HBomberguy

I didnt think I could hate this man any harder, but this is so foul and disgusting that I have tapped into new levels of hate. What the fuck, man.

I just realized that he actually did fake his suicide attempt. Jesus Christ what a foul human being. That is extremely fucking low and just an amazing feeling to someone like me who genuinely struggles with severe mental health problems.

Ever liking James Somerton is going to be my curse now, isn't it? Just when you think it's finally under control it just flares up again.

Man.

Hbomb made a very oblique reference to the news via a "tip of the iceberg" meme

Kat came to clarify that no, there won't be a follow up video about the iceberg, as they are being careful and restrained knowing they have an audience.

James meanwhile is apparently off on Tiktok making up bullshit outrage the "straights" have, first using weird AI voices and portrait and now doing it himself but with weird face filters to look 10 years younger.

Edited by Ghilz on May 9th 2024 at 5:19:55 AM

The name Somerton being forever remembered as a synonym for the most shameless forms of plagiarism is absolutely what this guy deserves.

His "suicide attempt" didn't fool me one second. This is the man who loved throwing pity parties "woe is me i am being harassed and receiving DEATH THREATS!!!" everytime he got called out, suicide-baiting is just the next step on the desperate pity party ranking.

Yeeeah, it's a classic narcissist move, and for good reason—who wants to be the one to call their bluff and look like a huge asshole on the off chance they actually did hurt themselves? There's no winning move except not to play.

Edited by Chortleous on May 9th 2024 at 12:23:52 PM

I dont think it fooled anyone, and to Hbomb's audience's credit, even those who didn't believe it still threaded carefully.

(It also wasn't the first time James had brought up Suicide as an attempt to deflect, he'd done it in apology #1)

Second James Sommerton alt account been dug, where he used pics of someone he grabbed off Grindr, used to use it to promote Nick's book years ago, then ditched it, then started using it to subtweet people who posted about James.

According to Kat and a couple of the mods on Harry's discord, the whole sockpuppet account thing is as alluded to, just the tip of the iceberg. However as mentioned there will not be a follow-up on James' since unlike the man himself, Harry's crew cares enough about the possible mental distress that such a thing might cause.

According to some posts I've seen about the situation, the nudes posted to the first alt account might also be stolen- but I'm not 100% sure if they're referring to photos taken from the aforementioned Grindr profile, if James stole two people's photos, or if people are mistakenly conflating the nudes and the Grindr pics.

If James did indeed post other people's nudes, that is beyond fucked up, and I hope someone can reach out to the person to let them know.

Okay, so I finally saw the big video about plagiarism… and here are my thoughts:

• I feel blessed, having not ever been a James Sommerton fan, because I don't need to imagine the mental turmoil I'd be in if I were a former fan… but holy shit, this maniac here has enough skeletons he's hiding to practically fill a morgue. Plagiarism after plagiarism, just… abused with impunity… I'm willing to bet that many of these folks being listed, following the sheer success this video, experienced for the first time any sort of justice or retribution for so cruelly curbing out the names of those who deserve to be known (hell, just look at Sommerton contorting as uncomfortably as he did).
• What was admittedly disheartening for me to see, unfortunately, is finding out what was up with Internet Historian's Cave video. That one hurt, stung like a bitch… BUT… it did at the same time explain why it felt weird, what happened to it. And I recognize he was part of the far more minor first half of the video, but in light of the video's actual subject matter, I want to know that people are scouring Internet Historian’s uploads, thoroughly examining him from top to bottom. No one should be immune.

IH turned out to not be that bad of a plagiarist. He had a video on the Costa Concordia that had a bunch of plagiarism in it, but most of his output isn't plagiarized. Doesn't make the Man in Cave thing any better, and it's likely that he didn't plagiarize other stuff because most people aren't writing big in-depth articles about random meme stuff from 20 years ago.

A lot of it is just in bad taste

I believe IH's Expleened channel also turned out to have plenty of plagiarized material.

He shouldn't have plagiarism in any of his videos.

Yeah people have been turning out plagiarism in his second channel alot. Saw one dude who learned he'd been plagiarized on twitter.

x4 You're either a plagiarist, or you aren't. "It's not that bad because he only ripped off of fewer people's hard work without giving them proper credit and due than Somerton" is a pretty terrible statement still. There's a reason why getting caught plagiarizing major essays like theses or projects in college is enough to get someone failed out of that course, if not outright expelled from university.

Was the Costa Concordia vid also stolen? I thought it was just the cave video for IH's main channel.

And it's so weird because IH clearly still puts a lot of effort into his videos with the amount of visual edits in them. Dude could have just asked permission to do live readings instead of plagiarizing and would have been fine.

Edited by Karxrida on May 18th 2024 at 9:56:52 AM

Nah the Costa one is AFAIK, original to him.

You can tell from his delivery. It's a lot more flippant and less poetic. More his usual style.

The Man In Cave one stands out because he doesn't really have the same tone in his narration he usually has.

Edited by Ghilz on May 18th 2024 at 12:59:52 PM

I do think that the Costa Concordia one has some lines proven plagiarized. I recall specifically the part about the "asian couple found in their room who had slept through the crash, safe but shivering" being lifted word for word from an article.

If it's the only line, I could believe it's inadvertent plagiarism (I think everyone can accidentally copy someone's line without realizing) but I don't think it was the only one.

So I should specify a lot of his videos have the "Im quoting a thing but I don't tell you I'm doing that", which to be fair alot of youtubers do. It is plagiarism, sure, but it's also insanely widespread.

But they don't form the majority of his video's run time the way man in cave did.

Plagiarism is plagiarism and I heavily doubt it was limited to these two cases. Nobody who writes their own shit suddenly decides to steal an article, word for word, as the script for an entire video.

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on May 18th 2024 at 2:27:44 PM

Caught up with the Somerton developments and as shocking as they are I can't even say I'm surprised. Not even with the faked attempted suicide threat. It's just the narcissist's playbook all the way fucking down.

The one part that IMO is actually morbidly funny is one of his sock-puppets trying to bury his co-writer, basically self-reporting that throwing him under the bus was always one of Somerton's cards to play. What a loathesome fucking asshole.

One of Hbomb's major points in his video was "Quoting something without saying you're quoting it is stealing and plagiarism". It makes no sense to give that behavior a pass when Hbomb himself explicitly wouldn't.

I wonder if Nick ever found out that he got thrown under the bus, considering the two seem to be friends I'd imagine Nick wouldn't like it

it's not impossible, but rather unlikely. Still I don't think he stopped at stealing, 2 videos worth of material iirc? Maybe someday it'll be found out there's hints of it in a lot more of his catalog