this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
376 points (94.3% liked)

News

23287 readers
4101 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

James Somerton was making $170,000 a year with nearly 6 million views and 267,000 subscribers on YouTube, until...

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 157 points 10 months ago (4 children)

There was another aspect to this video, which was that when Somerset actually did try to write some of the material himself, it was complete garbage.

For example, he completely plagiarized from a book about Disney, but then, he had to transition between one plagiarized book and a different plagiarized article, and in that transition, he presented some facts about Disney organizing gay events at their park, and it was all outright lies. Disney did not actually have any official LGBTQ events at their parks until far after that.

There was a different YouTube video that came out the next day, from this musician who listed all of the outright lies that he discovered while watching Somerset's channel.

I think the plagiarism displayed by Somerset is atrocious, but personally, I find lying and spreading misinformation to be even worse.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not to mention the rampant misogyny.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The queer community deserves better. Hopefully this will leave some room for other voices

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The queer community clearly already has better, as James plagiarized lots of very talented creators and writers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

This is a great point! I like you're way of looking at things.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

hbomb included a playlist of smaller queer creators that i've really enjoyed!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRGz5EMig3r2ZDgeGzwUlSz-PzF-L1Xu1

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Ahhhh nice, I haven't finished hbomberguy video yet

[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago

I think the Todd in the Shadows video was the nail in the coffin. He might’ve been able to slither back by saying he didn’t realize he was attributing incorrectly (like Internet Historian fans are screaming), but he can’t come back from outright lying the times he wasn’t plagiarizing.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do you have a link to that different video? I only saw the hbomberguy one I think

[–] [email protected] -4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I have no issue with the content provided, but I wanted to give a little constructive criticism on the structure of your writing. Real small. When you say,

There was another aspect to this video, which was that when Somerset actually...

When you say there is a thing, the reader is going to assume the next thing you write to be that thing. So you don't need the "which is that." You can just launch right into what you're going to say, you already set it up. You basically said "I have a thing to say. The thing I have to say is this:"

Everything else is informative and well presented. No other notes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

No other notes.

There is another aspect to your comment, which was that it made me laugh really hard.:)

No other notes.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Would you need a semicolon then or not?

There was another aspect of the video; Somerset actually made up…

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Eh doesn't really flow compared to the original. I would have to reread to understand.

I'm all for omitting unnecessary words, but certain cliché connectors are so ubiquitous that they act as punctuation. You don't notice them, but reading is less comfortable when they're missing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I don't know that you need a semicolon but you could definitely use one, and that would probably be the best way. Semicolons are for when two complete sentences are related. But they can still be formatted as two sentences, or even the same sentence with a comma. Many sentences contain parts that could be standalone sentences. But reading back over the original sentence again I would probably say it can just be rewritten to be more straightforward.

"Another aspect to this video is that Somerset, when actually trying to write some of the material himself, produced complete garbage."

Mostly I've just been reading a lot of philosophy recently which tends to run on a long and complex sentence structure that's unnecessary and could be a lot simpler, so this kind of thing has been at the front of my mind lately. That's probably the only reason I even noticed in the first place.