I've seen a lot of people rightfully questioning why people were watching and giving money to this James Somerton guy, considering how... bad his videos were. Like watching a few minutes of his content evidences pretty clearly that he doesn't have much in the way of charisma, that his presentation of the subject matter was super bland, etc.
And a lot of people weren't just casually engaging with Somerton's work, they were subscribing to his Patreon or deeply invested in his Discord community. So it's not just, like, "oh people know this is garbage but they want some noise on in the background."
I think what's going on is that Somerton was making a quasi-passable imitation of better content, and Youtube was primed to reward that. Somerton didn't just plagiarize content, he also copied style. Like he even had the damn copy of Disney War on the table in one video. He did a lower-effort version of the aesthetics that a lot of video essayists employ – the props, the moody lighting, etc.
But the difference between him and the video essayists he was imitating is that he was uploading a lot more frequently. And I think that's the key: Somerton was basically making a surrogate product. There's not that much Lindsay Ellis video you can watch on YouTube. But if you watch it all, YouTube will suggest videos from slightly-worse creators. Consume enough of this material and you'll get James Somerton, and Somerton has a regular upload schedule and puts out a lot of videos, and at that point maybe you are not so discerning about the quality of the material because you're pursuing something that kind of reminds you of better creators, but is a lot more voluminous.
Like, the video essay game has gotten advanced over the last few years. Hbomb himself only uploads basically once a year now, and before she quit YouTube, Lindsay Ellis was going in the same direction of slower, bigger, more sophisticated videos before she quit YouTube. People are making feature-length documentaries. I have a pile of YouTube subscriptions that haven't uploaded in months, and I know those channels aren't dead, just working on some massive essay.
I think creators like Somerton and Illuminaughty were exploiting a niche borne out of this: that people want things that have the outward trappings of video essays (ie, stuff that doesn't immediately come off as thrown-together or vloggy) but at a volume that's simply not sustainable for a video essayist. And that constant volume makes their audience both parasocially bond with these creators more strongly (as we see with Somerton's very invested fanbase) and it kind of inures people to the low quality of the videos by sheer force of familiarity.
I think there's also an element of just affinity fraud to this – Somerton portrayed himself as basically the only queer creator on YouTube, and a lot of the factoids he fabricated in his videos played up historical queerphobia. And when people view someone as part of their in-group, especially an in-group that feels like a besieged minority, their critical sense can turn off.
So this is kind of a synthesis response/addendum to both the above and this post, both of which I think are 1. wholly correct and 2. very important additions to the conversation in the Somerton Aftermath. I think that, on the whole, exercising grace and understanding towards Somerton's now-former audience is the right thing to do. Intelligent, good-hearted people fall for grifts, scams, cults, etc all the time, it's hideously embarrassing and upsetting when it happens, and sneering at them is extremely unhelpful.
Now with that being said - I'd like to push back somewhat against wholesale absolution of Somerton's audience, particularly because it's very rare for grifts to be so swiftly and convincingly dismantled that their ENTIRE once-extremely-loyal audience is left effectively free of their influence. I think that, ironically, there's an excellent & unique opportunity here for advancing critical literacy in an audience whose interest in doing so unfortunately led them to James.
Todd in the Shadows's Somerton-misinfo-debunking video is useful here. If you're someone who previously enjoyed Somerton's content, I'll do you a solid and assume that you see yourself as a basically-morally-good person who is interested in learning, truth, and equality. So, ask yourself: why were these bizarre tangents salivating over Nazi physiques not worrying to you? Why weren't multiple instances of Somerton inventing hordes of Evil Straight Women Preying On Poor Defenceless Gays from whole cloth enough to raise your suspicions? Why did these nakedly-sinophobic lies, delivered against a bright-red background while wearing a fucking tang suit, not give you pause? These questions aren't intended to be "gotchas" that prove you're a bad person - rather, I think it'd just be useful to sit with them.
Twitter/Tumblr user 3liza had a very good thread that I believe has been lost following the nuking of their previous Twitter account, the thrust of which was this: one of the most important things to learn when creating your own work and digesting the work of others is that everyone possesses the capacity to do harm. (I recently encountered a very similar sentiment in this very good essay entitled Imposter/Abuser: Power Dynamics in Publishing by Sarah Gailey.) Even people you've liked for years! Even people you've KNOWN for years! Yes, even you and me! That capacity never goes away, no matter how nice a person you are or how much good work you've done - you can't actually bank good vibes to erase harm that you do. Your favs can, and will, hurt people who don't deserve it - maybe intentionally, maybe not - they'll release bad work, they'll be less-than-exemplary business partners, they'll be cruel lovers, they'll support bad causes, bad people, they'll cheat, they'll steal. It's inevitable! This isn't me saying "be hypervigilant and get your knives out at the first misstep", this is me stating the absolute necessity of understanding that the people who make the things you love are PEOPLE - imperfect, messy, people - who make mistakes or act with thoughtless cruelty or whose formerly-noble motivations for making the things they make might shift over time.
So, yes, the buck might stop with a dubiously-charismatic grifter who leveraged plagiarism, an aggressive content release schedule, and a yearning for queer community into a 30k/month payday. But let's also make sure to draw a pretty distinct line here, with the people he stole from and groups directly harmed by his rampant misinformation on one side, and the people who watched & supported him on the other. It's certainly true that he was the one poisoning the well, but a LOT of people kept drawing water from it, even after multiple instances of someone saying "hey, this water tastes funny. Also, isn't that my bucket?" HBG/TITS have, in addition to their enviable work in exposing Somerton as a fraud (and, in HBG's case, seeking to provide the victims of Somerton's theft with some level of renumeration), provided a large group with the opportunity to reflect seriously on the damage they did to themselves and their community by passionately supporting a grifter, and I hope they take it.
