Internet Historian - Blog Posts

I feel like the Hbomberguy plagiarism video has a lot of really good lessons about building an argument. Like, the thesis of the video isn't just "Plagiarism is rife on Youtube", although that point was certainly well made, it was specifically about James Somerton, who isn't mentioned until about halfway through the video. Before then, Hbomb goes through several creators who are already widely discredited as plagiarists, and in each section he introduces concepts that are later incorporated into the final takedown of Somerton, but each section also stands on it's own. Like, he starts with Filip, the game reviewer, which he uses to introduce the format of how he will discuss and expose plagiarists. Specifically, the graphic of displaying the source material while the plagiarist's voice plays, and marking up said source material every time the plagiarist changes some wording slightly. This is the method that Hbomb uses across the entire video. With Illuminaughtii, Hbomb introduces a few major concepts 1) The idea of Insufficient citation. Illuminaughtii "Cites" her sources by putting a plaintext pastebin link in her video descriptions with no indication of how each source was used. Technically, her source is CITED, but not in any relevant or useful way. She has a big list of stuff she read, and a random youtube link in there happens to be the source that she stole 90% of the video from. 2) He introduces the profit motive behind this approach. Putting out a lot of content very quickly is how one builds an audience, and therefore an income, out of making stuff on youtube. Plagiarism of this sort is a way to produce content very quickly and build a following. The Internet Historian section introduces two new concepts:

1) The behavior of an exposed plagiarist, taking down and reuploading videos with minor changes, awkwardly trying to insert credit without admitting guilt. 2) That the plagiarists are stealing not just research, but STYLE. Previous sections go over how the plagiarists are reusing the same words, but this section oozes over how much of the final product's quality was the result of how well the source material was written. TIH didn't just crib the notes from the Mentalfloss article, he created a video heavily dependent on the original author's skill as a writer. When TIH tried his own hand at presenting the same set of facts, it came out much worse. So that when the time comes for the Somerton takedown, Hbomb has already laid the groundwork to bring these concepts back. Somerton takes down and reuploads videos when he's caught, he declares this his video is "based on" work by somebody else without providing proper citation. He's not just stealing research done by somebody else, he's taking their insights and talent as a writer and regurgitating it as his own, and he's doing so to churn out a vast wall of content that he can financially benefit from, and he doesn't need to tell you why this is important, because he's already done so. He already convinced you that Illuminaughtii hiding a line in a pastebin didn't excuse her plagiarism, so you don't need to be told why Somerton saying his video is "Based On" somebody else's book doesn't excuse it.

if you’re wondering how it’s going, internet historian fans have resorted to making up qanon conspiracy theories about hbomb

His Patreon doesn't even have a tier for that much money! It's the easiest thing to fact check!

if you’re wondering how it’s going, internet historian fans have resorted to making up qanon conspiracy theories about hbomb

Okay for real though can we also talk about internet historian and illuminaughtii?? Cause both those channels also suck and deserve at least a little of the vitriol Mr. Somerton is currently receiving. Illuminaughtii positioned herself as like an expert on bad businesses and exposing mlms and stuff, and internet historian makes dreck that appeals mostly to edgy teenage boys who think saying slurs is funny. The fact that both of them were also just ripping off other people’s work to make such desperately mid content is a little funny ngl. I hope this video tanks both their YouTube careers too.

EDIT: yes I am now aware that Blair’s channel has already tanked as a result of the dramas that unfolded a few months ago while Hbomb was working on this video (1 mil subscriber count but averaging 20k views a video nowadays. Brutal), but let’s still hope internet historian’s follows suit. Everyone has latched onto the James Somerton centerpiece, but internet historian has a Huge platform (and also sucks).

It would be extremely lame if the guy who got his audience by posting 4chan edgelord bait and anti-sjw cringe and is now pretending to be a respectable channel has the only career that survives this exposé.

James Somerton and Internet Historian

Hbomberguy

They mightve stolen other people's writing but he stole their subscribers

Um, about that….

"internet historian's alt-right anyways" "great day to have never liked james somerton" "never even heard of illuminaughtii before this lol"

that's great buddy but don't go around thinking you're immune to this. if you're not looking for plagiarism, you likely won't notice it unless its egregiously obvious. hell, you've probably consumed plagiarized content without even realizing it. even hbomb pointed out that these people disguised what they presented pretty well as long as you didn't try and dig deeper. don't come away just thinking of this as a callout piece, take this as an important lesson about vetting your sources. if googling scripts in quotes was enough to expose the original, we should all start doing that shit!!