#Somerton

[thunderandsage]

[ellipsiseffervescent]

[tuurverheydepoetryandprose]

Not to distract from more important issues, but the most recent James Somerton news is insane. Any sympathetic statements I may have made about James are now fully rescinded.

What an incredible asshole, and to think that many people were calling Hbomb and others murderers over Somerton’s tweet. To do something like that knowing all the accusations, harassment, worry and blaming it would trigger. Unconscionable. And then to still be excusing himself on his alt while that was going on, showing absolutely no remorse, self-awareness or anything. Just sickening.

I am weary of the internet’s version of accountability, but I do hope people will not let him get away it & start over as some different brand of influencer.

This man has no conscience, sense of shame, integrity or responsibility. He cannot be trusted with a platform or an audience. Please don’t let him try this again later. Let it stick.

[voidmountain]

somerton post!

I’m a queer academic. I study film & lit. I’ve published 3 peer-reviewed journal articles and 6 magazine articles. I’m working on a book manuscript. Meticulously researched, multi-year projects, thousands of hours of 100% solo work. No co-writer, no proofreader, no copyeditor, &c &c.

All of this is unpaid. All of it! I do it because I love it and not for any other reason!

An adjunct prof just starting out can expect to make less than $25k/year.

That’s the context. That’s who he’s ripping off. That’s who is doing the real intellectual work of creating, testing, writing, & sharing these ideas. Just fyi.

Edit to add: around the world humanities departments, that employ people to do the thing James somerton said he was doing but better, are in crisis mode and hemorrhaging money because there’s this impression that nobody values humanities research. And yet. Here’s this guy. Making $170k/year by ripping us off.

[dubmill]

Newport, Monmouthshire; 2.4.2022

[fruitseason]

What's crazy about the somerton apology video is that he falls into almost all of the pitfalls of the 'insincere apology' that hbomberguy went through with the video game reviewer. Somerton didn't even watch the video accusing him, or at least didn't learn anything from it, because he wept on screen for 30 minutes going 'some copy and paste mistakes happened...of course shan't say who did it or why it was bad...'

[lascitasdelashoras]

Trojeborg, a stone labyrinth from Visby, 1919

[fishfishlove]

[stillbitteraboutsusanpevensie]

the passive voice is doing so much lifting in the Somerton apology video that it'll be hot enough to send Americans running off to war soon

[stickydeliciousbanana]

In light of recent events, I feel we should all take a deep breath. While he's certainly done harm, James Somerton has also done a lot for the community! FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, he threw the first brick at stonewall! Smh 🙄

[archiveofaffinities]

Turf Maze, Troy Farm, Somerton, Near Oxford, England

[tuurverheydepoetryandprose]

Thinking more about the Somerton situation, I fear this might have some seriously bad consequences for online discourse.

Already there’s plenty of people with a one strike and you’re out mentality to any kind of mistake or misdeed. No room for making amends, learning and growing, explaining what happened, working to be better etc. Many just unconditionally demand people disappear forever.

It’s kind of understandable if you’ve been hurt and cheated a lot, but it can lead to an unreasonably stringent view of fallibility and forgiveness.

And now we have this fairly high profile example of someone just blatantly deceiving his audience, smearing his victims and accusers, faking remorse while being totally averse to understanding what’s he done, why it was harmful and why he got backlash, shamelessly trying to deceive his way back into the spotlight. Just no empathy, no remorse, no self-awareness, just pure egotism and opportunism. Grifterdom personified.

I can imagine many people will learn exactly the wrong lessons: doubling down on their unforgivingly high standards, raising suspicions about every apology, seeing all online expressions of remorse as insincere, equivocating every ‘influencer does bad thing’ situation with this, and maybe even using this to further enforce the stigma against people suffering from suicidal ideation.

I hope we’re better than this, but I have my doubts. After all, many people uncritically jumped on the bandwagon of blaming Hbomb when the suicide note still seemed real.

Let’s be vigilant, let’s make sure James Somerton cannot do this again, but also let’s not tar everyone else with the same brush.

[ohgollygeewhiz]

Tomska Goncharov mention!

[tubapun]

BECAUSE CITING SOURCES KILLED MY GRANDMA, OKAY?

[fruitseason]

Here’s my thing about the Somerton 'apology'. Sometimes people do shitty things and know that they’re shitty, but do them because they think they can get away with it. I think it’s incredibly clear that’s what happened here. He didn’t respect the work of these other creators and didn’t think any of them were important enough that it would be noticed. Plagarism was an easy way to churn out what appeared to be thoughtful and high-quality video essays at a very low cost for a profitable and cushy job. There is no justification because it was the wrong thing to do with no good motivation. There is not even an explanation, because he wasn't forced into doing this by a systemic or uncontrollable issue that was forcing his hand. The only thing he can do here is be like ‘look, you got me, this was wrong and I was wrong for doing it, so now I’m out.’ I think the best practice here would be for him to give the money back, but logistically that would be fairly difficult so I doubt he will do anything. Whatever. Trying to film an entire video and feign ignorance that what you were doing was wrong or harmful and spending the whole time weeping and referencing a suicide attempt is just insane. People will either revel in your pain because they hate you, more sanely go ‘well he shouldn’t die over this but yeah I’m glad he’s been affected, this career path shouldn’t be open to him anymore’ or correctly see this as manipulation and be even less sympathetic than they may've been before. You cannot possibly win by coming out with this video, if you have to say anything concede defeat but the smoothest path for him would’ve probably been to just disappear off the internet and figure out what else he wants to explore career-wise because this is a career-ending scandal and not something you can just patch up with crocodile tears.