#I'm just thinking how a lot of those things somerton said in his videos I LARGELY heard back from other people

[repurposedmeatlocker]

If there is one thing I learned this week, it's that you really can just say something absolutely untrue, and there is a strong chance barely anyone is going to check it.

#I'm just thinking how a lot of those things somerton said in his videos I LARGELY heard back from other people #like through posts and online rhetoric #which is not only interesting but extremely shocking considering a large part of it is queer history #aka history more at risk for being lost and/or inaccurate #it is just wild and people heard that and just keep on lying in a vicious cycle #this isn't exclusive to him and this current internet event I could name many other such instances #squack

[vicissicude]

reading the transcript of james somerton's video and here's some notable stuff for people who dont want to watch the 34 minute long thing:

it opens with him saying his media blackout is because he was in the hospital for "trying to do something really stupid"

the first thing approaching an apology in this apology video is at the timestamp 2:20

immediately after saying "i'm really really sorry" he says that in title cards he tried to put "this is based on this person's research or this person's book" but he "knows that isnt enough now"

"there were a lot of times that stuff just got put in and there was no attempt at crediting anybody and i'm really really sorry" nice passive voice james

he claims he didnt know he was hurting people doing this

he spends two minutes explaining how long he's been friends with nick and all their history and that nick has not spoken with him since "this happened"

"I also want to apologize for the misinformation and just outright lies that ended up in the videos I can honestly say that I never intended for any of that stuff to be in the videos. And most cases I didn't write it but I should have […] I should have been more diligent about factchecking" he never intended lies to be in the video, just pure good research that he stole. research that he later says he took for granted

he briefly thanks harris and his team for the fund set up for victims of plagiarism and says he wants to help but doesn't know how

less than a second later he's saying that all claims and estimations of how much he makes online are overestimated and that he split everything 50/50 with nick

he says his plan moving forward is to reupload all the videos, put credit in the description, and then somehow send the ad revenue for those videos to the authors whose research he stole. do those authors want that? wonder if he even asked them. i mean if he stole my shit for a video i wouldnt want him to reupload with a credit in the description and whatever paltry cents i get from the few views he'll manage after this

"I never thought anyone thought that I was doing like journalism on stuff. I don't think anyone did, but the people who actually were doing it should have been given the credit they deserved." wild sentence bro

he once again defends his title card citations in two videos and appends "but now I know that's not how citation works" so why are you still saying it...

at some point he'd like to do videos again, and his plan for that is "videos that are fully sourced where I will put a link to the script where you can find all of the sources so that everyone is properly given the credit that they deserve." now i could be reading this purposefully negatively but this just sounds like a description citation again but with extra steps

he wants to be a "really good example" of proper citation

"People think that I hate ace people and women and bisexual people and lesbians and that's not true. I'm sorry that stuff made it into the videos. I promise you I did not write that stuff. I should have been a lot more extracting when Nick and I would be editing scripts but I promise you that I don't think those things […] when it came to that I would just kind of run with Nick's judgement and his observations and stuff like that." SO THE ONE THING THAT HARRIS SAID WAS NOT PLAGIARIZED AND SEEMED TO BE JAMES'S REAL OPINION HE WANTS US TO KNOW THAT HE DEFINITELY DOESNT FEEL THAT WAY AND WAS JUST PARROTING NICK'S OPINION. but dont worry right after this he assures us he's not trying to "throw Nick under the bus"

he says he thinks they were just trying to do videos too fast and writing and editing too fast

"Telos was never a scam. It was never a grift or anything like that I swear it was not. In the next couple of days I'm going to send out a message to the supporters on Indiegogo and explain the whole situation in more detail to them." can't wait to read that explanation

he spends more time talking about the videos he'd like to make in the future

"I actually liked doing research. I loved doing research, reading the books and articles and stuff like that. The part of me that was lazy was the copy and paste part. I wasn't trying to be malicious that was just laziness." james. that's not as great of an explanation as you might think. it just shows how blatantly you dont respect or care for other creators. you only did it because you believed you could get away with it, not just because you were lazy

he says the reason he's reactivating his patreon is because there were several people online theorizing that his plan was to relaunch in january to pull surprise billing and run with the money. so he said he's relaunching now to give people time to leave ("which i imagine will be the vast majority" can't pass up the opportunity to be self-deprecating)

he ends the video restating what he said earlier in the video

notably he's crying the whole time

one thing i'll say is that i didn't see anything that indicated he communicated with harris or kat or anyone. it sounded like he was coming up with that plan on the fly. i'm not surprised if he claimed it elsewhere or has failed to follow up on that promise, but it has only been 5 hours since release (at the time i'm typing this). so at least he's not making claims quite as bold as "i've been in communication with hbomberguy"

#james somerton #hbomberguy

[stormsbourne]

alright listen

I know we're all having an evaluation of how eagerly we believe people who present with even the slightest air of authority and frankly good! we all need to be less credulous of people on the internet who tell lies.

but I think there are also other lessons to learn from james somerton. namely about his raging and blatant misogyny, which I've often seen similar forms of in fandom and on this specific site. to paraphrase bombs himself in the ctrl alt del video, if you see shitty behavior within your sphere, it's important to recognize it and try to fix it instead of rejecting it and asserting that no REAL members of the ingroup are like that. and nerds have a misogyny problem. including tumblr. so let's reckon with it.

do you append "white" or "straight" to your comments about women even when those things have little to do with the topic being discussed, just to make your comments seem more legit? (and no, m/m shipping discourse does not give you a ticket to say it's all straight women -- it's fictional characters, james.) do you often theorize about how (hurriedly appended "straight/white/cis") women are responsible for a problem in fandom, nay, all problems in fandom? have you made up a guy based on a single post that annoyed you and extrapolated to say that all (appended signifier to make it ok) women in fandom are like that? do you see women as uniquely fetishizing, uniquely stupid about politics or social issues, uniquely annoying to talk to? do you assume when there's an issue, even a real one and not the fake ones james made up, that a woman is probably at the root of it?

all of this still applies to you if you're a woman. it also applies if you're gay or a person of color or trans. being an oppressed group doesn't mean you are immune from sexism, and sexism is still rampant in everyday life for pretty much everyone.

your shipping and fandom discourse isn't immune from this. no, I'm not talking about how not enough people like yuri. I'm talking about how women who like "bad" ships like r*ylo or whatever are seen as open targets for harassment. how women who are into "bad/problematic" fandoms are seen as idiots and enablers who deserve what they get. how there's an attitude that women who like shitty bad porn must think it's good, must be too stupid to know better, and must need to be handheld and taught about good, acceptable fiction. I've already talked a lot about tumblr's complete refusal to admit that fujoshi wasn't a term coined by delicate japanese mlm to complain about evil women (and I wonder if james contributed to that idiotic concept), but the way I've seen people assert that women into m/m must be straight, must be stupid, must be lying about their identities, must be hurting gay men in real life in addition to wanting some anime boys to kiss ...

I've seen how some of you people talk about amb*r h*ard, is all I'm saying, and I've seen what you've tried to do to dozens of female creatives that, for some reason, you've decided deserve to be taken down or taught a lesson. I've seen the descriptions you use. shrieking, bitchy, whiny, uppity, shrewish, karen (don't get me started on how karen has been turned into an easy excuse for misogyny). you're not bystanders to what james did and is doing, you're a part of it. sure, you might not have the nazi fetish, but you've said things about women that put somerton to shame.

just a thing to keep in mind while the plagiarism discourse is ongoing. somerton is a shithead for many reasons but this is one that's important to remember because I think people often treat misogyny like a lesser crime, a smaller concern, and it's not. just think of what laws are passing and what views popular movements have of women and then, for one moment, consider that maybe your reflexive need to blame women or pick them apart might have been influenced by the Society In Which We Live.

#james somerton #hbomberguy

[msbluebell]

How We Fall For People Like James Somerton

We're all joking, but this James Somerton thing has me really fucked up.

I wasn't a huge fan of James. I saw a few of his videos and liked them. In the ones I saw he was calm and explained things straightforwardly and even the one or two times he said things against white women...well, that's language I've been seeing on Tumblr since I joined back in my tweenage years. I thought it was just a dismissive joke pointing out a frank reality.

I didn't watch him too much. Just a few videos. I kept meaning to watch more, but I didn't because sometimes I wanted something easier. But I regarded him sell because of how informed he seemed.

And that's the thing, isn't it? He SEEMED informed. He spoke confidently and sometimes quoted queer sounding articles and I trusted him blindly. And why? Because he was giving me information that SEEMED well researched.

Illumanaughtii too. I WAS a consistent fan of hers before other youtubers came out. Because she presented information really well and I like hand drawn characters and because she read academic sounding quotes. I trusted her and her information was stollen. And I feel like a fool for ever having trusted her now, but at least her stollen facts were apparently accurate. Maybe.

James though, he straight up lied. Todd in the Shadows went through a lot of effort to expose those lies. He did so much research that I didn't bother to do. And he admitted he only did it because he happened to know people more informed than him that noticed the lies and went down a rabbit hole.

And maybe if I was more involved I would have noticed. But that's beside the point. what's getting me is I didn't bother to check myself, I just blindly trusted.

And the worst part is I can see why it happened.

I work.

I work, and then I get home, and when I get home I stress. I stress about work I have to do tomorrow, or classes, or finding a new job that actually pays a livable wage. And to escape that stress I go online to AO3, or tumblr, but especially Youtube.

Because I like youtube, I like to have noise in the background while I work. I like to listen to things while I read. And some of the time it's ASMR videos, or watching someone cook something. But mostly? It's history things or video essays.

And when I'm working, or reading, I'll hear a fact, and I'll look up, and I'll think "Huh, that's interesting to know, I didn't know that." And I won't think anything about it.

Because I'm busy, or I'm tired. I'm tired from work, and I don't want to do more work. Or sometimes it's mental health. This is my coping mechanism. I'm trying to learn things, do something to distract myself. I'm not looking to disprove things.

In other words I'm lazy. Or, if I'm being kind to myself, I'm tired.

Maybe if the topic was something I was an expert in I would have noticed. I'm a former ballerina, I'm a failed history major dropout. Maybe if he'd said something like "Holodomor never happened" or "Boudica is a Finnish folk hero" I'd have noticed. Maybe.

But he didn't, and I didn't notice. I assumed he did the work, and why?

Because surely a gay man wouldn't spend hours on youtube talking about Queer history if he wasn't passionate. Because he, a queer man, would surely know about queer history. Surely he wouldn't want to spread lies and hate. And he's quoting from books and articles so why wouldn't I trust him?

My trust was blind and unfounded.

And now I'm reeling from that. I'm reeling because I'm starting to feel like I can't trust a lot of people. How can I listen to any Youtuber casually now?

I can't, I never should have assumed I could.

Now every informative video feels like I need to do tens of hours of research just to be sure what I'm hearing is true. I feel like I can't trust anything unless I do.

James Somerton took my trust.

And it's not only that either. That's not what scares me the most. It's that there are THOUSANDS of people like me. Millions like me. Who are learning something from a video or a tweet or a tumblr post from someone they assume is an expert and are blindly trusting because they assume they can trust it. They don't intend to do their own research because they're tired, or don't know how. And that scars me. I was a history major, I studied tyrants and misinformation and the rise of propaganda, and I, with all my tools to notice, was still blind.

You cannot blindly trust a video, you cannot blindly trust a tweet, you especially cannot blindly trust a tumblr post.

YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE TO PROPOGANDA

#hbomberguy #todd in the shadows #james somerton #plagerism #misinformation

[storagebay29]

james somerton 'apology' video transcript

Note: for those who do not want to watch it. For those who do, here's a link to a reupload as the original has since been deleted. There are a lot of a pauses and 'um's/'uh's, the latter of which are largely ommitted from the below transcript. Posted under a readmore as it's pretty long.

I'm sorry for taking so long to make this video, or to say anything. I'm in the hospital- I've been in the hospital for a little over a week. I tried- Fuck. I tried to do something really stupid... (pause) I'm only here now because before I did it, I called my dad to talk to him one more time and, he figured out something was wrong, called paramedics or 911 or… and they got here and I woke up in the hospital and, yeah.

…

Anyway, I'm not trying to make this a sob story, I'm just trying to explain why I've been so quiet. I had a friend from back home checking my emails and stuff, and yeah.

…

But anyway… I wanna say that I'm really really sorry, really really sorry... for the stuff in the videos, the not crediting people, and for a lot of videos, you know I, I did the opening titles thing, and I tried to put like ‘this is based on X's- this person's research, or on this person's book,’ but I know now that wasn't enough, that wasn't okay. And then there were a lot of times... that uh...  oh god. There were a lot of times that stuff just got put in and there was no attempt at crediting anybody (pause) and I'm really really sorry.

And I'm not, I'm not sorry that I got caught, I'm sorry for ever doing it, I didn't- I honestly honestly... didn't realise that I was hurting people... And now that I know that I was hurting people�� I'm just really sorry.

I lost my best friend because of this. Nick and I have been best friends since 2011 or [20]12? We'd been friends online and then. He lived in Ottawa, I moved to Ottawa so we could be, like, friends in person, and then we moved back to- I moved back to Nova Scotia, and Nick came with me. We eventually moved to the Toronto area where we lived together for 7 years? 8 years? We lived together for a really long time… and… he hasn't spoken to me since this happened.

Sorry, sorry I said I wasn't gonna make this a sob sorry. I should’ve got some Kleenex.

Then again I'm really really really sorry for the things I did in the videos: copying people's work and not crediting them properly or at all. I also wanna apologise for the misinformation and just outright lies that ended up in the videos? I didn't- I honestly say that I never intended for any of that stuff to be in the videos, most cases I didn't write it but I should’ve, you know it was my face on the channel, my name on the channel, I should have been, I should have been more diligent about fact checking and stuff. ‘Cause there was a lot of really stupid shit in there. It would’ve- it's just so easy to check, I just never did, I just took it for granted…

I also, I wanna thank Hbomberguy and his team for setting up the fund to make some money available for the authors that were wronged and the journalists and writers and…

I wanna help somehow, I don't know how, a lot of- I've seen a lot of people online saying how much money I apparently make and they’re way overestimating. Beyond the fact that Nick and I split everything 50/50, they're still way overestimating how much money came in… And the Toronto area is expensive, so there's not really any kind of savings, I'm moving home really soon… ‘Cause without Nick there's nothing for me here, and like I said it's really expensive…

And so I wanna say I wanna thank them for setting up that fund, and I wanna help somehow. The only thing I can think of right now is to make the videos, most of the videos public again and every month I can send the ad revenue from all of the past videos- ‘cause there were plenty that didn't have any, any uncredited stuff in them... But I can make them public again, and then every month I can send the AdSense to- either I can send it to Hbomberguy's team, that they can add to the fund, or I can start a fund myself? And every month I can publicly say how much money was made on the AdSense and show it. And send that to the writers and stuff every month. I don't know... what the system for that would be? But I would be more than happy to do that

You know some of the videos like the ‘Killing Stalking’ video brought in like a pretty decent amount of money every month so that would be helpful I think/to them. I'll also put in either the description or the pinned comment the names of the authors so that anyone watching the video knows where all of the information came from, that it wasn’t me going out doing journalism- I never thought that anyone thought that I was doing journalism and stuff, and I don't think anyone did. For the people who actually were doing it should have been given the credit they deserve, they did the hard work, all I did was edit a video. They did the hard work and they- they deserved the credit

(cut) Sorry about that, phone stopped recording.

But- yes. They deserved- they deserved credit, and… when it was something... when it was something like the, the recent... ‘history of hollywood’ videos, right there in the opening credits, I put the Vito Russo's name, that it was adapted from his book ‘The Celluloid Closet’. Same thing went for the gay panic video and the gay holocaust video, they were- the holocaust video was adapted from two books, and the gay panic video was adapted from a lot of journalism, and I- I put their names right at the beginning of the videos.

But and- I understand that's not how citation works... now. I understand that, I get it. And I wanna do better. And I know a lot of people hate me now, ‘cause I did bad shit. But I wanna try and do better. At some point I’d like to make videos again. I'd like to do videos that are fully sourced, where I will put a link to the script where you can find all the sources so that everyone is properly given the credit that they deserve, any the kind of research that's done, credit for any b roll that's used whether it's stock footage, or movies or TV shows or video games, or anything like that, have it all in there. I would like to become a really really good example of giving proper credit to writers and journalists

And I know a lot of you watching this aren't- aren't really gonna care, you'd rather I just disappear. But I would like to try to do better.

I never ever intended to hurt anybody. I never thought that that's what I was doing. Before I went- before I went to the hospital, I read a lot of stuff from people who were really hurt, not just authors and stuff but people who watched my videos who were hurt by stuff in them. People think that I hate ace people and women and bisexual people and lesbians and that's not true. It's really- it's just- it’s not true. And I’m sorry that stuff made it into videos that just shouldn’t have been there: misinformation and lies... But I promise you I did not write that stuff.

I should have been a lot more exacting when Nick and I would be editing scripts but I promise you that those are not- I don't think those things. I specifically want to apologise to asexual people who feel that I just completed delegitimised you. Nick being ace, I- I know that it's kinda like you know, no two gay people are exactly the same, no two ace people are exactly the same, but I kind of, when it came to that I just kind of ran with Nick's judgement and his observations and stuff like that. And I’m not trying to throw Nick under the bus, which a bunch of people are saying that I was setting him up as doing, which is not true…

This whole thing, Nick and I were 50/50 partners, it wasn't I hired him to have a scapegoat or something like that. I never hired Nick. Nick and I were roommates for years before I started doing Youtube videos and then they started- people started watching them and I asked Nick if he wanted to help me write them and he said yes and we started splitting the- first the AdSense and then the Patreon and then the sponsorships, we just split everything. Nick was never supposed to be a fall guy.

I'm sorry. Maybe I should have waited longer to do this. But yeah, I- the- I did not- I don’t think those things and I don't think Nick does either, I think it was just how fast we were writing stuff, and how fast we were putting videos out, it was just too fast. And we weren’t putting the care into them that needed to be put into them.

I've seen a lot of people on social media and other youtubers even lying about me, but other- other- Hbomberguy was not one of them, I just wanna be clear about that, except I was never setting Nick up to be a fall guy and. It was never a grift or anything like that. I swear it was not. It is not.

In the next couple of days, I'm gonna send out a message to the Telos supporters on Indiegogo and explain the whole situation in more detail to them because we were not super clear about everything that was going on with Telos and so I can- I understand if it seems like we weren't doing anything but we were. We were doing a lot of work on Telos. We just weren’t talking about it is because we- we made that initial first announcement for ‘final girl’ and that fell through and I'll explain that to the message I send out to the supporters which I'm sure will end up on reddit or somewhere… And after that we didn't- we didn't want to talk about it too much until we had something really concrete, and I will explain all of that in that message

Telos was and is not a grift. I was never gonna take the money and run. None of the money that came in for telos was ever going to be paying me or Nick. It was going to be paying queer actors and artists, musicians, things like that. And I know there's been lots of talk about budgets and all this stuff, and people saying that I'm really stupid for thinking a movie could be made for that little money, but there are examples of it being done, and I actually do have a work ethic.

Anyway. but yeah. anyway

I do want to keep making videos and I know a lot of you won't watch them and that's- that's fine. But I really liked making videos…

We ended up making a lot of videos we didn't wanna make because people were asking for them, and so there were a lot of videos that we made that we didn't wanna make, and I think those videos are very clear on which ones those were. One of them never got officially released. It was released to patrons, some patrons have shared it to other people before all the videos went private. A lot of people hate the analysis that Nick and I did on it but. And so maybe it's good that that never got properly released, because… maybe it would have hurt people. And I don't want that.

But I do wanna make videos again sometime. I'd love to do like retrospectives on important gay movies. If you watch the channel ‘Be Kind Rewind’ they're an amazing channel that do a lot of retrospectives on older Hollywood movies and I would love to do that for gay movies. A lot of gay movies, people my age and younger have never heard of, things like ‘Torch Song Trilogy’ and ‘Longtime Companion’, and stuff like that, movies from the seventies and eighties and the nineties, things that were like really influential for gay cinema that no one talks about. And you know, I'd like to talk about not just those movies but how they got made and stuff like that. I would love to do something like that.

I swear on my mother's grave that there will be no copying people, no copying pasting. Every source will be cited in a document and on screen. ‘Cause I usually liked doing the research. I loved doing research - reading the books and articles and stuff like that. I- the part of me that was lazy was the copy and paste part. Instead of just putting it into my words and citing them properly and giving them credit… that's where the laziness came in. That was- I wasn't trying to be malicious. That was just laziness. And I promise for anyone who does watch the videos that I make going forward… I promise that will never happen again. I welcome the highest level of scrutiny on the new videos.

…

As for Patreon, I’m going to reactivate it. Because I saw a lot of people on social media saying that I was probably going to reactivate it right on January 1st so that everyone could get a surprise billing and I could take the money and run. And, no. First of all that was never my plan and I'm not gonna do it. I'm gonna reactivate it now so that anyone who wants to leave - which I imagine will be the vast majority - can leave and not have to worry about being billed again in January.

… Yeah. So. In closing. I'm again incredibly sorry... And again I'm not sorry because I was caught, I honestly didn't know how much I was hurting people… and how much harm I was bringing to the community, because that's not ever what I intended. I wanted the channel to be a safe place. I spent so much time deleting comments that were hateful

I recently found out that I wasn't being notified about- that I wasn’t seeing comments that were in replies to other comments so there were plenty of hateful comments in the comment section that were plenty hateful that I wasn’t seeing, and I didn't know that. But I wanted the channel to be a safe place and it ended up not being a safe place.

And for the misinformation, that kind of falls into two categories. 1. I did the wrong research in the historical things and other things they're not what I wrote.

Again, thank you to Hbomberguy and his team for making the fund for the writers. I'd like to try to contribute to that somehow so- if- if it's okay to make the videos public and send all of the- public and send all- it won't be all of videos ‘cause some of them had to be taken down because sponsors wanted them taken down, but I can put the videos back up with the sources properly put in either- for the I guess for the videos that would be going up from zero, I could actually put in sources for the videos, which would be good.

I guess I could- For the other ones that would just be made live again, I could put them in a pinned comment. ‘Cause I think people read pinned comments more than they read the descriptions, cause like the descriptions disappear in a lot of places. Something like that. Something so that I can try and- it won't make up for what I did but just. Something.

So I’m really really really sorry. I hurt a lot of people that I really respect and that really sucks. And.  Nick if you're watching this I know you're probably not but I miss you and…

Yeah I want to do better. I want- I want to do better. I want to prove that I can do better. I don't expect anyone to just give me the benefit of the doubt. But I want to show that I can do better, so I hope you'll let me do that.

Again, I'm really sorry. I'm sorry that the things I did- I'm sorry that I disappointed you. I promise going forward I will do better.

Thanks for watching, and...

…

And I’m really sorry.

#james somerton #hbomberguy plagiarism video #plagiarism and you(tube) #james somerton apology video #of course it's badly written he had to write it himself for once

[ellestra]

Farming content James Somerton style

Edited: I cleaned up sentences, removed typos and added some links

You've probably seen the latest hbomberguy video that highlights plagiarism problem on youtube. He gives several examples many I never heard about but I've been recommended iilluminaughtii before and watched some of her stuff before getting tired of seemingly endless volume (now I know why). But then he gets to the real subject of the video and I did watch a lot of James Somerton videos. And I liked many of them. I liked them a lot.

I didn't give him any money and, as much as it came as relief, I kept thinking how this must feel so much worse for people who did. I thought about supporting him for a moment when he posted (in April this year!) how his videos are getting less views because youtube algorithm and demonetisation of gay creators (it's a real thing so it was easy to believe) and he will be forced to stop creating if people don't sign up to his patreon. But I was casual viewer and he seemed big enough so I didn't. It must feel like such a betrayal to those who created a real community around him. Just like his film production company it's clear now it was another of his scams. It's infuriating how well it worked.

Somerton deleted his patreon now (along with his twitter and discord server) so there is probably no recourse for those affected. The only good thing is that someone big enough highlighted what he did (and brought receipts) so he had to stop. When smaller creators called him out it either went unnoticed or he managed to make himself a victim (and send his fans after them). He actually did what Anita Sarkeesian was accused of and gaslighted his followers about it. His misogyny just adds an extra bitter taste to this.

At the end hbomberguy talks about how if Somerton was open about what he was doing this could've been his niche. He said it just as I was thinking basically the same thing. I'm sure there is a market for field review type of videos. Not review like movie or book review but in academic sense when you take other people articles on the subject and compare to show the state of research on the subject on at the moment.

This kind of reviews doesn't need any original research. The value is in giving people overview of where the field is at and pointing them to the actual research so they can read more in depth about the results. If you already did the search for all the sources this is a perfect format to use them. Most people don't have time or resources to comb through all the resources themselves but they like to learn about it and this is why videos like that are popular. That's why iilluminaughtii, Somerton and al. were able to cash in on it.

But of course this kind of things have to properly cited. And they cannot be just all quotes. You have to make coherent points not just make stuff up for the transitions (lies that actually made Todd in the Shadows make a video not about music). I suppose that's too much work. Too much effort when you need to crank out content to satisfy all the sponsors.

I was glad to find out I already watch most of the queer creators recommended in the hbomberguy's video (and put on this watch list) as an alternative (I would add Caelan Conrad to it - funnily enough I found them through their video about antivax movement). I trained my youtube recommendations well in which way it skews but it's easier to kick out all the obviously awful when you know what talking points to avoid. It's much harder to spot grift when it pretends to care about the same things you care about. Somerton was saying all the right things. It just wasn't his words.

Did he even believe any of it? I bet he'll insist on yes but the laziness says otherwise. It seems like it was all just for the money and fans this angle gave him. That he enjoyed being cool to the audience he built and the stuff it bought him. Be gay do crime for real. Only he didn't write that one either.

#hbomberguy #james somerton #youtube drama #youtube plagiarism #todd in the shadows #archeology tube #james somerton conman #james somerton scam #youtube #plagiarism

[theacecouple]

I didn't see anything from somerton until about a month ago when he popped up in my recs and I ended up binging his content for about 2 days, but something kept being off and I noticed some of the lies/ignorance, and there was something really dismissive and weird about how he talked about aspecs and women in particular... I stopped watching him cause I watched one of you guys' podcast and realized I also just felt like crap after his videos.

I did end up getting his rwrb video in my recs when it came out cause of the binge and I just remember leaving a comment about the way he talked about aces in it. It was especially upsetting seeing people in the comments who were simply happy he mentioned aspecs at all. He replied to me just saying his cowriter was ace. I don't reply to youtube comments but I just remember wanting to point out that same co-writer he was using as a shield said aces don't face discrimination or conversion therapy, and in that video wrote that aces have to have sex to find out they don't like it. Being something doesn't make you instantly know everything about it, as somerton himself demonstrates with his ignorant comments about gay history.

I'm not really one of his victims since I avoided him as soon as I found him, but I feel bad for all the people he tricked and/or guilted into believing him. I hope some other creators make videos exposing the weird way he manipulated the queer community, cause I think a lot of young folks could use a breakdown of it.

Anyways I just wanted to finish by saying I love you guys' work and learning from you. You helped me understand why certain phrases make me upset, and that and watching your podcast back to back with his videos helped me figure out what I didn't like about Somerton, so you helped protect me from him and not convince myself I was just being Weird as I often do when I get Bad Vibes from someone.

Thank you so much for reaching out <3

It's so fascinating that you stopped watching Somerton after finding us. We've tried to keep things as professional as possible these last 2 years by only citing directly harmful things he's done to us and direct members of our community, and even then it was sparingly and as kind as possible.

When we first spoke with him about including Asexual representation in his future Telos endeavors, he assured us that not only was there already an Ace in the writers' room, but that two real, fully-fleshed out Ace characters were already being written. This was encouraging! After all, we had no way of knowing if he was the kind of cis gay man who loathes Aces or doesn't view us as queer. Since this didn't seem to be the case and rep is important, we supported him. We now deeply regret not doing our research on him first.

Even before his video "The Queer Erasure of Asexuality", we started watching a few of his YouTube videos for the first time and some of the subtext was NOT kind to our community. Subtle things that we'd see get repeated by his fans over and over again, like how queer art is bad these days because all the "artists" and the "exciting queers" who "really lived" died in the AIDS crisis. Or the implication that the Interview with the Vampire reboot was *more queer* because the vampires actually had gay sex on screen, despite this being a complete departure from the source material and neglecting the fact that Anne Rice's vampires have always been undeniably queer *and also* sexless. In fact, we didn't say his name, but we did mention some vague "bad takes" we saw about the series in our podcast episodes 75 & 76 The Triumphs and Failures of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire Part 1 and Part 2...At least some of those came from James.

We did not see his rwrb video, because we had long given up on him by that point, but it is not at all surprising to hear that he had bad takes and also hid behind Nick once again to shield himself from any criticism. It was very much his MO, and yet we're also certain we've heard him chastise straight women for using the "I have a gay friend" defense.

It is so good to hear that our podcast has been helpful to you. There are FAR too many Aces who are willing to let bad behavior or ill-informed takes slide just because someone with a decent following noticed us. We deserve so much better.

#ace #asexual #asexuality #aces #ace community #ace pride #asexual community #asexual pride #lgbtqia #james somerton #hbomberguy #hbomb #todd in the shadows #the ace couple #the ace couple podcast #interview with the vampire #ace erasure #asexual erasure #compulsory sexuality #queer #queer community #rwrb #media analysis #video essay #telos #ace rep #ace representation #asexual representation

[emerald-star-productions]

One Final Thought About James Somerton [MINI RANT]

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, this is a follow-up to my rant about James Somerton posted earlier today. You can read it HERE.

Soooo for those of you who watched my Check Please video essay, do y'all recall that last section of the video essay where I referred to someone speaking on Check Please being "too saccharine?" I was referring to James Somerton. I didn't mention him by name cuz I wanted to be nice at the time.

For reference, head to 20:39 in the video, where the final section begins. You'll immediately notice me trying oh so hard not to mention the man. Highly recommend watching the rest of the segment (and the video if you wanna) to get an idea of how I felt about homeboi's shitty comment.

That motherfucker spoke on Check Please briefly in one of his many livestreams (it was back in February 2023 I believe. I don't think he keeps those livestreams up tho smh) and it pissed me off for WEEKS. I was writing my essay about Check Please at the time and this man completely dismisses it upon being recommended more queer comics to read.

As I said in the video, he refused to read it cuz the comic was essentially too sweet. He'd know that, despite how sweet the comic was, that it's so much more than that if he actually took the time to read it.

And yet...AND YET THIS FUCKER CHOSE TO READ HEARTSTOPPER IN THE SAME BREATH! Absolutely NO SHADE to Heartstopper (we stan/love Heartstopper over here mmmk) when I say this but it's evident James was just very picky about the shit he chose to read for one reason or another. Then again, I'm glad he didn't read the comic cuz he would've demonized Ngozi cuz homeboi hates women writing queer work with queer guys in it. So perhaps it's for the best he didn't indulge in Check Please, cuz then my own video essay would've been a whole lot different aka a whole section dissecting whatever he'd come up with.

I chose to keep quiet about that out of respect of not starting any drama. I don't do that shit. But fuck man, now I kinda wish I did all things considered.

#james somerton #hbomberguy #omgcheckplease #Youtube

[duran-duran-less-official]

Ok ngl the fact that you refuse to watch the video before making an opinion on it strikes me as anti-intellectual. The video gives a very clear list of things to look out for for future instances of plagiarism and discusses why plagiarism (especially the plagiarism Somerton was doing which included stealing and harassing other smaller lgbt creators when they spoke up about it) is such a problem and how it’s easy to forget to check sources or think critically when it’s packaged in a well produced video like the ones he made.

I was not a Somerton fan (I bounced off his videos since they couldn’t hold my interest) but you have to understand he scammed a lot of people out of money while positioning himself as the True Queer Authority while spreading misinformation. Of course people are angry.

And were hbomb and todd just supposed to keep quiet about the fact that he was plagiarizing and spreading misinformation? If not for those videos, he would’ve kept scamming people. He was causing harm, and in an attention based job like this, the only way to stop them is to deplatform them. How else were they supposed to spread the word? Genuinely interested in how you think it should’ve been handled.

My guiding principle here is that when someone does a bad thing, the response to that should be proportional to the badness of the thing that was done.

The problem with HBomber as a handler of this kind of controversy is that he has no apparent upper limit on the number of hours he's willing to spend on this. And as I highlighted in an earlier post, he seems to treat any one thing he finds bad as equally bad as all the other things he talks about. I think it might be a consequence of the way his videos are formatted, and it all adds up to being disproportionate by definition.

Consider: If it's worth spending two hours talking in general terms about how plagiarism on Youtube is a pervasive problem, which I have little reason to doubt, why is it worth spending another two hours calling out one specific guy who does this thing that apparently a lot of people do? Does James McBlandname also kick puppies and protest against Planned Parenthood in his spare time? Like, the impression I get from that split is that one guy's acts of plagiarism are considered equally as bad as every other act of plagiarism on Youtube put together. And I'm sorry, I simply don't believe that any amount of plagiarism from one guy can be that morally bad.

As I said, this is a failing of HBomber's format, and the end result is that James Blanderson kind of... takes the fall for every Youtuber who has ever plagiarised. Is he worthy of derision? Yes, absolutely. Is he worthy of personally being a scapegoat for the entire Youtube plagiarism industry? There's practically no way that can be true.

It kinda makes me wish and hope that I never jumped on the Tommy Tallerico hate bandwagon—I legit don't remember if I ever have. But the same principle applies. Do intellectual property rights and their various abuses suck? No doubt. Does Tommy Tallerico deserve to be an icon of that particular sin when, say, the entire Microsoft corporation exists? Maybe not.

The question is, why single one guy out at all? Especially if it's a pervasive problem! If you're gonna go down the route of Prestige More-Than-Movie-Length Callout Post, the net result from that is you've entirely obliterated the online presence of one guy. Have you actually solved the problem? Even if the General portion of the video does the smart things, like tell viewers which genres of content farm are especially susceptible to this, or advising them how to spot when content might have been plagiarised as you're watching it, are people talking about that? Or are they talking about the one guy the other half of the video was about? What is your net impact here, and could it maybe be improved by cutting the video down to 30 minutes and being a bit more general?

All this doesn't even touch on how morally bad plagiarism is. Like it IS bad, sure, but there's degrees of badness. If you remember illuminaughtii's defining toxic trait as plagiarism, when in fact she was also very likely guilty of workplace bullying and financial/verbal abuse, then something has gone very wrong. I understand that this is Youtube, so the value of Content is at a premium, but maybe that means their own moral compasses have been warped, naturally treating plagiarism as considerably worse than the average person would or perhaps should. This is part of the point of me saying you aren't a Youtuber's foot soldier! They decided to make Youtube their lives, but you don't have to!

#ask #hbomberguy #todd in the shadows #YouTube

[thevagueambition]

i've been thinking a lot about how somerton managed to 'get' me and the cop out here would of course be to say that he didn't really. I was never a big fan who watched all his stuff, I mostly just used his videos as background noise and I stopped doing that like a year ago because the vibes were off

But like I said that's a cop out and not an answer to what what i'm actually trying to ask myself

What I really want to know is why, even though there were several times he said things I simply did not believe to be true, did I continue to think of him as a serious person committed to making video essays? Why did I never notice how little he cites sources? How come nothing he did set off alarm clocks for me, even when I didn't believe what he was saying to be true?

I'm pretty sure the answer is aesthetics. The aesthetics of video essays leads me to assume that the creator is someone who cares about the subject they're talking about or at least that they've found something to say about the subject that they think is interesting. In assuming that they care, I then assumes that means that they've read about it at least a little bit and that they want to share their own opinions about the subject. If you care, why would you have nothing to add? If you care, why would you make things up?

I guess it never crossed my mind that anyone would become a video essayist for the income rather than through passion. If money is the objective, there are easier ways.

While I don't think I'd have noticed the plagiarism if I'd been watching illuminaughti, I do think I would have pegged the channel as Not Serious in a way the aesthetics Somerton used kept me from doing

Whenever something sounded untrue, I assumed he was exaggerating based on some fringe academic analysis or a pop history book or some such. If his presentation of those lies had been different, I probably would have assumed he'd just made it up or found it on a conspiracy board or something. Idk

I wasn't an outright fan so I don't have that sense of betrayal his actual fans experienced, but this has been an humbling reminder that You Are Not Immune To Misinformation -- not if it's being delivered in a format you trust

anyway

#i guess him being a marketing grad should have been immediately suspicious lmao

[sizablelad]

the hbomb video has inspired me to think a lot about the video essay culture on youtube and, in general, the academic institution of Queer Theory. there's a lot to be said about how Queer Theory as an academic pursuit has a very different and much more rapid ascent to prominence than a lot of other disciplines that affects the work done in it today. a badillion scholars, particularly scholars of color who because of their positionality might recognize these things out of the isolation of Queer academia, are presently discussing the state of Queer Theory as an academic pursuit and what the goals of this research can/should be, but that's a huge and complicated topic that others know more about.

at a more basic level, i feel like the sheer popularity of the video essay format as academic scholarship but for the Masses has inspired a lot of people without the basic training on how to do research to do research. i mean i'm only a frackin undergrad, but in high school i participated in a program specifically designed to teach us the basic foundation of how to do quality original research. and, simply put, it's a lot less glamorous and a lot more rigorous than people realize (including me-- i've only had a taste of what this research involves from a program that obviously has a limited scope; also only from a humanities perspective). there's a really important part at the very beginning of your research when you figure out the gap, then scope of your research. you have an idea of "oh this topic interests me and i think i want to add to the knowledge around it" and then you figure out a gap in the research that could be addressed by your own research. so i was interesting in queer characters and the potential differences when queer characters are written by queer authors vs non queer authors. so then you conduct a literature review to find out, okay, what research has been done on this topic? what has already been done, how useful would my perspective be on this research, what hasn't been addressed, how can i adjust my research goals so that i am not just conducting a review of others' research, but adding something new to the field. which, conducting a literature review and stopping there is fine! that's okay! but that is different from a goal of doing original research which says something new, and doing that requires a very symbiotic process of review and adjustment between your own research goals and the reality of the research that's already been done.

so i guess in a case like somerton's, he might genuinely want to add something to the field. maybe he loves the ideas he talks about and wants to be like the people that put those ideas to paper. but either he doesn't know how to do research so he gets stuck at doing a historical literature review, or is embarrassed that he might be "not as smart" as the community of people he admires and wants to be a part of, or maybe he just wants to make a quick buck. i don't know. but even if that's the case, him and people like him have demonstrated that they do have the skills to at least find past research, so why not just acknowledge the reality of what you're doing and say "hey look at this research i found and find interesting, i'm going to introduce you, my audience, to these people's work" and emphasize collaborations with the people who's work you're talking about. like with the internet historian video, obviously the video was very well done and funny and enjoyable to watch, and his methodology is different from someone like illuminaughtii's content mill production, which obviously requires a way different approach. what would've headed the WHOLE thing off is if he reached out to the og journalist and said "i read your article and am thinking about doing a video on it, want to endorse (.....and profit from) it?" but that would be assuming a lot of these people are good faith actors, which they aren't.

i don't really know what my point is here. maybe experts in their field are experts for a reason? the academic institution and it's scholarship have it's problems (boy does it), but at least there's processes in place to ensure academic integrity? the video essay as a genre is a cursed hellscape that is a great idea in theory but has been taken over by bad faith actors? misinformation is a plague partially perpetuated by people claiming they act in good faith and audiences can't be expected to constantly be on alert for the myriad of ways creators can take the good will of their audiences and manipulate it for their own personal agendas?

on a side note, this is why (at least, during my more intense youtube days) i tended to be suspicious of youtubers who would either 1) make a lot of research-intensive essays about a lot of different topics in a relatively short amount of time, or 2) make videos about things completely unrelated to their background. i have a hard time believing that jimbob the youtuber was able to become an expert and produce high quality of research in a topic they'd never previously publicly expressed knowledge or interest in. obviously there are exceptions, but with the proliferation and popularity of the video essay it seems like the well has been poisoned in that so many bad faith actors, realizing it's potential, have entered and been proven as bad actors on the video essay scene that it's impossible to see it as a genre with blanket integrity. i don't know the exact history of the genre, but i have to believe that this was not nearly as big a problem as it was before now.

#i'm only part of the way through the section on somerton #but i keep having these thoughts about some of the things being talked about #misinformation has been something i've been getting quite anxious over lately and boy howdy this video was no help.

[jimmythejiver]

So I watched three James Somerton videos in my life. One was about The Owl House, one was about Luca and Falcon and The Winter Soldier (it was a video using both to illustrate how disney uses gay tropes to tell straight stories or something... i think? this guy's points manage to always be so muddled while absolute) and another I clicked not knowing what it was about based on title and then it turned out to be about M. Night Shyamalan's recent film I did not care about or had intentions see and didn't care I got spoiled.

So I didn't keep up with this guy and just moved on to watch videos from other creators or just plain fell off of watching videos when my life was falling apart. I forgot about him for the most part, but some of the things I remembered being iffy was as with iilluminaughtii (who at the time I watched James videos, I didn't know was plagiarizing from other mlm expose youtube creators and more thought she was lazily reading from articles that are other people's works for sure) had way too many videos pumped out in a short time of many media I feel it suspicious to consume and make long videos about. Another was his insistence TOH cancelation is on Bob Chapek's shoulders, that Hunter and Gus will be canon... There's the doublespeak he'd use that makes him come off as racist, aphobic and anti trans men and enbyphobic in the guise of old fashioned misogyny that's totes okay when a gay man says it... Just a lot of red flags I hoped he'd grow out of and do better if he wanted to stay in this game, but I was done watching his content. Instead he kept getting away with it, his subscribers grew, he kept stealing and plagiarizing and being all the things that set off alarm bells in my head and now we're here with a whole dossier of transgressions against many smaller creators. I hope he never comes back online as a content creator and stays in obscurity tbh. I hope the same for iilluminaughtii, but she's not stopped dragging her fight against her victims yet.

So my moral of the story here is, if a video essayist is pumping out too many videos, if their delivery is opaque, but said in absolutes, if their asides scream alarm bells of bigotry, then listen to yourself and don't doubt it, click away. Yes it's hard finding the buried gems on the platform who won't lie to you, spread historical disinformation, moralize with bigotry or steal other people's hard work. It is so tempting to just passively watch easy recced videos on a topic one cares about, but isn't an expert in. It is easy to believe if so many people watch this creator who speaks with an authoritive voice, calls out and finger wags a moralizing tone at the big guys, has even a bit of bite to them that makes them more than just a stodgy, dry fact checker, and all those watchers, subscribers, thumbs ups and algorithms mustn't be wrong right? Unfortunately they often are and it sucks. Let it be a lesson in curating your experience actively and not passively when you have energy and many of us are so tired it's a lot to ask, I know. Many of us will throw things in on the background and let the next video play while we're working or trying to sleep. I know I lost my energy to do what I'm asking others to do, but I should still do more to be vigilant anyway, let's all try.

#and maybe not beat ourselves up if hbomberguy ever fucks up #creators aren't gods and they are not our gurus or friends

[mysticdragon3md3]

📺🤮

When i check out a YouTube channel i havent tried before, and they start talking about "we're not like the MAINSTREAM MEDIA because we have a DIVERSITY of political opinions", why does that set off my dog whistle alarms? I feel like most times i hear that, it turns out they're an outlet that allows for bigotted, elitist classist views. And then i went to look up this particular channel's Wikipedia. Yes, it was founded by a guy with tenture as a film critic. I started watching this particular vid of his because he had quotes from insider sources who work at Disney. But i also remember how he's been making several distasteful statements in recent years. Probably safer to add this channel to my list of YouTube channels to avoid.

I swear, it's always safer to stick to YouTubers who are queer or are a constantly vocal ally to non dominant social groups. Otherwise, I'll just be listening along and then hear something jarringly...distasteful...🤢 First time, it's "did i hear what i thought i just heard?" Second time, "isn't that a dog whistle used by bigots?" Third time, "omg I don't think they're using it ironically! I need to get out of here! Omg i just wanted to listen to a video essay about superheroes!"

The only healthy/productive "diverse opinions" are an INCLUSIVE diversity in perspectives of cultures that does NOT tolerate bigotry. Like that old saying: the irony of tolerance is to be intolerant of intolerance. Yeah, the world is shades of grey, not absolutes, and that's how to stamp out bigotry. So when i hear a channel imply that they might tolerate perspectives that actively disdain and try to take away people's human rights---just because they're different from the "norm" (white cishet Christian male)---for the sake of "a diversity of opinions"? Then it's time to run far away from that YouTube channel.

EDIT 8:52 AM 12/6/2023: After the whole James Somerton thing, it's become clear to me that simply being queer isn't a reliable signal for a safe YouTuber. My general rule has always been to evaluate YouTubers by how much empathy they have for all people. Do they catch themselves to ensure they always speak with inclusivity? Do they give their opposition the benefit of the doubt? Do they show a general concern for all groups, even the ones they aren't a part of? After the vlogbrothers showed how it's done, I usually watch for the same type of vibe. I didn't think Somerton passed; actually I thought he spoke with a lot of passive-aggressive hostility in his tone. But a lot of the information he gave was good, so I pushed through my discomfort with his tone. But I should have listened to my instincts. Now my only consolation is that it's ok for me to like most of what Somerton said in his vids, because most of those words WEREN'T HIS. They were stolen from much better authors, activists, documentarians, and video essayists. So I don't have to feel bad that I liked those ideas. I just have to watch them from their actual sources instead. I'm so glad hbomberguy made a playlist of recommended video essayists.

#NTTUIPRN #youtube #yikes #realitystuff #toxic fandom #don’t worship creators

[theangryjikooker]

Hahaha your first post had me worried, ngl, but I see and understand where you're coming from now! I just have one question: do you really not see any of JK's or JM's actions as declarative?

Not GCF in Tokyo? Not GCF in Saipan's I don't wanna lie no more I don't wanna hide no more? Not Rosebowl? (sidenote: ARMYs love to say they don't like to speculate about their relationship, but the narrative that JK sucked on JM's ear to somehow comfort JM is 100% speculative. From what I've glimpsed, speculation seems to be acceptable as long as it's in the service of explaining the gay away.) The ARMY tattoo to which JK later added a J, such that it reads ARMY JM? (Again, that's just literally what it says read from left to right, top to bottom, no speculation or mental gymnastics necessary. But it's ok to speculate that JK somehow doesn't realize that JM often refers to Jimin) I was with JK? The proud display of a hickey?

I understand caution, but there is also a long, long, loooooong tradition of closeted people living their truth in subtleties, specifically in queer coded art. When I saw MN dance company's performance for Black Swan the very first thing I thought of was the queer reading of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, so seeing JK and JM do a pas de deux very much inspired by the ballet struck me as... Very queer.

There's a great video essay by James Somerton called The Aesthetic of Gay Nuance (https://youtu.be/QxRveV0x2-o ). Yes it's about the fictional characters in Yuri on Ice, but I feel the points about queer coding and nuance are very much applicable here.

"Coming out" with a public statement to media outlets is a very western thing to do, and frankly I think it's a ridiculous and unfair burden placed on same sex couples. Jay Z and Beyonce never had to do it. Tom Holland and Zendaya never had to do it.

And I don't think JM & JK will ever do it.

But the gay nuance of it all...

At what point are we no longer being careful and simply denying them their truth?

How gay is gay enough?

BTW, I really don't mean to come off as hostile towards you, you seem like you're trying to be very measured, thoughtful, and respectful which I really appreciate. It's why I bothered asking at all.

But I'll admit, a lot of the narratives ARMYs use to explain the gay away really get under my skin. Especially when they depict JK as some kind of hapless idiot who keeps accidentally stumbling into queerness. He spent hours editing those films syncing images to lyrics, he sat for hours getting those tattoos and by the look of them, he's getting his hand tattoos retouched regularly.

I think at the very least we can safely say he knows exactly what it looks like.

Hi, anon!

I think some of my followers who happen to be Jikook supporters will be very interested in your submission, as it's perhaps the most thorough one I've received from a supporter. I'll try to answer this as best as I can, and just note that I'm really all over the place with your ask, but I’ll attempt to address all the points you made.

First of all, speculation is fine. I don't know if you meant to accuse me of something, but I've never said that speculation in and of itself is problematic. What I find problematic about it is when speculation is being passed off as fact, which I find a lot of toxic shippers tend to do, and when other Jkkrs can't see it the same way, the assumption is that those other Jkkrs don't understand anything, they're homophobic, antis, solos, not real Jkkrs, etc. I've always found that unfair and really an obnoxious way to treat Jkkrs with differing opinions because it sends a message that Jikook is factually dating. That's not the case. A person can believe they're dating, but to say that they are--full-stop--and to spread it as fact is irresponsible for shippers to do, in my opinion.

Regarding the tattoos, I answered this in a different ask, but it's worth mentioning that I don't think tattoos, which are personal to an individual, should have their meanings assumed by outsiders. I understand this is a personal preference, and some people really DGAF, but I do. I would add that it also doesn't take much mental gymnastics to say that it's J (for Jungkook) + ARMY. The fact that it's a possibility that can exist means that JM + ARMY is also rendered a possibility, and so no one can say definitively it means this or that. But like I said, tattoos are personal, so I leave that alone.

I've also never said that Jungkook and Jimin should have to come out [as gay] to make me or anyone else believe they're Real. I've mentioned this a few times already, but I don't look at them and think in terms of sexuality, like are they or are they not..? But I have said that their sexuality is their business and until they decide they want the world to know (or even if they don't), I really don't care. And I don't mean to sound flippant about homosexuality or the difficult experiences faced by the LGBTQ+ community, but I do employ the belief that homosexuality (or whatever your representation) should be treated as normally as people who are heterosexual (and also I’m not trying to deny the care that should be taken in individual circumstances because there are so many things to consider about LGBTQ+ people and their experiences that I’m unable to discuss that here without writing a whole novel in the process). That’s what I mean by I don’t care.

With the GCFs--I’m honestly not trying to downplay the potential significance of those videos and how they apply to Jimin, but if I’m being incredibly honest with you, I watched most of those purely from a creative standpoint, and to me that means Jungkook has an eye for beauty and art, knows how to tell a story, and his ear for music and sound and knowing how that plays into visual processing is ridiculous for someone who never formally studied video production. That’s how I viewed them, and I never really thought about reading too much into the lyrics because I personally find it a touch precarious in that it’s a subjective experience, and it would be just as fair for someone to say that his GCFs are a “love letter” (not necessarily romantic) to his members, depending on who you ask, and they wouldn’t be wrong either. But to the Jkkrs who think that it’s meaningful support of Jikook being Real is just as likely, but I just don’t venture one way or another. The only GCF that would give me pause is GCF Tokyo because it’s really just the two of them, but it’s not so much proof for me that they’re Real, but it’s enough for me to say, Okay... these two have a connection. To what extent, I won’t say because I don’t know for sure.

I’ve seen discussions on queer coding, and I have enough information on it to understand its importance and how that relates to Jungkook and his work. I realize the weight that it carries, especially for LGBTQ+ people who pick up on queer coding and what that means to them to see it happening in the work of people they admire. I don’t want to sound like I’m minimizing the validity of it, but I think in the context you’re presenting this, queer coding (as it’s being discussed here) seems more in reference to whether Jungkook/Jimin is or isn’t, but that doesn’t prove that Jikook is Real (to me). I think it allows for a higher probability, yes, but to me attraction is attraction; queer coding or not, Jungkook and Jimin do seem attracted to one another at the very least.

I’ve never really wanted to talk about the “hickey” because it’s one of those things that seems to rile people up in a way that honestly annoys me in the certainty that comes with it. I also think that speaking in anecdotes is a fruitless endeavor because it’s still hearsay, but in this case I think it might be worthwhile to share: I love my dog, but that little shit demon was an angry, defensive little turd when I first got him. He was found running in a really rough area, malnourished, blah blah. Anyway, as I was carrying that goblin (and the way that I was carrying him) one time in his early years, he ended up nipping my neck. It bruised, and I had to convince my then-partner I wasn’t cheating on them. And so what I’m getting at is, based only on my experience, it wasn’t that difficult for me to take Jimin’s story for what it was. He bit him, and I didn’t automatically think, That’s a hickey! Frankly, I think the strangest and most sus part of “Hickey gate” was that he even bit Jungkook at all. I don’t think anyone has to say it was or wasn’t a hickey to know that it’s weird no matter how you spin it. But do I get why a lot of Jkkrs think it was a hickey? Yes, I’d be dumb not to, but my point still stands in that Jimin might not be lying. Doesn’t make me want to side-eye him any less.

I’ve said before that the only way for me to believe that Jikook is Real is if they say, point blank, that they’re dating, or some other relevant proof that proves beyond reasonable doubt that they’re together. To me, it’s just a matter of what’s factual and what isn’t, and anything to do with Jikook--including what I say about them--is technically a belief until it isn’t. As it currently stands, for me Jikook can be Real and not, so I’m firmly in the middle. I don’t know if you’ve been poking around here for very long, but I’ve fondly referred to this as Schrödinger’s Jikook.

Perhaps an even better way to explain the stance I have is if I phrased it this way: I am a lawyer, and I need empirical evidence that Jikook is Real. So far, everything I know of Jikook is circumstantial. Given the beliefs I do have above, it’s kind of a Catch-22 because I really don’t know what the likelihood is of Jikook admitting to some kind of personal relationship in the future, but I’m also not here trying to prove or actively disprove that they’re Real. I wanted to be able to share my opinions that could reasonably exist about Jikook--especially as someone who simply enjoys the Jikook dynamic and am in for the long haul in however their lives end up--and not be condemned for it (but people like us do, and that’s what ticks me off).

Hopefully, I’ve addressed all the points you made. I’ve been composing this answer for almost 2 hours..? Definitely over an hour... basically whenever you first submitted this I’ve been typing away because I really wanted to be careful in my approach to it, but I might have missed something anyway. Thank you for the link you provided, I’ll definitely take a look at it just for my own edification!

#TAJ asks #lovely jikook supporters #jikook #kookmin #jikookers #kookminers #schrödinger's jikook