#James somerton “apology”

[51-queer-frogs]

A small collection of comments found below the video, but some re-occurring things I saw were

soup recipe

"please leave the internet man"

"his mother is very proud" (or similar talirico jokes)

dude how am i gonna trust you???

"this video has so many ads"

oh looks, he also stole the title

Anyways he sorted the comments by newest so it was less obvious how many folk were shitting on him

This is here so that when he inevitably deletes the video or disables comments we have good memories

[getrope1]

You cant make this shit up

[weedle-testaburger]

i just wanna preserve some of the biggest bangers from james somerton apology video 2: plagarised boogaloo

and of course:

[dimonds456]

So I was re-watching Hbomb's plagiarism video, and I noticed something really funny.

Allow me to show you.

Lol whoops.

[nubinublado]

Welp

[thunderandsage]

[sss-shyshy]

[thetimelordbatgirl]

James Somerton Apology 2: Electric Boogaloo summed up.

[lesbianamalvada]

somerton should just make an anti-apology video, where he reveals himself like a scooby-doo villain. "I had all you fooled! I don't care about LGBT issues! In fact, I'm not even gay! It was so easy to squeeze every last dime out you queers. I was taking vacations and drinking martinis while you thought you were supporting a revolution. And I would've gotten away with it too! If it weren't for those meddling video essayists..." and then that's the last we ever hear from him.

[dev-solovey]

James Somerton in 2033, speaking between sobs in his 74th monetized apology video: I only plagiarized those people because (sniffles) I contracted a rare form of cancer that turned my brain smooth

[marciaillust]

[douwatahima]

sorry to invoke james somerton again but i just watched his "apology" video and the way he addresses the criticism to his utena video has been scratching at my brain. for this who don't want to watch (which is so so fair), here's what he says:

"we ended up making a lot of videos we didn't want to make because people were asking for them and so there were a lot of videos we made that we didn't want to 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 and a lot of people hate the analysis nick and i did on it 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."

so, not directly saying he's talking about the utena video…but he's talking about the utena video lol. the thing that really gets me is like…look. full disclosure. i used to be subscribed to james somerton long before this whole thing blew up. i wasn't necessarily a big fan of his video style, but he talked about a lot of media i enjoy and i liked his analysis (that wasn't really his, but i didn't know that at the time) so i followed him.

the thing about him was he was always asking his followers for shows he should do videos on, especially anime, and then not long after making those posts he would post videos of "things to come" including like…every anime people suggested. not all of these shows ended getting videos made, but the point is james really set himself up as the queer anime video essayist; constantly promising videos about every show people told him they wanted.

and a lot of people loved that about him! a lot of the big names talking about anime on youtube are people doing season by season breakdowns or people talking about big shonen titles, and here was someone consistently pushing out long form analyses on less talked about shows! great! but to find out that not only was a lot of what he said plagiarized, but also that a lot videos were just shat out to appeal to his audience without any care or passion? just to get more views and more money on patreon? that's literally crazy when you're talking about something usually as involved as video essays.

on top of that i'm about 95% certain him doing an utena essay was a patreon tier goal (hence why that video was released there first). he literally heard queer anime fans asking him en masse for a video about one of the best queer anime of all time, decided to set it as a patreon goal, and then literally boxed himself into doing a video on an anime he didn't care about because he promised it to the people who payed him to be the "queer anime guy".

and the thing is he 100% didn't need to do that. he didn't need to "make a lot of videos he didn't want to make because people were asking for them". i follow a ton of video essayists who get requests for videos all the time! that doesn't mean they have to, or even should, make them if they're not passionate about the topic! video essays, when actually done well and with integrity, are hard work. that's why most good video essayists take a lot of time between videos! to think that this guy just took every possible suggestion, dangled them like carrots in front of his audience, that made a bunch of passionless, mediocre videos to solidify his station as the queer video essayist to watch is just…upsetting and disheartening tbh.

anyway if you want some actually good analysis of revolutionary girl utena, my favourites are "is revolutionary girl utena still relevant?" and "why revolutionary girl utena still slaps" by stushi, and "the shadow play gays" podcast (note: this podcast is run on the same feed as another podcast called "bitter jurors". you may have to scroll back a bit to find "shadow play gays", it started in 2021 if that helps, but i promise you it's worth it).

[ozziescribbler]

TW: suicide

Statements "James Somerton doesn't deserve to die and I hope he's okay.", "Harry, Kat, Todd or Jessie (?!) bear no blame for James' self-harm and calling them murderers is abhorrent." and "Threatening or committing suicide is often a DARVO manipulation/revenge tactic." are allowed to all be true at the same time and not mutually exclusive.

[antiqua-lugar]

also as a quick note, "Who is James Somerton trying to fool"...exactly who he was trying to fool before, impressionable young queer people and anyone who watched his content without paying too much attention.

One of the most astounding things about Somertom is how blatant his lies were if you knew anything about the subject and how obvious his misoginy, queerphobia and racism were. He was also very open about how he DEFINITELY was the only queer voice worth listening to, to the point that he accused Nebula of being unable to accept a visionary like him.

He still got caught but he kept getting away with it using the same tactics. It was everyone's fault but his, the haters were out to get him for no reason, he was getting death threats and that's obviously more important than whatever controversy he was on...

And now he released an apology video where he actually did nothing bad, but if he did it's because he just cared so much about the queer community and because he is neurodivergent and has epilepsy and memory issues and also he is poor and his mother died and doesn't everyone deserve a second chance?

He seems also to be carefully deleting any comment that points out everything else he did not address and liking comments that think he should get a second chance.

If he manages to pull through he is probably gonna start a narrative where everyone deserves a second chance and everyone who brings up his past behaviour is just a bully who is not letting him grow or a desparate hater and "he apologized to everyone involved so what else do these people want from him :(".

hbomberguy and Todd In The Shadows' videos were amazing, but the world moves on and people have a tendency to forget. That's who he is trying to fool.

[saltypepper17]

Guys let's remember that he didn't only plagiarized a bunch of queer people but also his only contributions were lies and misinformation about history, queer history, other queer minorities etc.

Todd in the shadows made a great vídeo debunking a lot of his lies.

[roguemonsterfucker]

Huh youtube lagging horribly. I wonder what's going on.

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh no james.

Oh no don't james.