this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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James Somerton was making $170,000 a year with nearly 6 million views and 267,000 subscribers on YouTube, until...

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[–] [email protected] 157 points 8 months ago (4 children)

There was another aspect to this video, which was that when Somerset actually did try to write some of the material himself, it was complete garbage.

For example, he completely plagiarized from a book about Disney, but then, he had to transition between one plagiarized book and a different plagiarized article, and in that transition, he presented some facts about Disney organizing gay events at their park, and it was all outright lies. Disney did not actually have any official LGBTQ events at their parks until far after that.

There was a different YouTube video that came out the next day, from this musician who listed all of the outright lies that he discovered while watching Somerset's channel.

I think the plagiarism displayed by Somerset is atrocious, but personally, I find lying and spreading misinformation to be even worse.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not to mention the rampant misogyny.

[–] UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The queer community deserves better. Hopefully this will leave some room for other voices

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The queer community clearly already has better, as James plagiarized lots of very talented creators and writers.

[–] UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT 1 points 8 months ago

This is a great point! I like you're way of looking at things.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

hbomb included a playlist of smaller queer creators that i've really enjoyed!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRGz5EMig3r2ZDgeGzwUlSz-PzF-L1Xu1

[–] UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT 1 points 8 months ago

Ahhhh nice, I haven't finished hbomberguy video yet

[–] [email protected] 46 points 8 months ago

I think the Todd in the Shadows video was the nail in the coffin. He might’ve been able to slither back by saying he didn’t realize he was attributing incorrectly (like Internet Historian fans are screaming), but he can’t come back from outright lying the times he wasn’t plagiarizing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Do you have a link to that different video? I only saw the hbomberguy one I think

[–] [email protected] -4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I have no issue with the content provided, but I wanted to give a little constructive criticism on the structure of your writing. Real small. When you say,

There was another aspect to this video, which was that when Somerset actually...

When you say there is a thing, the reader is going to assume the next thing you write to be that thing. So you don't need the "which is that." You can just launch right into what you're going to say, you already set it up. You basically said "I have a thing to say. The thing I have to say is this:"

Everything else is informative and well presented. No other notes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Would you need a semicolon then or not?

There was another aspect of the video; Somerset actually made up…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I don't know that you need a semicolon but you could definitely use one, and that would probably be the best way. Semicolons are for when two complete sentences are related. But they can still be formatted as two sentences, or even the same sentence with a comma. Many sentences contain parts that could be standalone sentences. But reading back over the original sentence again I would probably say it can just be rewritten to be more straightforward.

"Another aspect to this video is that Somerset, when actually trying to write some of the material himself, produced complete garbage."

Mostly I've just been reading a lot of philosophy recently which tends to run on a long and complex sentence structure that's unnecessary and could be a lot simpler, so this kind of thing has been at the front of my mind lately. That's probably the only reason I even noticed in the first place.

[–] UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT 3 points 8 months ago

Eh doesn't really flow compared to the original. I would have to reread to understand.

I'm all for omitting unnecessary words, but certain cliché connectors are so ubiquitous that they act as punctuation. You don't notice them, but reading is less comfortable when they're missing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

No other notes.

There is another aspect to your comment, which was that it made me laugh really hard.:)

No other notes.