James Somerton

James Somerton is a marketing expert, film school grad, and he's also gay. Prior to December 2023, he was best known for long-form video essays on pop culture through a queer lens.

In December 2023, H Bomber Guy released a video on plagiarism on Youtube that culminated in half its four hour runtime being about James Somerton, his extensive history of plagiarism, his biases, and accusations of grifting. Alongside this video, Todd in the Shadows released a companion piece documenting Somerton's apparent willful spreading of misinformation, accusing him of using the clout he gained through plagiarism to distort facts. Several other Youtubers were caught in the crossfire of this drama, either for calling him out earlier, being accused by Somerton for bad behavior, or calling him out after the floodgates were opened by Hbomberguy's video.

From there Somerton nuked his Patreon, videos, and social medias for several months. In February 2024 he reinstated his Patreon and released a monetized response video titled "A Measured Response," titled after a series of video essays by H Bomberguy. He also unprivated several of his older essays and has other new essays on his Patreon.

This thread is for general discussion of James Somerton's works and public presence. For discussion specifically related Hbomberguy's video of Somerton, you likely would want to take it to the HBomberguy Forum Thread.

Hbomberguy's video:

Todd In the Shadows' video: Somerton's "A Measured Response" (reupload by another Youtuber, viewing will not go into Somerton's pocket) Jessie Gender's Reaction to Somerton's Apology (Jessie was one of the only specific people directly apologized to in Somerton's video)

Edited by Larkmarn on Feb 28th 2024 at 4:33:01 AM

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One of the things I find kind of interesting is that a lot of the excuses aren't... any better than the accusations?

Take the plagiarism accusation of "Are They Gay?" His defense is that he didn't steal from "Are They Gay?", he just took from another video that did steal from ATG?... which is still just copy/pasting from another Youtuber.

Or, in his Measured Response, I find it really telling that he shows the email saying the writer of ''Tinkerbells and Evil Queens" agreed to his video... which shows that he didn't get this agreement for several months after said video went up.

Like... he thinks that's a defense but it's just proving that he made, produced, and uploaded the video very explicitly without the blessing of the book he's plagiarizing.

That... actually might make a lot of sense. I don't know if I could stand to watch a two hour takedown of my most visible flaws without cringing myself out of existence. I could envision a scenario where he looked at a rundown of accusations and see "Evil Queens was plagiarized? HA! I have proof that it wasn't!" without thinking it through.

Edited by Larkmarn on Feb 28th 2024 at 4:04:07 AM

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I think he hasn't actually watched the expose videos and has only heard about them second hand. So he's defending on what someone else is telling him and not what he's actually seen himself.

Not Three Laws compliant.

(I'm glad this is no longer in the HBomberguy thread, but considering James' aspirations it is a little ironic that he didn't get a thread of his own until after he was called out for plagiarism and ceased to be relevant.)

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I added Jessie Gender's video to the OP.

I think her perspective is interesting given Dan Olson's take on the fake sexual assault threats^note For context, Somerton claims that one a female fan of Jessie Gender reached out to James and told him that she (the fan) was going to accuse him of sexually assaulting her. Which... is a wild threat to make against a gay man while also defeating the purpose by forewarning him. Later retellings would seemingly turn this into death threats, but one thing she said is that she wouldn't consider accepting his apology unless he proves he's being sincere and one of those things would involve posting a police report of him reporting these threats. Somerton says he filed the reports, and Gender assumes he wouldn't go so far as to take the risk of filing a false police report, so her train of logic is that if he was serious about this happening to him, that's what she needs to see to believe him.

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Dan points out that if he did file a police report, it's easy to show he did. But he also points out that after all he's done anything James posts now after its been brought up is suspect as a forgery.

Also "Female fan of Jessie Gender" ...did she email him with her real name? How does he know it's a female fan? does she include that in her email?

"Hello James, I, a woman, will falsely accuse you, a gay man, of sexual harassment. Please accept this duly noted forewarning."

It's the same thing when James says straight female fans argue in his comments that Yuri on Ice isn't gay. How do you know they are straight females? Do they add that to the comment?

James is sloppy. He doesn't do work and he wont do work for his apology. Like Dan points out he messed up the aspect ratio of his own apology video. This seems like a guy who is gonna pay attention to the pale grey date in the corner of an email and double check his timeline to see if it matches up? No.

This is a guy that posted a picture of himself using a stolen video to make his own video.

Edited by Ghilz on Feb 28th 2024 at 5:20:56 AM

I think he probably just got something at random and ended up on him plagiarizing that book

I heard fhis guy's name a lot last month and well.

Well I'm interested to see how this thread is going to proceed without touching on his recent controversy.

Akira Toriyama (April 5 1955 - March 1, 2024).

I do wonder if James Somerton is going to make anymore videos after this. It would be hard to talk about his videos without addressing the whole plagiarism controversy.

I love animation, TV, movies, YOU NAME IT!

Apparently this thread was made solely to stop said controversy from clogging up the Hbomb thread so… yeah, talking about anything else will be hard.

The guy is probably toast. Any video he could make after this will just serve as fodder for other Youtubers to point and laugh at. This is not the sort of thing you can just bounce back from.

He's made two on patreon. One about some killer and one about Bob's Burger. They are only on his patreon atm so god knows who he plagiarized.