatever, but I think it's good to know that plagiarism can happen by accident. Idk abt punitive measures but I think it should be acknowledged as something that exists. Also I kept the mosaic plagiarism in bc that's the kind of plagiarism most often discussed in the video.

On the topic, I found this article (https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2023/12/05/responding-to-hbomberguys-plagiarism-video/amp) to be informative and worth a read (goes into more detail about the specifics of plagiarism and such)

[trashworldblog]

What is hmbomberguy (I can’t spell) ur reblogs are making me so curious but I cannot handle getting into more content/ content drama rn.

hi! yes. so hbomberguy is one of those 2hr long video- twice a year or less youtubers. who make content exploring a topic (like plagerism on youtube, vaccines and autism, etc).

his new video talks about video essay type youtubers who steal all their writing from documentries, books, articles, etc. and makes thousands of dollars off of other peoples work.

james sommerton is the main focus of the video, but he also shows how iiluminaughtii stole from documentries (and even listed the piriting site she watched it from as a source? lol) and internet historian stole an entire article, format, visuals, and all, and got 10 million views for it (and stole so much his video got taken down) and theres this other video game guy that got hired at ign and the got fired from ign for piriting and is a homophobic right wing guy?? (details are fuzzy, this is a 4 hour video i watched once, forgive me).

um. but, the james sommerton stuff just gets crazier and crazier the way this guy just makes a ton of money by lying to his community. he ends up accidently stealing work from one of his patreon members (he stole on purpose, i assume he didnt know who he was stealing from was a patron). he asked and got thousands of dollars to mame a fake (?) film studio that has made no films, and only says theyre in preproduction for a new film every 10 months. he also, yknow, steals from queer voices, basically harming his own community for profit. and when he's called out for stealing, he either shouts homophobia or shifts the blame to his co writer, who probably knows nothing about the plagerism.

anyways. its a bit of a drama thing. but honestly its a lot about how and why we should care about the art and media we consume online, and just how many people who look like they have their life together and are making lots and lots of content, seemingly on their own or close, actually are just stealing from talented people. it heals a bit of that imposter syndrome for people that do make genuine content online, and shows the consumers what making too much too quick actually means for the content they enjoy. the get the equivalent of meat grinded facts mixed with misinformation, subtly changed quotes, and 0 sources, or a laundry list of unorganized and unlabled sources if they want to learn more.

also i like this tweet. summarizes it well for me.

um. but thats my thoughts on it. i liked it because it reminds me that people who are churning out content one-man-show style aren't making the greatest stuff. i struggle with feeling like my work takes too long. but this was a great reminder that im actually making something good (i hope!), or at least, something that is truely coming from me. so its gonna take time to do it. but it'll be worth it because it'll be coming from me. (and also good. hopefully)

also the money hbomberguy is making off this video is going to the people james stole from. so thats really nice.

[anthonycrowley]

not liking james somerton before the hbomberguy video dropped not disliking him but a secret third thing (i had managed to skirt seeing any of his videos or possibly forgot because they were bad in a way that was unmemorable to me so when they brought him up i just went 'who?')

[kokoasci]

👏LET👏EARTH👏WORM👏JIM👏BE👏GAY👏

we just be putting anything in this ask box what does this even mean