Since it was revealed that gay youtuber James Somerton was engaging in extensive plagiarism in his videos, many of us are reflecting on how it relates to us personally. My first reaction was that I never liked Somerton to begin with. His videos were very disjointed, and they took forever to get to the point, or never got to the point at all. I also spotted one or two factual errors that made me think he didn’t know anything.
But I feel for his former fans, and I don’t blame them for liking and trusting Somerton. How could they have known?
And I never said out loud that I disliked Somerton, and why would I? I just thought he was a bad essayist, I didn’t think he had actually done anything wrong. Maybe if more people spoke up, stuff like this would come to light sooner?
I’m grasping at straws, I’m not convinced for a minute that this is the right answer. But let’s try it for a moment. Let’s talk about a few youtubes I didn’t like and why.