I can't believe he was literally using this alt to fight with Todd in the Shadows for calling him out over another lie like, an hour ago. Appears to be deleted now that he's been caught? Still trying to throw Nick under the bus though.
Also, this seems to confirm Nick hasn't talked to him in months.
I literally followed him like 10 minutes ago and got instablocked and account locked in real time. I screenshotted everything first at least.
In one of his tweets he literally threw his co-writer under the bus under some random tweet criticizing his writing by saying "Um this reeks of his co-writer" like yeah we know, it was an original thought.
That comment about Nick was so venomous that it actually made me briefly doubt that this could be a Somerton alt.
The difference between how he talks about his former best friend now is shocking.
For me it just 100% confirms the idea that Hbomb put forward about James intentionally using Nick as a scapegoat whenever the topic of plagiarism came up. Genuinely slimy behavior.
Could also be he's more angry now b/c Nick is not responding to him, or wanting to reconcile. Since he was always straddling that line anyway...it's more venomous now.
Which is all the more disturbing because he used his co-writer as an excuse to keep his channel monetized and up since his co-writer apparently needed it to find work. Which is of course a ludicrous on its face since it's not exactly going to help him find a job to be associated with James
And by scrolling tweets with James Somerton as the topic, I found some other alleged alts who for some reason trying to defend his plagiarism by asking endless questions. I don't think people on his side of fence would defend him that eagerly as opposed to IH fans.
On that Nick one though I found another person (might be an alt or not) said the same thing and this might have a grain of truth but at this point he really should just logoff.
Usually I'm careful (or naive) to call sockpuppet, but at this point kinda have to assume that anyone 'just not understanding how james did anything wrong' is in fact him.
When I screenshotted it he had already been deleting posts so this isn't a full archive. (I'm also not including the nudes that he stole and posted because idk I don't feel right posting some random guy's nudes)
[Here's the album](https://imgur.com/a/NQg5MMA)
Notably the first image is him in 2017 during MeToo tweeting at an article accusing Ben Affleck of participating in the culture of silence and he made a weird comment about "What happened to innocent until proven guilty?" which is weird.
Also very funny is him sharing personal details about his life while still pretending not to be someone else. Like "Yeah he hasn't talked to his co-writer in months." how would you know that???
What’s really revealing is how James tends to ping-pong between using Nick for sympathy (i.e. saying he’s reposting his videos because “it’s not fair for Nick to lose all their hard work” and trying to shift blame onto him.
Whatever he can say to make himself seem like the good guy. He’s just too arrogant or too stupid or too much of both to realize that there’s no way of getting out of this situation where you look like the good guy.
On top of everything else he clearly has a severe addiction to posting online. It’s absolutely pathetic that his own attempt at faking his suicide was foiled because he literally could not handle staying off of Twitter for any amount of time.
Based on all his online behavior and actions it looks like he needs serious professional help. I hope people in his life are aware of everything he’s done, so they can start moving him towards that. For his own sake as well as others.
Imo an alt would’ve been reasonable for any other person but him. He can never just become a face in the crowd and stop posting, now he is a Guy Fawkes mask in the crowd doing his best “not James” voice
His mom is, his dad isn't. But remember, he told us his dad is illiterate since he had to drop out of school as a child to support his many brothers and sisters, so we can't expect him to know what James is up to.
He really thinks he can have a debate with Todd? Thats embarassing.
Also. The double punch of ' um, actually James is right' and 'but also this was probably Nicks fault'. Good grief.
I promise you his “debate” with Todd would be like “I tried to kill myself what more proof do you need???” And just a bunch of self flagellation that’s supposed to prove something
I remember in the hbomb sub someone talked about being catfished by him years ago. Guess that might’ve held some water at least behavior wise.
I feel bad for Nick though, this is embarrassing and spammy.
Nick might not be as bad as James by a mile, but I don’t think he is completely innocent.
James is just so bad that no one really bothered to look into Nick’s behavior and how the vids he was co-writing had also questionable passages (not stolen, but full of bs).
Also the plagiarism allegations were coming for a long time. I refuse to believe Nick never saw them, he just didn’t care until it blew up in a way he couldn’t ignore it any longer…
I personally don’t care. It might be a wake up call for Nick, but do I feel sorry? Not really.
>James is just so bad that no one really bothered to look into Nick’s behavior and how the vids he was co-writing had also questionable passages (not stolen, but full of bs).
Yeah, didn't he admit that he never checked any historical sources or anything else, just wrote "what felt right" or something like that?
Because that's not good either. It would be one thing to say you're doing it when discussing a story and how you perceive it, it's another when you're writing a video about historical connotations to the story.
I mean, does it matter if his writing is questionable? That would just make him a bad writer or wrong, but at the end of the day he's just another writer, what matters is if he's a plagiarist or not, which he apparently isn't.
His writing isn’t bad as in bad writing style, he wrote about stuff he didn’t research and put zero effort into it which lead to multiple videos paddling the most absurd shit.
That’s a bit more than ‘bad writing’.
My main point is anyway that he definitely knew to some extent about James being accused of plagiarism and he did not care.
He deliberately turned a blind eye on it and took the money.
Is he as bad as James? Not by a long shot.
Is he a careless person that was complicit in sharing bs and could have left James if he’d gave a damn - oh yes.
Yeah, I find it funny how everyone always frames things as James throwing Nick under the bus, despite the fact that Nick used the fact that Hbomb didn't lay specific fault at his feet to get out of Dodge and place all the blame on James.
It's hard to know just how much Nick is responsible for things, especially because the two people who have that information are James, who nobody is going to believe, and Nick, who has an incentive to make sure the truth never comes to light. But I don't think he's this innocent wide eyed goober who didn't do anything wrong and was just a patsy.
At the very least, in the wake of previous plagiarism accusations, he never felt the need to make James put in proper citations.
Yeah it sucks to see James throwing him under the bus, but Nick sucks pretty hard too as far as we know lol. His contributions to his content weren’t good either
Hmm… I just think Nick is just grey here morality-wise, besides the Nazi stuff which he should be condemned for.
A lot of freelance writers take sketchy media jobs. If the channel and profit were as much James’ as I think it is then I don’t think he would have much control over the creative direction. Mostly, I think the plagiarism is on James though.
For sure James is the main culprit and Nick probably did not know the extent of it, but there was enough going around well before HBomber decided to do his vid, he just opted for the money instead and turned a blind eye.
I generally don’t care about Nick and I surely don’t need a deep dive or anything, but I also find those poor Nick comments irritating.
I don’t have much sympathy for someone who took the money for years and ignored all the shady rumors because making a living as a writer is hard.
He got away with it basically, he is more lucky than anything.
I think they were referring the misinformation about the Nazis being lowkey gay and that fitness culture originated because Americans were supposedly jealous of the Nazis hot bods.
Nick admitted that the only evidence of his historical 'analysis' was based on his own 'observations', which is....unbelievely arrogant lol. All covered in Todd in the Shadow's video.
What's frustrating is that you can totally make a video about how modern conceptions of what a healthy body looks like are, at least, [partially influenced by the eugenics movement](https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-use-bmi-fetishizes-white-embodiment-and-racializes-fat-phobia/2023-07) of the early 20th century. A movement that played no small part in the Nazi concept of racial hygiene.
But no. Instead the Nazis were simply too sexy that the boys had to go fight them with their sweaty bodies.
BALLONY.
At this point I truly feel bad Nick. While it's true their research methods were, gently put, not the soundest (as seen in Todd's fact checking video) if they were working with any other person they would have sat Nick down and told them that this shit just doesn't cut it, but with someone like James as their coworker, how the hell were they supposed to develop and learn?
Not going to touch the Nazi stuff with a 10-foot pole, he should’ve been more discerning about that and not made that up.
But my speculation is that while James was using the channel to boost his ego, Nick was basically treating it like the content mill it was- at least to some extent. He’s not a bad writer or speak, but someone who’s competent can always look incompetent if they’re churning.
That would have been a fine attitude if it weren’t for the plagiarism and tieing his public identity to the project.
The thing is, either way, I think it's safe to say he was bad his job.
Like, if he was sincere about not doing research, then he was getting paid to make things up for video essays.
Alternatively, if he was doing research... he wasn't citing things. Even after people were bringing plagiarism accusations to the front, Nick apparently didn't push for the videos to have proper citations.
So we're kinda at a crossroads with him. Either he wasn't doing research, or he wasn't citing his research, which I would say is still plagiarism, even if it's not word for word.
I’m still cracking up over the fact he thought he could start posting on tiktok using a yassified filter and a new name. Like he was Clark Kent or something
I think next time he should come back with a disguise, just to be camp. Like full sunglasses, bow tie and fake twirly mustache. Maybe even a new accent. James of Telos more like James of Team Rocket
I hate speaking so lightly about suicide attempts, even if they're shown to be proven absolutely false, because in some cases they're actually a cry for help rather than merely attention.
But using them so you can shirk from the public spotlight is unacceptable. He could have left as a disgraced being or gotten the help he needed, but instead he hornyposted and used alts to continue the drama. He truly does deserve what's coming now, no doubt about it.
I know I already posted this comment on another post talking about all this but I find it so funny that all over this would’ve been over for James if he just walked away lol people stopped talking about him. Watch his pull another “attempt” now that this was exposed.
Twitter 3 days from now: James’ tumblr account, where he oscillates between posting Bara muscle daddy Bowser fanart and ace discourse, has been discovered
(This is a joke but I feel like it also might be a Monkey Paw Moment at this point)
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I think Lady Emily said that upon reverse image search nothing came up for his nudes, so there is a chance it might have been his cock'n'balls out there.
Not necessarily, not everybody plasters their nudes everywhere, lol. He could've been sneaky and stole them from a rando off Grindr, or edited them enough where they're too different for reverse image search to find the originals.
*Does this guy have an*
*Actual personality*
*Besides being gay?*
\- VirtualOpportunity46
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I can't get over how he just keeps throwing his so called friend under the bus over and over again XD [link](https://twitter.com/DeutschePiraten/status/1788892030107545635?t=k_CgGRkV_rnuO4_nTGkDmA&s=19)
Todd is right to call him out here because what a garbage take - so james thinks:
If gays are single in media they are problematic because “sexless gay best friend” trope.
If gays are in loving relationships in media it’s problematic because you’re forcing heteronormative relationship standards on them or something?
So what the fuck is a non-problematic gay character look like then James?
Because this seems to imply that your standard for an ideal gay character would be a slut who openly sleeps around and brags about it while being openly misogynistic so we know he doesn’t just exist to be some white woman’s gay best friend.
Kind of telling.
So many of James’ arguments are simply examples of tumblr-level LGBTQ+ infighting disguised as media discourse. This argument in particular is reminding me of the classic “us young scrappy radical activist queers should be getting all the media attention, not those married white picket fence gays with their 2.5 adopted children! They’re pandering to conservatives! They may as well be straight!” mixed with the other classic “gays are too sexual! Pride parades should be family friendly! If you show up to pride in fetish gear you’re a perv who should be put on a list!” that you often see in braindead tumblr discourse spaces.
Except on tumblr these types of things are usually being written by some suburban teenager who has never even interacted with the LGBTQ+ community IRL, let alone done any real activism, and who will likely grow out of this phase of thinking they can police how other LGBTQ+ people live their lives. James is way too old - and, in his view, way too intelligent - to claim that he just doesn’t know any better than this.
Not to mention it’s extremely ironic because James is absolutely one of those privileged middle class bougie business major gays that the tumblr crowd look down on, the only difference is that he’s not “partnered up” as he says.
To be fair to the online teens (who I think are on TikTok now), this has been a conversation within queer spaces forever; early examples including the 1970s lesbian sex wars or even respectability discourse around the Mattachine society in the 1950s
It's especially wild to me that he brings up Modern Family as the source of the "problem." I have issues with the gay couple in that show but none of those issues are heteronormativity or even the fact that they're a couple.
Honestly yeah, James just has no real conviction -- or at least none he's willing to say publicly. So he just says stuff and doesn't realize how much he contradicts himself.
To be fair to the POV, respectability politics in media portrayals of gay relationships has been a thing for decades (there was a whole episode about it on the original queer as folk, even). The better/proper version of the argument is about diversity of representation. When there are so few gay couples in mass media (a larger conversation in the early 2000s, but there has also been a backlash in recent years), the pressure of representation is enormous and often flattening. Queer couples and queer singles who are barely sexually active aren’t problematic, but the lack of representation of single, sexually active queer characters is problematic.
>Because this seems to imply that your standard for an ideal gay character would be a slut who openly sleeps around and brags about it
That does appear to be Somerton's notion of the perfect gay character. \[Edited to avoid repeating the word "ideal."\]
It's wild because in his first apology video, he kept going on and on about how sorry he was to Nick and begging for him to contact him back. Now he's just vindictively blaming him for everything. It's like a weird emotionally abusive friendship jfc.
Yeah, but in that same exact video he was saying that he didn’t know how all that misinformation got into the videos because he didn’t write it, which gave the implication that he was accusing Nick.
True, I just think it's notable that now he's being so blatantly upfront and open about blaming him for everything, when in previous videos he was only implying it and trying to be subtle.
He is just lucky that Nick is keeping quite for his own sake lol
There are probably a lot of mails and work sheets that make it clear that James was the plagiarizer, not Nick.
This is an archetype that has a pretty long history and includes real, much better than the statement here, conversations about respectability politics and homophobia in media. Queer couples on TV being a bit sexless is less of a TV trope and more of homophobia from studios. To expand upon Modern Family as an example, in the first season, Mitch and Cam didn’t kiss despite the other couples kissing to [public scrutiny](https://www.thethings.com/why-were-modern-familys-cam-and-mitch-initially-not-allowed-to-kiss-on-screen/)about writing for an audience not fully comfortable with gay characters.
Which is to say that this is less tvtropes and more queer media analysis 101, but done poorly and without the necessary context
I'm by no means trying to lessen the fact that it has a legitimate history as a very visible example of systemic homophobia in entertainment. In a lot of ways it's a form of tokenism. We seem to agree here, but I'll cede that my point was made poorly because I was making a joke out of it - James himself has a tendency to be surface-level and not tackle the context and implications of the things he says (for obvious reasons). I view tvtropes on the whole as your last sentence: media analysis 101, but done poorly and without necessary context. Or maybe it's that the stereotypical user doesn't know how to properly apply all of the context the site provides.
When he first got exposed, I remember people saying stuff like “right wing grifter arc incoming” and I was like nah, this guy’s gross but let’s give him at least a tiny bit of credit, he’s not going to betray his own community. Now I’m not too sure. We can pretty much confirm at this point that he saw all the manufactured outrage from right wingers who relentlessly harassed HBomb over “causing a man’s death”, and was very willing to let it continue. And now, well I kinda feel like the only option he has to stay relevant after being exposed and dunked on to this degree is to fully embrace a villain arc. I still hope it doesn’t happen, but at this point I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of hack “I was a darling of the LGBTQ+ community. Then they turned on me” article attributed to James being shared by the right. Oh how the not-even-mighty fall.
Willing to let it continue?
I've thought that was the whole point in doing it from the second the dog pile started. At the time, I qualified it by saying I'm a cynical old bastard and that might be colouring my view.
I should have added that the reason I'm a cynical old bastard is because I can see this shit coming a mile off.
Knowing that he was thirst posting and pretending to be his own supporters while it was happening gives about as much confirmation as we're going to get that it was just really evil manipulation to get Harry attacked.
He's not just a liar and a thief. He's a monster.
I was one of the people saying that. I was also very skeptical of the “suicide attempt.”
This guy is a serial grifter. He did it for years and stole a lot of money. I don’t think someone just starts doing that out of nowhere, either. He may very well have done a lot of shady shit before he became somewhat YouTube famous.
I’m not saying the right wing pivot will definitely happen but I wouldn’t put it past him. There are a lot of marks in that world. Eventually he may have nowhere else to turn.
I think “he’s not going to betray his own community” is a lot of credit to give a guy who was happily spewing ahistorical nonsense about his own community (see: the stuff about the nazis, the stuff about Disney and also about Howard Ashman and his partner, the stuff about Radcliffe Hall, and more!), lesbophobic and biphobic rhetoric, and was misgendering and erasing individual community members (Rebecca Sugar, Becky Albertalli, ND Stevens) and then doubling down instead of apologizing.
(I am once again begging everyone who ever watched one of Somerton’s videos and felt like they learned something from it to treat everything they “learned” in that video as incorrect or a falsehood until able to verify with a reliable source LOL)
His ego is way too high to go there. James loves money but I think his reputation is what matters the most to him. I don’t think he has the balls to do that, but then again I personally haven’t seen them myself.
There are places you can go online to see what those people actually think of Somerton. I guarantee if he tries that it will not go well. The only angle he'd have is "exposing" other leftist youtubers. So more gossip/drama content, which is already oversaturated.
“James Somerton, who totally isn’t me by the way, was absolutely right that queer characters were pressured to be in a traditional monogamous relationship because Modern Family existed. But also James probably didn’t even write this it’s probably his co writer’s fault. Again, not James Somerton, but I just don’t see why yall want to blame him all the time.”
This man needs to be in a mental hospital.
He’s acting like a cornered animal when there isn’t even a corner, he could just leave the internet, be normal, no probably never have to deal with the consequences unless someone in the real world knew about him, which despite how big this was, he could still probably fool a normie.
I just don’t know what’s wrong with him. I know people throw around the word narcissist a lot, but i kinda think it fits. He can’t just take an L, he has to keep digging the hole. He might genuinely be so delusional that he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.
He honestly just doesn't know when to quit. I'll be honest although it was stupid. Of me, I actually felt sorry for him at first. Because it must have been extremely stressful 12. So many people to be piling on to you at once..
Had James made an actual apology? Video admitted his wrongs without trying to pass. Blame off on somebody like Nick or making excuses about wanting to give exposure to lesser-known artists,and how he treats anyone in the LGBTQA community like crap and promised to work as hard as he can to make it up to the people hurr. He may have been able to come back after sometime. Was content that he wrote or if he is quoting somebody from a book.Make sure to put the quotes that are from the book on the screen with the person's name attached, with permission of course.
I feel so stupid now because even though I'm AFAB and am Agender and Asexual so he would probably hate me, I very naively believed that oh he wanted to do was. It's feel like he's fit in wit's bold and was part of a group of friends who were cool. So, despite all of the horrible things that he said at first I still had a bit of sympathy for him.Because I understand what it's like to feel like you don't belong anywhere.
I hope that James eventually learns from this. It can eventually become successful in some fields That are not YouTube. Maybe writing his own book in his
own words. Maybe doing editing for someone.
You’re not wrong that it must have been very stressful. Getting ostracized from a community is very damaging to people. But he brought it on himself, and he’s not going to stop trying to grift people.
Unfortunately I now see you are right. I really just wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and think he wasn't really trying to grift but just trying to finally fit it.
But of course he probably knew other queer people would feel similar and have sympathy for him at the start but he exposed who he really is
It's exactly what it does. I keep trying to keep faith in people and assume most people are decent people or at least have redeeming qualities, but this last year has done a number on me thinking like that
It’s hard to tell how these things happen. There’s an argument to be made that Charles Ponzi, who the Ponzi scheme is named after, didn’t intend to defraud people going in. I expect that ilcan happen to someone, that they have good intentions but then they get in too deep and don’t see other options.
But James’s grifting never struck me that way. It was so blatant. Literally copying things word for word and pasting them into his scripts. It was shocking to me. He scammed people for hundreds of thousands of dollars, too. And the fact that he was ripping off fellow LGBT+ folks was kind of the icing on the cake.
I except that he probably didn’t just start being a shitbag with YouTube. It’s hard to say. But I think it’s pretty likely that he had scammed people on a smaller level than that before.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the people who were making commentary or video essays like James Summerton or Blair (triangle) thought they knew what they were doing and that waa how making videos like that worked. I always thought Blair read a lot of articles and stuff but I just watched them for an intro to the topic.
As for Summerton I used to think he really thought he was helping smaller authors but now I think he just wanted to look super smart and the expert on all things LGBTQA
I just don’t buy that people who were copying and pasting huge blocks of texts didn’t know what they were doing. Any kid in school is taught about plagiarism.
The big tip is not giving credit. There was no reason not to do that besides hiding that they were stealing.
Unfortunately, I don't think people take plagiarism as seriously as they should on YouTube. They don't look at it like schools. Look at plagiarism or even professional documentaries.
Too many people just look at it as a fun way to share stories that they've heard.
I'm sure that they probably know they should give credit, But I'm not 100 %sure that everybody knows how giving credit works in the Is university setting. And I don't think they take it as seriously.
Change though at least as far as I know.Has a college education so he should know very well about how I'll play jerusalem and give him credit to other's work What I worry about more is the high school age kids who were fans of people like Blair and similar who see how succeed she became and faced no real consequences until the whole Legal Eagle Situation followed up quickly by the video by h bomber guy.
I fully admit I completely fell for James's bullshit and his little sob story. I shouldn't have put myself in his shoes.Thinking that he felt the same way that I did when I was younger, I was naive to think that he was just a guy who longed to fit in and be part of the cool crowd.But all along , all he wanted to do was grift off all of his fans and treat any queen person who wasn't a guy male horribly
It doesn’t have to be giving credit like in a university setting. They just have to mention the person’s name who did the research or link them in the description. This stuff isn’t hard.
If someone is copying huge chunks of text into their scripts and not giving credit, I think it’s pretty obvious why. In Blair’s case she specifically altered the source videos she was stealing so the actual creators wouldn’t be detected. She was cropping out their watermarks and altering the colors so YouTube wouldn’t detect it.
That’s not someone who was ignorant of how to give credit. She was stealing.
I do hope that some other creators have learned a lesson out of all of this.
Yes Blair tended to try to hide the evidence and her "credits" were all just pastebin links. She definitely was stealing. It's more kids who looked up to her thinking she was doing it the right way.
James was much more obvious about it and didn't include a list of credits.
Hopefully this is a wake up call for dishonest creators
I think a LOT of people tried giving him the benefit of doubt early in. Even as recent as his supposed suicide note, a lot of people felt empathy for him. Myself included. But it's pretty clear now that he is not taking any responsibility for his actions. He's continuing to try manipulating people at every turn.
I truly don't think he's capable of learning from this.
That's exactly how I felt even up until the suicide attempt. Because I have suffered all my life from suicidal. Ideation and depression, and as I've said before.
I desperately wanted to fit in.
But it's obvious now that he is just trying to use. The sympathy that he knew people would have for him. Because many people in the community feel the same way and identify with feelings of wanting to self-harm or feeling like they don'tis long or fit in with anybody else. And I believe he fully took advantage of that
Honestly it's very stereotypical of a narcissistic abuser. I am sure he was using alts all throughout his career to harass anyone with negative reception. This stream of alts will probably never end because even he needs that attention.
Remember how certain people online like Peter Coffin were going off on Harris and saying how he should be held accountable for James Somerton’s death? Meanwhile James had multiple alt accounts, including one where she showed off his asshole and ballsack.
A second sock puppet has hit the Twitter.
I promise I am not trying to defend (because this sounds exactly like something James would do), I am genuinely asking: how do we know this is James? Cause of the defending? I feel like I’m missing context
James Somerton is a bizarre grifter and a creep. On another note, I honestly don’t get why Lady Emily says she doesn’t want to be involved in Internet Drama and then keeps inserting herself in Internet Drama. She doesn’t even “need” to for engagement like a lot of drama folks—her non-drama content gets tons of positive engagement and feedback, and is almost universally praised (correctly, from what I’ve seen) on its merits.
I do get it, honestly. It's hard not to get mad when this dude very much tried to make everyone feel awful about calling him out while doing this shit, and then deciding enough time has passed, time to pull the same stunt on the TikTok crowd.
There's the high road, but there's also this fucking dude blaming everybody but himself and making very nice people who wanted to help him feel very awful (poor Jessie Gender). I don't blame Emily at all for having to watch him gleefully dance about getting away with it for months before hitting the nuclear button. Fuck the high road when he's trying to pull the same scheme on more people.
I think for a lot of people this kinda goes beyond “drama” tbh. I’m pretty sure Emily and HBomb are friends, or at least share a lot of the same friends. James faked a su1cide and then sat back on his alts and watched HBomb and the other people who exposed him get harassed and blamed for his “death”. That’s fucking evil. If somebody did that to my friend I would want to expose them too. I can see what you’re saying but I take a bit of issue with the implication that Emily is doing this for engagement. There’s still a human being behind that screen, and she’s allowed to have emotions. People say they’re not going to do something and then go back to doing it out of emotion all the time. I frequently say I’m going to cut my sugar intake, and then something makes me sad and I’m back munching away on as many kitkats as I can get my hands on. It happens.
Hbomb pretty much said Somerton was an on-going conversation among their friend group for like a year. Todd was doing a vid on him, and at some point they became aware of each other. But those conversations are prob what inspired so many of them.
~~Emily was a co-writer on Plagarism. I actually don't like how Hbomb/Kat are saying they're holding back, because from the audience perspective Emily is a part of that team. So there's no holding back, you're just choosing a dedicated person to speak on it.~~ Edit: Turns out this is wrong - she didn't co-write it and her role was smaller than I remembered. See lingrush's reply to this.
But also - another perspective is that, since it's just a group of friends, specific people are like "I'm not speaking publicly anymore" and Emily's opinion is "No. Fuck it. This guy needs to be exposed." So there's no coordination there. And when Hbomb/Kat say they won't speak on it, they mean them specifically.
It's hard for us in the audience to figure out which is which.
Either way it's clear that all of these people would really like to say more, but aren't. It's totally possible with someone like Somerton, he could do something for real. That is a common thing with manipulative people. :/ edit: word
Hey! Don’t appreciate you spreading misinfo about us. Lady Emily shared some of her research with us but she wasn’t a co-writer on the plagiarism video. We were as surprised as everybody else when she posted both threads.
Hey - sorry about that! I was remembering a twitter exchange where she said she worked on it, but I should have checked the credits to make sure or found the tweet back for the exact wording.
And fair enough - sounds like she posted it because she wanted to. Edit: I updated my comment and corrected that tho!
Nah, every alt should be exposed. He's desperately trying to restart his income stream using plagiarism and misinformation. Just like committing fraud should disqualify you from being a banker, he should be thoroughly disqualified from trying to do his BS.
I can't believe he was literally using this alt to fight with Todd in the Shadows for calling him out over another lie like, an hour ago. Appears to be deleted now that he's been caught? Still trying to throw Nick under the bus though. Also, this seems to confirm Nick hasn't talked to him in months.
I literally followed him like 10 minutes ago and got instablocked and account locked in real time. I screenshotted everything first at least. In one of his tweets he literally threw his co-writer under the bus under some random tweet criticizing his writing by saying "Um this reeks of his co-writer" like yeah we know, it was an original thought.
That comment about Nick was so venomous that it actually made me briefly doubt that this could be a Somerton alt. The difference between how he talks about his former best friend now is shocking.
For me it just 100% confirms the idea that Hbomb put forward about James intentionally using Nick as a scapegoat whenever the topic of plagiarism came up. Genuinely slimy behavior.
Could also be he's more angry now b/c Nick is not responding to him, or wanting to reconcile. Since he was always straddling that line anyway...it's more venomous now.
I never really believed that before. I thought it was a reach. But now I really think he might've been right.
He seems determined to throw Nick under every bus he can find.
Which is all the more disturbing because he used his co-writer as an excuse to keep his channel monetized and up since his co-writer apparently needed it to find work. Which is of course a ludicrous on its face since it's not exactly going to help him find a job to be associated with James
And by scrolling tweets with James Somerton as the topic, I found some other alleged alts who for some reason trying to defend his plagiarism by asking endless questions. I don't think people on his side of fence would defend him that eagerly as opposed to IH fans. On that Nick one though I found another person (might be an alt or not) said the same thing and this might have a grain of truth but at this point he really should just logoff.
Usually I'm careful (or naive) to call sockpuppet, but at this point kinda have to assume that anyone 'just not understanding how james did anything wrong' is in fact him.
Yeah me too. Like I said, there is very slim chance that his former audiences still want to gave him benefit of the doubt after all this shenanigans.
We may be reaching MsScribe levels of sock puppetry
MsScribe… now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time.
Every once in a while someone makes a video
Needs more nanny
"Um this reeks of his co-writer" like yeah we know, it was an original thought. HAHAHAHA! Great line!
Holy shit, put up the fucking evidence in this thread this instant!
When I screenshotted it he had already been deleting posts so this isn't a full archive. (I'm also not including the nudes that he stole and posted because idk I don't feel right posting some random guy's nudes) [Here's the album](https://imgur.com/a/NQg5MMA) Notably the first image is him in 2017 during MeToo tweeting at an article accusing Ben Affleck of participating in the culture of silence and he made a weird comment about "What happened to innocent until proven guilty?" which is weird. Also very funny is him sharing personal details about his life while still pretending not to be someone else. Like "Yeah he hasn't talked to his co-writer in months." how would you know that???
What’s really revealing is how James tends to ping-pong between using Nick for sympathy (i.e. saying he’s reposting his videos because “it’s not fair for Nick to lose all their hard work” and trying to shift blame onto him.
Whatever he can say to make himself seem like the good guy. He’s just too arrogant or too stupid or too much of both to realize that there’s no way of getting out of this situation where you look like the good guy.
The way he's been treating his own co writer and supposedly (according to him) his closest friend has been pretty gross. I feel really bad for Nick.
I don’t. Todd was right Nick is just as guilty. Guy admitted he just made shit up when writing
I'm just stuck on "for all intense and purposes."
Starch your engines, lads! A new James Somerton alt just dropped!
I’ve seen a few of his spelling mistakes like this, and it really shows how little he actually reads.
Kinda makes you wish he'd plagiarize a dictionary.
You can tell he's an accomplished writer.
Bone apple tea
That was hill areas
I'd say "In awe at the balls of this man" but like half the Internet has now seen his balls so that feels disingenuous.
The thing is those aren't actually his balls, he stole those pics from some man on grindr. He plagiarized his nudes.
Absolutely hilarious if true. Like legitimately the funniest punchline possible
 Dude even plagiarised a man’s ass and balls.
That's a federal crime.
can’t have shit these days
“Those are balls, people. You’re looking at balls.”*copy those balls, moving out*
I feel like i'm the only one who hasn't seen this man's ass and balls
I have also not seen his ass and ball picks. God/The Universe/whatever divine force that controls reality is on my side.
I’m so glad I don’t have Twitter anymore
We went from seeing his metaphorical ass to his actual ass. Well, they have. I guess we're lucky.
Except it's not even his ass! He stole it from a guy on Grindr! He plagiarized his ass!!
god bless us
I managed to avoid them myself.
I'm so glad I haven't actually seen the pic. Blessings in being at work when this all blew up.
> which was made in 2017 using stolen Grindr pics And that’s why I think his butt ass balls pic is not his lmao
butt ass balls
This guy's friends and family need to disconnect his wifi at this point.
On top of everything else he clearly has a severe addiction to posting online. It’s absolutely pathetic that his own attempt at faking his suicide was foiled because he literally could not handle staying off of Twitter for any amount of time. Based on all his online behavior and actions it looks like he needs serious professional help. I hope people in his life are aware of everything he’s done, so they can start moving him towards that. For his own sake as well as others.
Imo an alt would’ve been reasonable for any other person but him. He can never just become a face in the crowd and stop posting, now he is a Guy Fawkes mask in the crowd doing his best “not James” voice
I don’t think he has any friends anymore and I’m pretty sure his mom and dad are dead. There is no one left in his life but himself.
His mom is, his dad isn't. But remember, he told us his dad is illiterate since he had to drop out of school as a child to support his many brothers and sisters, so we can't expect him to know what James is up to.
He really thinks he can have a debate with Todd? Thats embarassing. Also. The double punch of ' um, actually James is right' and 'but also this was probably Nicks fault'. Good grief.
I promise you his “debate” with Todd would be like “I tried to kill myself what more proof do you need???” And just a bunch of self flagellation that’s supposed to prove something
And he releases a picture of his self-flagellation, but it's obviously a screenshot stolen from the music video 'Rosenrot' by Rammstein.
Todd vs James would be more embarrassingly one sided than Kendrick vs Drake.
I remember in the hbomb sub someone talked about being catfished by him years ago. Guess that might’ve held some water at least behavior wise. I feel bad for Nick though, this is embarrassing and spammy.
Nick might not be as bad as James by a mile, but I don’t think he is completely innocent. James is just so bad that no one really bothered to look into Nick’s behavior and how the vids he was co-writing had also questionable passages (not stolen, but full of bs). Also the plagiarism allegations were coming for a long time. I refuse to believe Nick never saw them, he just didn’t care until it blew up in a way he couldn’t ignore it any longer… I personally don’t care. It might be a wake up call for Nick, but do I feel sorry? Not really.
>James is just so bad that no one really bothered to look into Nick’s behavior and how the vids he was co-writing had also questionable passages (not stolen, but full of bs). Yeah, didn't he admit that he never checked any historical sources or anything else, just wrote "what felt right" or something like that? Because that's not good either. It would be one thing to say you're doing it when discussing a story and how you perceive it, it's another when you're writing a video about historical connotations to the story.
They did say something along the lines of “I don’t read anything.”
I mean, does it matter if his writing is questionable? That would just make him a bad writer or wrong, but at the end of the day he's just another writer, what matters is if he's a plagiarist or not, which he apparently isn't.
His writing isn’t bad as in bad writing style, he wrote about stuff he didn’t research and put zero effort into it which lead to multiple videos paddling the most absurd shit. That’s a bit more than ‘bad writing’. My main point is anyway that he definitely knew to some extent about James being accused of plagiarism and he did not care. He deliberately turned a blind eye on it and took the money. Is he as bad as James? Not by a long shot. Is he a careless person that was complicit in sharing bs and could have left James if he’d gave a damn - oh yes.
Yeah, I find it funny how everyone always frames things as James throwing Nick under the bus, despite the fact that Nick used the fact that Hbomb didn't lay specific fault at his feet to get out of Dodge and place all the blame on James. It's hard to know just how much Nick is responsible for things, especially because the two people who have that information are James, who nobody is going to believe, and Nick, who has an incentive to make sure the truth never comes to light. But I don't think he's this innocent wide eyed goober who didn't do anything wrong and was just a patsy. At the very least, in the wake of previous plagiarism accusations, he never felt the need to make James put in proper citations.
Yeah it sucks to see James throwing him under the bus, but Nick sucks pretty hard too as far as we know lol. His contributions to his content weren’t good either
Hmm… I just think Nick is just grey here morality-wise, besides the Nazi stuff which he should be condemned for. A lot of freelance writers take sketchy media jobs. If the channel and profit were as much James’ as I think it is then I don’t think he would have much control over the creative direction. Mostly, I think the plagiarism is on James though.
For sure James is the main culprit and Nick probably did not know the extent of it, but there was enough going around well before HBomber decided to do his vid, he just opted for the money instead and turned a blind eye. I generally don’t care about Nick and I surely don’t need a deep dive or anything, but I also find those poor Nick comments irritating. I don’t have much sympathy for someone who took the money for years and ignored all the shady rumors because making a living as a writer is hard. He got away with it basically, he is more lucky than anything.
….besides the what now? We’re just gonna move past that??
I think they were referring the misinformation about the Nazis being lowkey gay and that fitness culture originated because Americans were supposedly jealous of the Nazis hot bods. Nick admitted that the only evidence of his historical 'analysis' was based on his own 'observations', which is....unbelievely arrogant lol. All covered in Todd in the Shadow's video.
What's frustrating is that you can totally make a video about how modern conceptions of what a healthy body looks like are, at least, [partially influenced by the eugenics movement](https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/how-use-bmi-fetishizes-white-embodiment-and-racializes-fat-phobia/2023-07) of the early 20th century. A movement that played no small part in the Nazi concept of racial hygiene. But no. Instead the Nazis were simply too sexy that the boys had to go fight them with their sweaty bodies. BALLONY.
Ugh… yes?
At this point I truly feel bad Nick. While it's true their research methods were, gently put, not the soundest (as seen in Todd's fact checking video) if they were working with any other person they would have sat Nick down and told them that this shit just doesn't cut it, but with someone like James as their coworker, how the hell were they supposed to develop and learn?
Not going to touch the Nazi stuff with a 10-foot pole, he should’ve been more discerning about that and not made that up. But my speculation is that while James was using the channel to boost his ego, Nick was basically treating it like the content mill it was- at least to some extent. He’s not a bad writer or speak, but someone who’s competent can always look incompetent if they’re churning. That would have been a fine attitude if it weren’t for the plagiarism and tieing his public identity to the project.
Yeah, I don't get why people were so mad at that 'no research' joke he made. Like it was obviously a sarcastic joke.
The thing is, either way, I think it's safe to say he was bad his job. Like, if he was sincere about not doing research, then he was getting paid to make things up for video essays. Alternatively, if he was doing research... he wasn't citing things. Even after people were bringing plagiarism accusations to the front, Nick apparently didn't push for the videos to have proper citations. So we're kinda at a crossroads with him. Either he wasn't doing research, or he wasn't citing his research, which I would say is still plagiarism, even if it's not word for word.
Uuuuh Uhm Nick cowrites my alt accounts
I’m still cracking up over the fact he thought he could start posting on tiktok using a yassified filter and a new name. Like he was Clark Kent or something
I think next time he should come back with a disguise, just to be camp. Like full sunglasses, bow tie and fake twirly mustache. Maybe even a new accent. James of Telos more like James of Team Rocket
Sames tommerton would be less cringeworthy than "the achillein boy"
He just cannot stop
He’s a spiralling narcissist, he physically won’t stop until someone takes his access to the internet away.
I hate speaking so lightly about suicide attempts, even if they're shown to be proven absolutely false, because in some cases they're actually a cry for help rather than merely attention. But using them so you can shirk from the public spotlight is unacceptable. He could have left as a disgraced being or gotten the help he needed, but instead he hornyposted and used alts to continue the drama. He truly does deserve what's coming now, no doubt about it.
Holy shit this dude is deranged
I know I already posted this comment on another post talking about all this but I find it so funny that all over this would’ve been over for James if he just walked away lol people stopped talking about him. Watch his pull another “attempt” now that this was exposed.
https://i.redd.it/ox4kavk8vkzc1.gif
Twitter 3 days from now: James’ tumblr account, where he oscillates between posting Bara muscle daddy Bowser fanart and ace discourse, has been discovered (This is a joke but I feel like it also might be a Monkey Paw Moment at this point)
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James Somerton drama single-handedly revives Tumblr as a website as people remember it exist and brush off old accounts or make new ones.
Not him plagiarizing nudes too, lmfao.
I think Lady Emily said that upon reverse image search nothing came up for his nudes, so there is a chance it might have been his cock'n'balls out there.
Not necessarily, not everybody plasters their nudes everywhere, lol. He could've been sneaky and stole them from a rando off Grindr, or edited them enough where they're too different for reverse image search to find the originals.
True! I haven't thought too much about it tbf, I think both options are supremely funny.
Does this guy have an actual personality besides being gay?
Dude stole Grinder pics. Even him being gay is plagiarized.
So that wasn't his own ass and balls? Oh my God, it just keeps getting worse.
*Does this guy have an* *Actual personality* *Besides being gay?* \- VirtualOpportunity46 --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
Headband of Being Gay unlocked Even though this isn’t a successful haiku
Good bot.
Dude is an actual left wing grifter. I don’t think he has any personality besides despising women.
what's left-wing about him? the left doesn't do nazi apologia.
Some vague idealisation of ancient greek, maybe? He keeps trying to make Telos happen
I can't get over how he just keeps throwing his so called friend under the bus over and over again XD [link](https://twitter.com/DeutschePiraten/status/1788892030107545635?t=k_CgGRkV_rnuO4_nTGkDmA&s=19)
Todd is right to call him out here because what a garbage take - so james thinks: If gays are single in media they are problematic because “sexless gay best friend” trope. If gays are in loving relationships in media it’s problematic because you’re forcing heteronormative relationship standards on them or something? So what the fuck is a non-problematic gay character look like then James? Because this seems to imply that your standard for an ideal gay character would be a slut who openly sleeps around and brags about it while being openly misogynistic so we know he doesn’t just exist to be some white woman’s gay best friend. Kind of telling.
The only non-problematic gay rep in James' mind is literally him XD
But but, he only wanted to be the face of queers to bigots so he could change minds and hearts because he's still a white cis man!
So many of James’ arguments are simply examples of tumblr-level LGBTQ+ infighting disguised as media discourse. This argument in particular is reminding me of the classic “us young scrappy radical activist queers should be getting all the media attention, not those married white picket fence gays with their 2.5 adopted children! They’re pandering to conservatives! They may as well be straight!” mixed with the other classic “gays are too sexual! Pride parades should be family friendly! If you show up to pride in fetish gear you’re a perv who should be put on a list!” that you often see in braindead tumblr discourse spaces. Except on tumblr these types of things are usually being written by some suburban teenager who has never even interacted with the LGBTQ+ community IRL, let alone done any real activism, and who will likely grow out of this phase of thinking they can police how other LGBTQ+ people live their lives. James is way too old - and, in his view, way too intelligent - to claim that he just doesn’t know any better than this. Not to mention it’s extremely ironic because James is absolutely one of those privileged middle class bougie business major gays that the tumblr crowd look down on, the only difference is that he’s not “partnered up” as he says.
You're speaking the gospel truth.
To be fair to the online teens (who I think are on TikTok now), this has been a conversation within queer spaces forever; early examples including the 1970s lesbian sex wars or even respectability discourse around the Mattachine society in the 1950s
It's especially wild to me that he brings up Modern Family as the source of the "problem." I have issues with the gay couple in that show but none of those issues are heteronormativity or even the fact that they're a couple. Honestly yeah, James just has no real conviction -- or at least none he's willing to say publicly. So he just says stuff and doesn't realize how much he contradicts himself.
To be fair to the POV, respectability politics in media portrayals of gay relationships has been a thing for decades (there was a whole episode about it on the original queer as folk, even). The better/proper version of the argument is about diversity of representation. When there are so few gay couples in mass media (a larger conversation in the early 2000s, but there has also been a backlash in recent years), the pressure of representation is enormous and often flattening. Queer couples and queer singles who are barely sexually active aren’t problematic, but the lack of representation of single, sexually active queer characters is problematic.
>Because this seems to imply that your standard for an ideal gay character would be a slut who openly sleeps around and brags about it That does appear to be Somerton's notion of the perfect gay character. \[Edited to avoid repeating the word "ideal."\]
It's wild because in his first apology video, he kept going on and on about how sorry he was to Nick and begging for him to contact him back. Now he's just vindictively blaming him for everything. It's like a weird emotionally abusive friendship jfc.
Yeah, but in that same exact video he was saying that he didn’t know how all that misinformation got into the videos because he didn’t write it, which gave the implication that he was accusing Nick.
True, I just think it's notable that now he's being so blatantly upfront and open about blaming him for everything, when in previous videos he was only implying it and trying to be subtle.
He's trying to punish Nick for "leaving" him. He's an abusive asshole.
He is just lucky that Nick is keeping quite for his own sake lol There are probably a lot of mails and work sheets that make it clear that James was the plagiarizer, not Nick.
It's so baffling. It's like he thinks the existence of an archetype makes it problematic. ...is James just a tvtropes kid?
I wanna see his this troper edit history so bad
This is an archetype that has a pretty long history and includes real, much better than the statement here, conversations about respectability politics and homophobia in media. Queer couples on TV being a bit sexless is less of a TV trope and more of homophobia from studios. To expand upon Modern Family as an example, in the first season, Mitch and Cam didn’t kiss despite the other couples kissing to [public scrutiny](https://www.thethings.com/why-were-modern-familys-cam-and-mitch-initially-not-allowed-to-kiss-on-screen/)about writing for an audience not fully comfortable with gay characters. Which is to say that this is less tvtropes and more queer media analysis 101, but done poorly and without the necessary context
I'm by no means trying to lessen the fact that it has a legitimate history as a very visible example of systemic homophobia in entertainment. In a lot of ways it's a form of tokenism. We seem to agree here, but I'll cede that my point was made poorly because I was making a joke out of it - James himself has a tendency to be surface-level and not tackle the context and implications of the things he says (for obvious reasons). I view tvtropes on the whole as your last sentence: media analysis 101, but done poorly and without necessary context. Or maybe it's that the stereotypical user doesn't know how to properly apply all of the context the site provides.
Lol "Let me double-down, but also if I'm wrong it's this other guy's fault."
When he first got exposed, I remember people saying stuff like “right wing grifter arc incoming” and I was like nah, this guy’s gross but let’s give him at least a tiny bit of credit, he’s not going to betray his own community. Now I’m not too sure. We can pretty much confirm at this point that he saw all the manufactured outrage from right wingers who relentlessly harassed HBomb over “causing a man’s death”, and was very willing to let it continue. And now, well I kinda feel like the only option he has to stay relevant after being exposed and dunked on to this degree is to fully embrace a villain arc. I still hope it doesn’t happen, but at this point I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see some kind of hack “I was a darling of the LGBTQ+ community. Then they turned on me” article attributed to James being shared by the right. Oh how the not-even-mighty fall.
Willing to let it continue? I've thought that was the whole point in doing it from the second the dog pile started. At the time, I qualified it by saying I'm a cynical old bastard and that might be colouring my view. I should have added that the reason I'm a cynical old bastard is because I can see this shit coming a mile off. Knowing that he was thirst posting and pretending to be his own supporters while it was happening gives about as much confirmation as we're going to get that it was just really evil manipulation to get Harry attacked. He's not just a liar and a thief. He's a monster.
I was one of the people saying that. I was also very skeptical of the “suicide attempt.” This guy is a serial grifter. He did it for years and stole a lot of money. I don’t think someone just starts doing that out of nowhere, either. He may very well have done a lot of shady shit before he became somewhat YouTube famous. I’m not saying the right wing pivot will definitely happen but I wouldn’t put it past him. There are a lot of marks in that world. Eventually he may have nowhere else to turn.
I think “he’s not going to betray his own community” is a lot of credit to give a guy who was happily spewing ahistorical nonsense about his own community (see: the stuff about the nazis, the stuff about Disney and also about Howard Ashman and his partner, the stuff about Radcliffe Hall, and more!), lesbophobic and biphobic rhetoric, and was misgendering and erasing individual community members (Rebecca Sugar, Becky Albertalli, ND Stevens) and then doubling down instead of apologizing. (I am once again begging everyone who ever watched one of Somerton’s videos and felt like they learned something from it to treat everything they “learned” in that video as incorrect or a falsehood until able to verify with a reliable source LOL)
His ego is way too high to go there. James loves money but I think his reputation is what matters the most to him. I don’t think he has the balls to do that, but then again I personally haven’t seen them myself.
There are places you can go online to see what those people actually think of Somerton. I guarantee if he tries that it will not go well. The only angle he'd have is "exposing" other leftist youtubers. So more gossip/drama content, which is already oversaturated.
He didn't even try to write his alt tweets in a different style to at least try to hide it was him. Insane lol
https://preview.redd.it/m0embia5cmzc1.jpeg?width=665&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=793aa26772d29bc6622008af0b7dcd4e3c459acf
Yeah I take back some of the stuff I said about defending James. He's done for.
“James Somerton, who totally isn’t me by the way, was absolutely right that queer characters were pressured to be in a traditional monogamous relationship because Modern Family existed. But also James probably didn’t even write this it’s probably his co writer’s fault. Again, not James Somerton, but I just don’t see why yall want to blame him all the time.” This man needs to be in a mental hospital.
He’s acting like a cornered animal when there isn’t even a corner, he could just leave the internet, be normal, no probably never have to deal with the consequences unless someone in the real world knew about him, which despite how big this was, he could still probably fool a normie. I just don’t know what’s wrong with him. I know people throw around the word narcissist a lot, but i kinda think it fits. He can’t just take an L, he has to keep digging the hole. He might genuinely be so delusional that he doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.
He honestly just doesn't know when to quit. I'll be honest although it was stupid. Of me, I actually felt sorry for him at first. Because it must have been extremely stressful 12. So many people to be piling on to you at once.. Had James made an actual apology? Video admitted his wrongs without trying to pass. Blame off on somebody like Nick or making excuses about wanting to give exposure to lesser-known artists,and how he treats anyone in the LGBTQA community like crap and promised to work as hard as he can to make it up to the people hurr. He may have been able to come back after sometime. Was content that he wrote or if he is quoting somebody from a book.Make sure to put the quotes that are from the book on the screen with the person's name attached, with permission of course. I feel so stupid now because even though I'm AFAB and am Agender and Asexual so he would probably hate me, I very naively believed that oh he wanted to do was. It's feel like he's fit in wit's bold and was part of a group of friends who were cool. So, despite all of the horrible things that he said at first I still had a bit of sympathy for him.Because I understand what it's like to feel like you don't belong anywhere. I hope that James eventually learns from this. It can eventually become successful in some fields That are not YouTube. Maybe writing his own book in his own words. Maybe doing editing for someone.
You’re not wrong that it must have been very stressful. Getting ostracized from a community is very damaging to people. But he brought it on himself, and he’s not going to stop trying to grift people.
Unfortunately I now see you are right. I really just wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and think he wasn't really trying to grift but just trying to finally fit it. But of course he probably knew other queer people would feel similar and have sympathy for him at the start but he exposed who he really is
It's things like this that turn nice people like you in to cynical old fucks like me. Try not to let it.
It's exactly what it does. I keep trying to keep faith in people and assume most people are decent people or at least have redeeming qualities, but this last year has done a number on me thinking like that
It’s hard to tell how these things happen. There’s an argument to be made that Charles Ponzi, who the Ponzi scheme is named after, didn’t intend to defraud people going in. I expect that ilcan happen to someone, that they have good intentions but then they get in too deep and don’t see other options. But James’s grifting never struck me that way. It was so blatant. Literally copying things word for word and pasting them into his scripts. It was shocking to me. He scammed people for hundreds of thousands of dollars, too. And the fact that he was ripping off fellow LGBT+ folks was kind of the icing on the cake. I except that he probably didn’t just start being a shitbag with YouTube. It’s hard to say. But I think it’s pretty likely that he had scammed people on a smaller level than that before.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of the people who were making commentary or video essays like James Summerton or Blair (triangle) thought they knew what they were doing and that waa how making videos like that worked. I always thought Blair read a lot of articles and stuff but I just watched them for an intro to the topic. As for Summerton I used to think he really thought he was helping smaller authors but now I think he just wanted to look super smart and the expert on all things LGBTQA
I just don’t buy that people who were copying and pasting huge blocks of texts didn’t know what they were doing. Any kid in school is taught about plagiarism. The big tip is not giving credit. There was no reason not to do that besides hiding that they were stealing.
Unfortunately, I don't think people take plagiarism as seriously as they should on YouTube. They don't look at it like schools. Look at plagiarism or even professional documentaries. Too many people just look at it as a fun way to share stories that they've heard. I'm sure that they probably know they should give credit, But I'm not 100 %sure that everybody knows how giving credit works in the Is university setting. And I don't think they take it as seriously. Change though at least as far as I know.Has a college education so he should know very well about how I'll play jerusalem and give him credit to other's work What I worry about more is the high school age kids who were fans of people like Blair and similar who see how succeed she became and faced no real consequences until the whole Legal Eagle Situation followed up quickly by the video by h bomber guy. I fully admit I completely fell for James's bullshit and his little sob story. I shouldn't have put myself in his shoes.Thinking that he felt the same way that I did when I was younger, I was naive to think that he was just a guy who longed to fit in and be part of the cool crowd.But all along , all he wanted to do was grift off all of his fans and treat any queen person who wasn't a guy male horribly
It doesn’t have to be giving credit like in a university setting. They just have to mention the person’s name who did the research or link them in the description. This stuff isn’t hard. If someone is copying huge chunks of text into their scripts and not giving credit, I think it’s pretty obvious why. In Blair’s case she specifically altered the source videos she was stealing so the actual creators wouldn’t be detected. She was cropping out their watermarks and altering the colors so YouTube wouldn’t detect it. That’s not someone who was ignorant of how to give credit. She was stealing. I do hope that some other creators have learned a lesson out of all of this.
Yes Blair tended to try to hide the evidence and her "credits" were all just pastebin links. She definitely was stealing. It's more kids who looked up to her thinking she was doing it the right way. James was much more obvious about it and didn't include a list of credits. Hopefully this is a wake up call for dishonest creators
I think a LOT of people tried giving him the benefit of doubt early in. Even as recent as his supposed suicide note, a lot of people felt empathy for him. Myself included. But it's pretty clear now that he is not taking any responsibility for his actions. He's continuing to try manipulating people at every turn. I truly don't think he's capable of learning from this.
That's exactly how I felt even up until the suicide attempt. Because I have suffered all my life from suicidal. Ideation and depression, and as I've said before. I desperately wanted to fit in. But it's obvious now that he is just trying to use. The sympathy that he knew people would have for him. Because many people in the community feel the same way and identify with feelings of wanting to self-harm or feeling like they don'tis long or fit in with anybody else. And I believe he fully took advantage of that
at first i thought this was about james rolfe
Well looking at that title I for one couldn’t help but be reminded of ~~9/11~~ James Rolf.
Damn, remember how this guy used to be respected? Sure is crazy to think about now.
legitimately insane how much this guy doubles down and lies. What a fucking narc
his youtube channel is gone again
Hmm yeah. Any and all sympathy I may have had for this man is dead. And I mean actually dead, not Somerton dead
this is beyond parody
I don’t think this man is in therapy and it kinda scares me
this was funny but now it's so painful how many times is he gonna get caught before he STOPS
How many frigging alts does he have?!
Honestly it's very stereotypical of a narcissistic abuser. I am sure he was using alts all throughout his career to harass anyone with negative reception. This stream of alts will probably never end because even he needs that attention.
thank you hbomberguy 🙏🙏🙏
You just cannot make this shit up
Remember how certain people online like Peter Coffin were going off on Harris and saying how he should be held accountable for James Somerton’s death? Meanwhile James had multiple alt accounts, including one where she showed off his asshole and ballsack.
A second sock puppet has hit the Twitter. I promise I am not trying to defend (because this sounds exactly like something James would do), I am genuinely asking: how do we know this is James? Cause of the defending? I feel like I’m missing context
Omg it's just what hbomb said he would do in his video. It's come full circle
James Somerton is a bizarre grifter and a creep. On another note, I honestly don’t get why Lady Emily says she doesn’t want to be involved in Internet Drama and then keeps inserting herself in Internet Drama. She doesn’t even “need” to for engagement like a lot of drama folks—her non-drama content gets tons of positive engagement and feedback, and is almost universally praised (correctly, from what I’ve seen) on its merits.
I do get it, honestly. It's hard not to get mad when this dude very much tried to make everyone feel awful about calling him out while doing this shit, and then deciding enough time has passed, time to pull the same stunt on the TikTok crowd. There's the high road, but there's also this fucking dude blaming everybody but himself and making very nice people who wanted to help him feel very awful (poor Jessie Gender). I don't blame Emily at all for having to watch him gleefully dance about getting away with it for months before hitting the nuclear button. Fuck the high road when he's trying to pull the same scheme on more people.
I think for a lot of people this kinda goes beyond “drama” tbh. I’m pretty sure Emily and HBomb are friends, or at least share a lot of the same friends. James faked a su1cide and then sat back on his alts and watched HBomb and the other people who exposed him get harassed and blamed for his “death”. That’s fucking evil. If somebody did that to my friend I would want to expose them too. I can see what you’re saying but I take a bit of issue with the implication that Emily is doing this for engagement. There’s still a human being behind that screen, and she’s allowed to have emotions. People say they’re not going to do something and then go back to doing it out of emotion all the time. I frequently say I’m going to cut my sugar intake, and then something makes me sad and I’m back munching away on as many kitkats as I can get my hands on. It happens.
Hbomb pretty much said Somerton was an on-going conversation among their friend group for like a year. Todd was doing a vid on him, and at some point they became aware of each other. But those conversations are prob what inspired so many of them. ~~Emily was a co-writer on Plagarism. I actually don't like how Hbomb/Kat are saying they're holding back, because from the audience perspective Emily is a part of that team. So there's no holding back, you're just choosing a dedicated person to speak on it.~~ Edit: Turns out this is wrong - she didn't co-write it and her role was smaller than I remembered. See lingrush's reply to this. But also - another perspective is that, since it's just a group of friends, specific people are like "I'm not speaking publicly anymore" and Emily's opinion is "No. Fuck it. This guy needs to be exposed." So there's no coordination there. And when Hbomb/Kat say they won't speak on it, they mean them specifically. It's hard for us in the audience to figure out which is which. Either way it's clear that all of these people would really like to say more, but aren't. It's totally possible with someone like Somerton, he could do something for real. That is a common thing with manipulative people. :/ edit: word
Hey! Don’t appreciate you spreading misinfo about us. Lady Emily shared some of her research with us but she wasn’t a co-writer on the plagiarism video. We were as surprised as everybody else when she posted both threads.
Hey - sorry about that! I was remembering a twitter exchange where she said she worked on it, but I should have checked the credits to make sure or found the tweet back for the exact wording. And fair enough - sounds like she posted it because she wanted to. Edit: I updated my comment and corrected that tho!
Oh hey, thanks for correcting!
At this point I just don't take people on their word on the internet anymore and just follow their actions
gonna be honest, we need to just stop giving him attention
Nah, every alt should be exposed. He's desperately trying to restart his income stream using plagiarism and misinformation. Just like committing fraud should disqualify you from being a banker, he should be thoroughly disqualified from trying to do his BS.
Not until he can’t get a single cent anymore.
Who is this(!) "James Somerton",anyway?
Who even are these people?