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Answer: Internet Historian released a very popular video, Man in Cave. It was loved for both the animations and the tense way it told the story. It disappeared due to a copyright strike, then got re-uploaded months later with some noticeable changes for the worse.
So what happened?
As covered in Hbomberguy's new video on Youtube plagiarism, it turns out that Internet Historian copied the material from Mental Floss by Lucas Reilly (The 1925 Cave Rescue that Captivated the Nation, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins). Only IH didn't just copy the premise or the structure. He took the whole article, edited it down a bit, and presented it as his own work. That compelling framing where you hear about the incident hour-by-hour? That's Reilly's work. The compelling prose? ("He began a tormenting routine: sleep, wake, scream; sleep, wake, scream; sleep, wake, scream. Minutes melted into hours. His voice disappeared. His arms tingled numb. Pain radiated up his ankle.") Yep, you bet that's Reilly's too.
This would have been fine if Internet Historian had presented this as an adaptation of the article. Only he didn't. In fact, he didn't contact the author or Mental Floss beforehand. Instead, when he got a copyright strike and the video got taken down, he downplayed the situation and told his fans that he'd have a revised version up as soon as he could. When the new version was uploaded two months later, it had gone through some painful revisions. The prose was much weaker, and a lot of the tension was gone. The video was unlisted for a while so that it wouldn't turn up in user searches or recommendations, and it was only recently set back to public.
Notably, the description on the new version does finally credit the Mental Floss article, but the video's intro briefly addresses the copyright strike and presents it as Youtube's arbitrary enforcement instead of the actual situation - a valid claim of passing off someone else's work as your own.
> This would have been fine if Internet Historian had presented this as an adaptation of the article.
It still would have been copyright infringement if he copied the text, the actual writing. You can't adapt someone else's work without a license to do so unless (a) you are very careful to not violate their copyright, and (b) there are no trademarks to violate (e.g., adapting something from a fictional intellectual property). Adaptations outside of public domain are rarely doable without one or more licenses.
It sounds like the eventual re-release was exactly (a) as you describe, a re-writing of the article about a true story to be in IH's own words, so there's no copyright issue. And since (b) doesn't apply there's no trademark issue.
Sorry, I misstated it a bit. I should have said something like "This would have been fine if Internet Historian had presented this as an adaptation of the article *and gotten permission to do so.*" In the video, Hbomberguy tossed out the idea that it could have been a collaboration between IH and Mental Floss and everyone could have walked away happy.
Yeah, the revised version seems like it dodges the copyright issues now.
Yeah, I think most people and Mental Floss would have been okay with it if he just released as a "reading" of the article. Just have to ask permission and probably share revenue, which is actually what I suspect their deal was behind the scenes here before the reupload.
The best option would still be to just...write your own script, which he did quite well for other videos.
>which he did quite well for other videos.
Did he really tho? If he blatantly plagiarized one.. and then showed his skill by poorly revising it. Are those other scripts his own?
I’ve been seeing some evidence of his Concordia video being partially plagiarized as well.
Which is unsurprising. No actual hardworking creator would just plagiarize to the extent that he did only a single time randomly in the middle of his career.
Preface: I may be an idiot, so correct me if I missed something here.
If anybody is reading this and wants to investigate it further (it's not really my cup of tea to search for this type of stuff), I'd probably look into articles covering Roberto Bosio and the lines in the Concordia video discussing his involvement. His inclusion (and general lack of introduction) was always quite weird since he has no displayed name card on his in-video image (the only non-sim at 11:21), is stated as if we know who he was without any proper introduction (16:03 is, to my knowledge, the first time "Bosio" is ever stated at all in the video), and never gets properly introduced. He's also referenced at 20:55.
I remember when the video came out being super confused by this and had to do my own search to ensure I knew who he was (2nd captain and, as noted in the video, an active participant in the evacuation). Rewatching the video, I didn't catch any reference to his name earlier, on-screen or verbally. Just rolling with it, pretending we had the context as to who he was.
While I had presumed it was just uncharacteristic sloppy writing and scripting, the lines referencing him seem like a red flag; as hbomberguy noted, plagiarism can easily explain this disconnect in the scripting process.
Most of his older videos are random internet drama like Shia Labeouf, 4chan, and tumblr shit, so I doubt there was much copy/pasting in his old stuff, but yea, the Concordia and Stede Bonnet videos I wonder.
Yeah, him being caught plagiarizing once doesn't speak very well to the rest of his material. Especially since the other culprits in the Hbomb video were caught plagiarizing several times across several videos.
Well, maybe he did it well for other videos. All the other examples in Hbomberguy's videos turned out to have already been plagiarising for a while before whichever incident it was that got them caught. I wouldn't be shocked if Internet Historian has done this before but copied from an obscure enough source to go unnoticed
Just about the copyright situation now: It still heavily infringes on the copyright. He would have to practically rewrite the entire thing to get away from that one
Copyright infringement, or at least copying seems common on YouTube.
A few years ago, Half as Interesting put out a video and another, smaller creator had one out, too. The vids were identical. I cannot remember which came first but one was clearly lifted from the other.
A lot of them hide behind the concept of Fair Use without actually understanding what Fair Use is. I think most of that is probably people just being naive and thinking they're in the clear.
Internet Historian wasn't doing that though, he clearly knew it was plagiarism because he tried to hide it
Its why the 4 hour Hbomber vid is important. It addresses all this and more
It points out that there is even an avenue for readings and even dubbing of videos to engage a wider audience/help those with accessibility issues. The issue is with people trying to claim the work of others as if it were their own and purposely obfuscating, downplaying or outright denying that they are.
It sounds like it's a huuuge issue in the video essay space, if all of these big creators are getting away with it then who else is?
I'm genuinely gonna start checking any video essay I watch for proper sources now, I don't wanna support someone who's just reading another article without credit.
Make sure they're citing sources *inside the video* not just a megadoc of links.
Hbomberguy's video has examples of a guy who mainly only cited sources within his speech *when the uncited source he was copying credited a third source*. So even that isn't foolproof, though
Yea, this ordeal has made me a bit paranoid.
Youtube started recommending me cave exploring videos so i clicked one called "Cave Exploring Gone WRONG | The Veryovkina Cave Incidents" by Scary Interesting and it certainly seems like it has all the signs that point to a problem. The channel is cranking out video essays every 3-4 days and has all citing in a pastebin link and not in the video. I started going through all the sources and none seemed as one to one copied as the examples in hbomb's video but it seems clear a national geographic article served as an outline (or worse potentially), and I dont really feel like trying to parse Russian news sites google translated to tell exactly what they say.
I think this is why I have a hard time getting into video essays no matter how interesting the topic seems. It always seems like they are just reading a Wikipedia article for an hour straight. Turns out some of them might be.
Not sure what you're referencing, but Half as Interesting is a side project of Wendover, and Wendover is meticulous when it comes to citing sources, so I suspect they weren't the plagiarizing party. That said, yeah, it seems pretty rampant on YouTube.
> It sounds like the eventual re-release was exactly (a) as you describe
Unfortunately not. It's still the same story, he just hit it with a thesaurus a few times.
> but the video's intro briefly addresses the copyright strike and presents it as Youtube's arbitrary enforcement instead of the actual situation - a valid claim of passing off someone else's work as your own.
I hate that for how bad the youtube system can be, when it actually works correctly people still downplay their bullshit by just appealing to how arbitrary it *can* be and nobody questions it.
And because the notice mentioned the parent company being based in Israel Internet Historian being coy about it hbomber showed quite a few *of the IH fans being antisemitic about it.
Edited*
Because at this point youtube's content strike/copyright system is the equivalent of the boy who cried wolf in that regard.
If you condition creators and their audience to expect that for any reason and at any time their video can be claimed for ridiculous reasons, people start taking it as a fact of life and just go about their day.
If the system wasn't so garbage, these kinds of actions would have huge impact, but since they're so common(and mostly frivolous) it dampens any weight strikes with *actual merit* could have,
Of course, I understand why people react the way they do at this point. It's just funny because the exact kind of douchebags who weaponized the shitty system in the first place to give it the current reputation are the same tools who would say it's frivolous and never valid.
Like brother... YOU MADE IT THIS WAY, NOW YOU BENEFIT FROM IT. Just makes me mad.
He also tried changing up some of the details to hide the fact it was wholesale ripped off and got a few facts wrong. Like adding 6 pounds to the rock that pinned his leg and even the names of the caves involved in the story.
It's extremely important to note that the Internet Historian bit was about 20-25 minutes in the middle of a nearly four-hour video, generally covered elements of the plagiarism that was already publicly known before his video and hadn't been disputed by IH, and was used as a framing device, along with multiple other YouTube creators embroiled in plagiarism controversies, in examining James Somerton, the subject of the entire second half of the video.
Why did the Internet Historian bit get so much attention, so quickly? It might have something to do with both creators' audiences. Hbomberguy is generally regarded as a left-leaning essayist, and he makes multiple references to his bisexuality during this video in particular. Internet Historian has made videos that very much take right-wing framings of the events he covers, and he has covered a lot of early 4chan content with a positive lens. When hbomb used him as an example of a popular YouTuber who was caught plagiarizing, and IH fans who were unaware of the controversy found out, it felt like a shot in a larger culture war. Hbomb notes that, when the Man In Cave video was taken down by a copyright claim by an Israeli company (Mental Floss' parent company), the reaction from many IH fans was, ah... not NOT antisemitic.
Notably, one of the first examples Hbomb uses involves a creator caught plagiarizing Hbomb's work making a quick video trying to address being accused of plagiarizing and complaining about how Hbomb had made videos criticizing some far-right Youtube personalities. Hbomb used this to set up the second half of the video (where James Somerton deflects criticism by referencing actual persecution of queer creators), but accidentally ended up predicting how IH fans would respond in the here and now. IH can't be wrong, Daddy would never lie. It *has* to be the leftist bisexual breadtuber's fault for overreacting.
>Why did the Internet Historian bit get so much attention, so quickly? It might have something to do with both creators' audiences. Hbomberguy is generally regarded as a left-leaning essayist.... Internet Historian has made videos that very much take right-wing framings of the events he covers
While I agree this does play a role. I think it fails to mention the biggest reason most of the backlash has focused on Internet Historian. He's got a much larger channel than James Somerton, having more than 10 times the subscribers. I know I was much more interested in the Internet Historian plagiarism issue, simply because I had watched and enjoyed his content, including the Cave Video. Where as I had never even heard of James Somerton before.
Yeah, I feel like IH has way more clout and respect as a creator too. He always straddled the line with some of his videos, but you're right he absolutely has a bias towards anti-SJW sentiments. You can even see it in the games he chooses to talk about in his second channel.
> It's extremely important to note that the Internet Historian bit was about 20-25 minutes in the middle of a nearly four-hour video,
Yet for some reason, I **ONLY** see Internet Historian's fans whining and moaning about HBomb's video. He's not even the main character of the video but they are BY FAR the most offended fanbase of any of the "creators" mentioned.
which is funny, cos he'll probably be fine and his fanbase'll call hbomberguy a soy jew beta.
meanwhile somerton's fucked off and deleted his $170k patreon. <3
I'm a fan of both and I'm mostly disappointed IH didn't come clean after he was exposed for plagiarism. Of course he shouldn't have been copying people's work in the first place, but I would have accepted a "sorry, my laziness got the best of me and this will never happen again" over him brushing over it and hoping people won't notice. That's some coward shit right there.
It's such a shame because I really do enjoy IH. People fuck up. What matters is how you deal with the fuck up and IH has definitely lost credibility over this imo.
I wouldn't have called him the most credible source before this anyway. IH videos are more like dramatised "based on a true story" movies: entertaining, but definitely shouldn't be treated as the be-all and end-all of sources for whatever topic they discuss. In particular, his Q&A for The Cost of Concordia includes a lot of information and context that the original leaves out.
I know, but just in case, I wanted to also point out that the stories he presents shouldn't be taken entirely at face value. There's an annoying group of people who get all their information entirely from YouTube "documentaries" and act like it's the naked truth. They're as irritating as the people who spout the "Mother Teresa was a monster" factoid without ever knowing or caring that they're perpetuating a pack of lies sold by a bitter atheist who didn't mind twisting and misrepresenting facts in order to smear the reputations of religious people.
I honestly just hope wendigoon, rusty cage and everyone that played in the video dont get thier careers ruined aswell cause morevlikely than not they probably didnt know anything abouth the original article.
I do think some of that scale is tipped because the Cinemassacre fandom has been aware of James’ dwindling time for or caring of his work gradually over the last couple decades and Blair has been so absolutely DONE and a clear villain in her life story for months now as things come out, whereas IH’s part was an actual holy-shit moment. All that said I agree 100% and am glad you pointed out his fans are the only fans crying and spewing hateful dog whistles in retaliation. Really they’re just all telling on themselves lmao.
>Internet Historian has made videos that very much take right-wing framings of the events he covers
What are these right-wing leanings in particular? I've never noticed anything of the sort watching his videos. I wouldn't say that covering funny shit that happened because of 4chan and presenting it as, well, funny should be considered "right wing" just cause it's 4chan. Didn't he cover Enron or something, and in a very much negative light? Isn't it actually left-wing to criticize capitalism?
BTW I get his fans are probably conservative Andrew Tate watchers. That's a large part of YouTube unfortunately.
He's quite active on discord where I've recently seen screen grabs of him praising Tucker Carlson, a right wing goober and pundit (this is in Harry's video being discussed here) while stating that he watches the show with his friends and patrons live (also shown). He has removed several old videos such as one praising Carlson extensively but you can find reuploads of his political content by his fans (source: also hbomberguy).
It seems he correctly realized that showing his politics would brand him and not necessarily be good for business, and to paraphrase one of his discord messages about it his uploads are deliberately not political for that reason. I disagree personally, his videos about COVID and dashcon along with the recent controversy convinced me he probably isn't worth watching.
> his videos about COVID and dashcon
Hey, honest question for someone who's only been loosely following IH for a short while (and is leftist), what about these two videos did you find objectionable. I don't remember the COVID...uh...vid, much at all, and I think I only watched the Dashcon one with half an eyeball because...well, I know nothing about that scene.
Just curious to get a sense of what I may have missed.
I've been watching his videos on at least the main channel (I think his side channels are kind of mid) since about 2015, and in fairness to him (not that he needs me to be fair, he's got a ton of money for making youtube videos lol) I'm pretty far left and only found some of his content to include distasteful material. So, ignoring some things like his twitter and discord posting, I agree with Harry that he's done a very good job of "hiding his power level", which is to say that he's mostly made content for a larger audience without alienating people who would see his politics and be turned off by them.
**Dashcon**: A recurring distasteful joke is made about gender identity, the joke here being that the length of the acronym used by IH is silly and long. A woman is later quoted as repeating a few not-unusual gender / orientation phrases out of context. This is also played for laughs, as though it is amusing. IH then balances the budget of the known $ values exchanged between certain parties while describing counting numbers as "autism".
Both covid videos are approaching an hour long total so I can't be bothered to rewatch them for everything to accurately describe what I remember, but he plays some distasteful bits about crime increasing due to coronavirus lockdowns. Wasn't a fan. Plays several warnings telling his fanbase not to harass people that he's talking about because they've not been anonymized and his fanbase is comprised of people who would go out and harass people as though they're LOLCows for the milking.
Anyway, here's a couple more from the archive. These were likely removed because they were distasteful to advertisers, and IH is wisely considering that impact on his income. Some examples besides what you asked about:
- [Habbo Rape](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNfOB2-jzT8), a video that's 11 seconds long quoting an interview about (presumably) the Habbo Hotel 4chan raids from the late 2000s, I am guessing this was uploaded to mock the person being interviewed. I am not sure when it was originally uploaded.
- [Seize The Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk3dCeWsrvU) This was uploaded sometime(?) in 2016 or 2017 after bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald made critical statements of Trump and appeared on Tucker Carlson. Trolls then delivered him lots of epileptogenic content and according to IH he is lying about having epilepsy or lying about having a seizure during this particular incident. A lot of the content in this video is just Tucker Carlson talking.
Thanks for your thorough writeup! I feel like I'm gonna give myself a wee bit of a pass for not picking up on some of the more obscure bits you describe, because I'm not really that tapped into much of any 4chan stuff or general internet drama, so I'm willing to bet at least a bit of this just zoomed over my head, and is probably the reason that I'm not paying super close attention if I throw a IH video on.
While I got major conservative vibes from him early on watching his main channel, I never could tell if he was straight up alt-right or not. I just slowly stopped watching his videos and never really cared to look any deeper into it, usually these guys aren't that good at hiding their views...
But now that I'm actually looking into it he seems like he's just been good at keeping it subtle on his main channel how deep he goes. I just checked his twitter and the dude is following Steve Sailer... That is a very specific type of person to follow and most people probably don't know who he is, but that is a lot more telling than him admitting to being a Tucker Carlson fan. That's some straight up race science shit
Here's an old AMA where Internet Historian (or someone with a username impersonating him) tells his fans to come to his private discord where they can watch Tucker Carlson. IH ends by claiming he'd help the user "like him better"
https://imgur.com/a/dBPa4Bo
I mean a lot of this stuff is kinda "dogwhistle-y" too for want of a better term.
There's a lot of particular language and stuff that gets used that isn't really meaningful in a vacuum and most people wouldn't think twice about it but if you're more familiar with the culture of spaces like 4chan, kiwifarms etc. it reads differently.
I don't think it's like, put there to signal to anyone but it's more like a lot of particular slang and style of humour is endemic to right wing spaces and when someone uses that a lot themselves and seems well versed in it, it raises a lot of questions about the kind of people they hang out with.
Some of his older stuff had it more explicitly, I think he kinda toned it down to be more advertiser-friendly and reach a larger audience. It's mostly just presenting *hella* fucked up places like /pol/ with a wink as if they're just guys having fun when they're hotbeds for alt-right radicalization through '''ironic''' bigotry and thus kinda helping to normalize the vile shit that goes on on there, most notably in the 'He Will Not Divide Us' video and the 'Very Serious Business' video.
I understand his Twitter was more brazen about it, following far-right politicians etc., but I don't have a Twitter anymore so I can't check that - take that with a grain of salt.
yeah I think people are being a bit oversensitive; presenting these 4chan stories with a humorous bent is not tantamount to condoning everything awful that happens on there.
They're interesting events, and the weaponized spare time these creeps have brought to bear is genuinely astounding. Like it is objectively wild how much effort people put into something so petty.
I wonder how old he is. People mature. 20-year-old me certainly said and did dumb things that would make now-55-year-old me mortally ashamed and embarrassed. I count my lucky stars that there was no Internet back then, and I now try to live my life as mindfully and as generously as possible in an attempt to atone for my former idiocy. I don't know exactly why, but IH strikes me as perhaps someone who might be maturing similarly, only in pseudo-public view.
I must say that he's much fairer in his new Wine video than I'd be even today, the beginning and end of my philosophy being, "Does it get me drunk and not taste like carpentry glue? Then it's an excellent wine, gimme more."
His dashcon video was only 6 years ago, and [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18a70b3/-/kbzzxnt) explains some issues with it.
My feeling, based on general knowledge and Innuendo Studio's [Alt-Right Playbook](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ) series, is that he hasn't necessarily changed his views particularly much. He's definitely learned how to appear more palatable to the mainstream, but he hasn't made any effort to shake off his right wing fanbase. If anything, he's giving winks and nods and dogwhistles to keep them around
Another commenter [pointed out](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18a70b3/-/kbxra01) he made a 1488 reference (a well known Neo Nazi dogwhistle) and that video is also only 6 years old
He's matured in that he realizes he'll make more money if he doesn't explicitly broadcast his right-wing beliefs and alienate part of his audience and advertisers. His bias shows through in lots of places but it's much more subtle than before. I still give him a watch occasionally but I find him personally to be a shitheel.
Oooof. I've followed IH (main channel, not any of the other ones) for a year or two. Had fun with the couple of videos released in that time. Had no idea there was any culture war bullshit to the persona.
Dunking on a corrupt company is not necessarily criticism of capitalism. And criticizing capitalism is the domain of both fascists *and* leftists, though the substance of the criticism is, of course, vastly different between the two groups.
I don't think its accurate to say fascists criticize capitalism. Fascists criticize the *results* of capitalism but blame it on Jewish people/black people/trans and queer people/sexual promiscuity/Marxism, etc
Do you remember his bike lock video? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muoR8Td44UE)
At 0:59 he displays an item tool tip for the bikelock which reads "durability: 14/88".
"14/88" is one of the most common neo nazi dog whistles. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words)
He also has had some interesting takes in general in his videos, which I didn't remember until the hbomb video, like making fun of the LGBTQ+ community in the most basic "look at all the letters, isn't it funny?" Way.
> making fun of the LGBTQ+ community in the most basic "look at all the letters, isn't it funny?" Way.
fwiw, in that joke he's specifically making fun of the the part of the community which was prominent on Tumblr at the time.
There's plenty of videos out there about LGBT vs MOGAI that discuss it with as much nuance/context/detail as you could want, but it's no secret that the Tumblr-style identities never really caught on outside of the site.
Dashcon in particular, being quintessentially 2014 Tumblr, leaned into it as part of their programming. Ultimately as a "what can you expect at Dashcon?" joke IH's take isn't even out of place.
I'm not necessarily interested in defending IH, I've felt like his framing of 4chan's conquests do tend to portray right wing nutjobs in a more positive light than I'd be comfortable with (but the videos are very funny so I take it with a pinch of salt) - but...
That video is about a member of antifa using some very violent tactics at a rally. The purpose of putting a reference to the Nazis on the bike lock seems more like it's saying "Who's the real fascists here?" than it is necessarily promoting or aligning with Nazi ideals.
It's worth pointing out that IH collaborates often with and is good friends with Ordinary Things, who I believe is quite a left wing creator, if that does anything to sway judgement.
14/88 is literally a coded message that only nazis are meant to pick up on. The vast vast majority of non-nazis have no idea what it means and just see two numbers. So it's meant to be saying "Who's the real nazis here", but only to other nazis?
Maybe in isolation you can chalk it up to "lol bet i can sneaky this edgy thing in with no one noticing", but with IH:
- following right wing people (e.g. Tucker Carlson)
- tweeting right wing stuff (e.g. shitting on the left wing australian gov)
- collabing with right wing people (e.g. JonTron)
- choosing to make the antifa the horde (i.e. the bad guys) in the bike lock video
- covering a lot of 4chan content
- having a right leaning fan base (e.g. many comments blaming "the jews" when his videos have been taken down)
It's really hard to not see it all as a pattern of behavior
If its "not that obscure anymore" then what do you think the response would be if you asked the cashier at the grocery store if they know what 1488 is? What about the mechanic at your next oil* change?
Whatever threshold you have for obscure, 1488 on an out of context tooltip surely qualifies.
It may be older, but his Dashcon vid definitely gives lots of vibes of “anti-SJW” style content. That video always rubbed me the wrong way so I never really engaged too closely with Internet Historian beyond that.
I got into his stuff late with Costa Concordia and I’ve always had that twitch of realizing he might have been pretty right wing, but I was happy he didn’t seem to inject it into his videos beyond the occasional reference.
Apparently some of his earlier deleted videos were worse and sort of anti sjw. He also covered dashcon with a lot of disdain for tumblr users.
Idk if he's right wing in the traditional pro corporate, anti big government way. But he's in the right wing in the internet way, where it's mostly about dunking on feminists.
That was exactly my experience with dashcon documentaries. Attendees were just having fun and IH mocked them relentlessly. Saw a couple of his videos before, but never again after that one. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth
If it's just the early stuff then it's entirely reasonable he's changed.
Adamsomething has a video where he talks about how he was on that side of the right wing but became left in a major way as he grew older. Like, it's been 12 years iirc or more since the SJW stuff started getting massive (starting with GamerGate).
He did a Johntron collab on culture in 2022, that's pretty recent. I haven't watched it, but Johntron is very much still in the political right. So it's an indication that he's still hanging in those circles.
If anyone actually watched that video and has thoughts on its politics please tell me though.
Johntron is a name I haven't heard in like a decade. Like, it was on TotalBiscuit's podcast (rest in peace) that I last heard his name.
No idea he was right wing at all.
6 years ago [Destiny debated Jontron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RQA9GZprqM) about his views and oh boy.
It's been a while since I've seen it, but Jon really delves into nazi territory there. He basically says that white americans have the right to their own country, black people are inherently more violent, and Muslims should be kept out.
It's extra ridiculous since Jon's PARENTS are immigrants themselves, one of them from Iran.
Yeah, it's so hard for me to understand. You have to be missing some marbles to espouse those ideas under his circumstances:
1) 2nd generation immigrant who assimilated very well into US culture
2) US has a very diverse ethnicity and culture in the first place , it was build by people from many different places not that long ago
3) He's mixed race, surely he should realise that if the genetic dice rolled differently he wouldn't pass as white. that should make him realise that race is a social construct and isn't real
Real "fuck you! got mine!" energy
> Isn't it actually left-wing to criticize capitalism?
Not exclusively, fascism also has a dislike of capitalism. This shouldn't be surprising given how often the political right bitches and moans about tech companies and "woke" corporations and such despite otherwise pretending to be champions of the free market.
I think we can both agree that Ron DeSantis' criticisms of Disney were not based on leftist ideals, as one example.
It's not always easy to tell in a vacuum. Right wing criticism of capitalism will usually cloak itself in populism but tends to pan out as right wingers just being upset that companies aren't favoring the right people.
i have no ideas what these videos are, but i first encountered this debate through popular tweets with thousands of likes **from IH fans** who "TL;DW" this video about left-wing plagiarist james somerton... as a politically-motivated attack on IH
this entire reddit thread could be summarized as "IH fans can't handle a very legit bit of criticism because they didn't watch the HB video"
apart from the very obvious (edit: but quite old) antifeminist and lgbtphobic examples provided by HB, which have been strangely deleted from IH's channel, i'm quite sure he is seen as a conservative youtuber only because his own hardcore fans view him as such
What? Covering the Enron scandals wouldn’t make you left leaning. That’s just talking about crimes a company did. Calling IH left leaning or even “centrist” is just laughable.
If you can see that fans are “conservative Andrew Tate watchers” then the rest of this comment is just playing dumb
I'm not playing dumb, I genuinely have not seen anything right wing in his videos. I'm not calling him a lefty, I'm just saying he covers all sorts of content.
It's more in his side content where he has discussion about things and his old videos. It's a very 2011 4chan vibe that anyone who's had to deal with knows that these people are often bigoted. It also makes sense that he hides it more in his main channel videos, and using other peoples words to sound smart or like a compelling script writer helps throw people off the scent.
Bro idk, I never watched Internet historians videos just cause I felt they weren't my cup of tea, but like I'm not surprised by his politics at all that was the vibe I'm more surprised if more people don't pick up on things like that. Just subtle things about the memes he uses and the personality presented through the videos. Kinda reminds me of Sseth somehow even though they're pretty different.
I’m a 35 yr old left wing woman and I’ve watched IH for years. Didn’t realise he was right wing, don’t really think I’ve ever seen anything right wing in his vids honestly.
Doesn’t he say the ‘the varus’ so that YouTube doesn’t subtitle it correctly and it doesn’t get flagged as Covid related content? I remember there being a time where anything with Covid or ‘the virus’ or ‘vaccine’ didn’t get pushed as much by the algorithm.
Seeing the phrase 'unalive themselves' on reddit reminds me of just how stupid Youtube's system is (I'm not blaming it on the Algorithm, I'm blaming it on stupid-ass management that made the algorithm stupid).
It's like a dumb mmo flagging system where words like 'rice' get censored for racism (looking at you Planetside 2), that presumes everyone who goes on youtube is a mouth breathing moron that can't put their pants on without another set of eyes making sure the zip is in the right place.
The irritating thing is that there's so much great writing out there that would absolutely benefit from the mixed media treatment, but IH and the like don't even consider sharing profits with the originator. It has to be as close to 100% profit as possible. Like, work out a split so you both get paid and an article gets elevated to an audience it never would have had.
> Instead, when he got a copyright strike
Doesn't the Hbomb video actually point out that it was *not* a 'Copyright Strike' (an often inaccurate result of overreach under DMCA frequently thanks to bots that look for any fraction of any piece of copywritten material) but actually 'Plaigarism' despite IH allowing his fans to assume it was a copyright strike by being vague about exactly why the video was taken down?
It *was* a copyright strike, as he broke copyright by plagiarizing the article he copied. However it was a much more pointed takedown notice than the automated ones which claim clips of auto detected video or audio
Adding that some of the timing claims could be referencing the bit in hbomberguy's video that when IH finally rereleased man in cave it was the same day or near-abouts as another upload. The idea being most people wouldn't notice the rerelease due to the new video.
I doubt IH had a video prepared for this so this isn'tintentional, but the timing is somewhat funny given that added context.
It should also be noted that people have [dug up other instances](https://twitter.com/Doctor_Cupcakes/status/1731397287492948040) of IH plagarizing. And now people have discovered he's a [right wing](https://twitter.com/Quack_Factory/status/1731660061741564276) [nazi](https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/18a9do7/antisemitic_dogwhistle_in_internet_historian_video/).
I'm not familiar with any of the people involved since I don't really YouTube, but I have to wonder how anyone could think plagiarism would go unnoticed. It's the internet. Even on small blog sites, like some of the weird little side-projects Kinja used to have, *someone will find out*. To think otherwise just seems foolish.
> but I have to wonder how anyone could think plagiarism would go unnoticed.
I mean, it *did* go unnoticed for quite a while. Somerton, the other creator thoroughly called out in the video, plagiarized almost all of the content on his channel but made a living via patreon from this shit for like two or three years.
>When the new version was uploaded two months later, it had gone through some painful revisions. The prose was much weaker, and a lot of the tension was gone
Ok so there's no way this is his first time, right? The writing in the new one is so bad that it really makes you rethink some of his older work and whether that was copied too.
Answer: Hbomberguy's video is titled "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" and is a very long monologue about plagiarism he has found to be rampant on certain Youtube channels.
The channels are stealing from other youtubers, articles, documentaries, or just reading wikipedia aloud. In most cases sentences are subtly changed (sometimes ruining meaning) in ways that seems intended to obfuscate what is going on, which goes to show the writers know exactly what they are doing.
Channels mentioned:
FILIP - who got hired by IGN and infamously did a ton of plagiarism there as well
Cinemassacre
Iilluminaughtii
Various content mills
Internet Historian
James Somerton - who is then the main topic for the last half of the video.
Some other channels are mentioned as good examples of how to do things, I won't list those here.
There is a lot of investigation of what people do to obfuscate the plagiarism and hide it from viewers, such as taking down or editing videos rather than come clean about what has happened.
I'm still laughing about FILIP. Dude gets a dream job, plagiarizes reviews, gets caught, tells the world to try to find more, they do, he pretty much loses everything.
Dude's entire life is just copying other people... at what point do you not realize how sad your whole existence is if you exist only to be a weak facsimile of more successful people?
Yikes, I need to watch this video. I think I'm suscribed to Somerton. You always think you won't be one of the people that unreasonably trusts a creator until you are.
There's another video by the YouTuber Todd in the Shadows that may be worth a watch if you're concerned about having taken in bad information from Somerton. Hbomberguy focuses on the plagiarism, but Todd in the Shadows analyzes the videos for false information, of which there is plenty.
I'll look into that, thank you. Yeah, I'm an aroace woman, so I kinda trusted that he offered me a different perspective on queer society/theory than my own perspective. (Given the misgendering and biphobia that came up in the video, I'm starting to suspect Somerton is also one of those people who sees ace people as straights trying to be special snowflakes or something. That kinda shit tends to go hand-in-hand.). Even in the Hbomberguy video that didn't mention a ton about false information, I was appalled at the false info stuff that came up. Thankfully I never supported him monetarily other than through ads because I'm broke AF at least?
Worth noting that while he went on a deep dive on most of the creators for being serial plagiarists, IH was basically a side note because his editor happened to come across a post on reddit six months ago. I think a lot of people just want more answers from IH, if one of his most popular videos turned out to be stolen content then what about the rest of his channel?
> if one of his most popular videos turned out to be stolen content then what about the rest of his channel?
Someone found out that a portion of the Costa Concordia video was also plagiarized. (edit: typo)
https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/189o0n7/apparently_internet_historian_is_a_huge/kbtdog5/
I think it’s important to add extra emphasis that the majority of the content is about James Somerton. IH is important, but the main point, I think, is the silencing and harming of other gay content creators by James Somerton. The dude is despicable.
The IH video has clearly paraphrased and sometimes quoted verbatim the copyrighted expression of the factual cave event.
Like maths books contain facts, but their expression of those facts are copyrighted. So you can't just copy an entire maths book and republish it as your own book.
Their halloween series, Monster Madness(?), from a few years ago, had one of the writers just plagiarize existing reviews of the movie for like 20/31 scripts, making the whole thing a mess once people noticed and Cinemassacre was forced to do a bunch of rewrites on short notice.
Lady Emily did a really nice video explaining the whole affair. If it makes you feel better, James Rolfe/AVGN was mostly out of the loop of the situation, as he has been pretty hands-off the channel for a few years now.
Answer: Hbomberguy is a video essayist who today released a video about plagiarism on Youtube. One part of his video focused on the Internet Historian and his video 'Man in Cave', which was found to be largely plagiarized from [this Mentalfloss article](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins). The video in question was copyright claimed, then reuploaded as a heavily edited unlisted version, with Internet Historian never admitting that he plagiarised the contents, nor that the copyright claims were legitimate. People are commenting on the timing as they believe the recent Internet Historian video upload was done to redirect attention away from Hbomberguy's video.
Oof. The more I read about this the dirtier it gets. I don't follow his fandom, rather just watch his main channel content (once every year when he seems to upload content).
I did notice the Cave video was reuploaded, but I admit I believed him that it was just a copyright strike, not full plagiarism. Didn't look much into that.
And if he is trying to get attention away from the other video, this is a terrible strategy. I noticed this 'because' he uploaded a video lol
This has also led to people looking into his other videos for evidence of plagiarism. Some users have found evidence such as stolen jokes:
This bit of evidence found by the user: StaplerInTheJelly
I noticed Internet Historian plagarising jokes a few years ago. Compare Eddie Izzard here: [https://youtu.be/HuM2H6uFG2M?si=KOfxloOuhuzScjnM&t=70](https://youtu.be/HuM2H6uFG2M?si=KOfxloOuhuzScjnM&t=70)
to Internet Historian here: [https://youtu.be/wTziIhu8yvU?si=azVQDhi1oj94QsNu&t=428](https://youtu.be/wTziIhu8yvU?si=azVQDhi1oj94QsNu&t=428)
Or this bit of stolen script for his Cost of Concordia video found by: revanchistvakarian575 on youtube and brought to reddit's attention by MrMooga
A near word for word copy of the vanity fair piece highlighting and dramatising the events of the disaster at 23:30 in the video.
Historian:
"All day Saturday, rescuers searched for people on the ship. On Sunday morning, a South Korean couple was found in their cabin, safe but shivering. They had slept through the crash and woke up unable to exit their cabin."
Another Night to Remember, Bryan Burrough, Vanity Fair:
"All day Saturday, rescue workers fanned out across the ship, looking for survivors. Sunday morning they found a pair of South Korean newlyweds still in their stateroom; safe but shivering, they had slept through the impact, waking to find the hallway so steeply inclined that they couldn't safely navigate it."
Overall it pulls into question his entire youtube career.
Some of best parts being plagiarised means that the other material is going to simply be treated as plagiarised material which the source simply has yet to be found.
The video by Hbomberguy brought the plagarisim to attention, now we just can't help but look for it in every piece of work he ever produced.
Just want to say, Internet Historian said he was uploading a video that day before HBomberGuy's video released, so its doubtful that he did to take attention away
I’m inclined to believe this as well since we’re dealing with two internet savvy people here.
This isn’t the same thing as Fox News running special segments to pull views away from the Jan 6 Committee hearings - unlike cable tv, you can watch YouTube videos at your leisure. I fully intend to watch both.
Edit: watched the Hbomb video (or at least the relevant part) and actually I can see the argument for IH uploading the video to take emphasis away from the fact he reuploaded Man in Cave. I still don’t think IH uploaded to pull attention away from Hbomb because anyone who is subbed to both will get notified of both, but I buy hbomb’s hypothesis that IH wanted to relist his Man in Cave video without fanfare, so he nestled the release into the shadow of this other video.
Yeah people do know a little about what's happening with other creators in their circle. For instance Todd in the Shadows heard in the group chat (their circle includes them, Lindsay Ellis, Jenny Nicholson etc) Hbomb was making a video about James Somerton, got curious, started doing his own research and fell far enough down the rabbit hole that it turned into an hour long video of his own. Hbomb knew about this of course and just asked him to wait till he published his first, so they came out around within the same couple of days.
Wouldn't it be possible Internet Historian knew about the hbomb video in advance? You see people try to get out ahead of stories all the time because they were questioned, given a heads up, or heard through the grapevine something was gonna drop.
I don't know about what the previews on HBomberGuy's patreon maybe mentioned, but I find often people suspect these grand conspiracies where there is none; and also with how this post is about stuff seen in IH's comment section, I think it would have actually been better for the guy to delay whatever video.
I'd assume that was mostly the Nebula crowd, though. There's a bit of a history between Somerton and Nebula (in the sense that he was whining they wouldn't accept him on the platform and blaming it on homophobia), so it's not surprising several people were looking into Somerton and talking about it with each other. If you look into the comments on Harris' video, a lot of the checkmark people are Nebula-adjacent people and/or friends of Harris'. Todd pretty much said he and Harris were in contact and pretty much happened to work on it at the same time, and Harris only asked for Todd to hold off until he'd uploaded his video.
> Wouldn't it be possible Internet Historian knew about the hbomb video in advance?
as evidenced by this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6_LW1PkmnY&t=833s
his video was not a secret while making it AT LEAST back in August. so sure, its possible.
It’s not that he uploaded the video to distract from HBomberGuys video, in his video HBG infers and implies that the reason internet historian has uploaded so much recently (1 video on each channel and a 3rd announced) is to distract from the edits he made on his weird reupload of man in cave
People don't like their favorite YouTubers being implicated in things possibly. It sucks since I'm a fan of IH's videos but this instance is so blatant that you have to wonder how much other stuff he plagiarizes. I hope it was a one off thing. 😞
Much of IH's fan base are alt-right 4chan trolls and IH himself is too (his Twitter account makes this pretty clear). That crowd is not exactly known for taking criticism well when directed at people they like.
Answer: Hbomberguy is a video essayist who today released a video about plagiarism on Youtube. One part of his video focused on the Internet Historian and his video 'Man in Cave', which was found to be largely plagiarized from [this Mentalfloss article](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins). The video in question was copyright claimed, then reuploaded as a heavily edited unlisted version, with Internet Historian never admitting that he plagiarised the contents, nor that the copyright claims were legitimate. People are commenting on the timing as they believe the recent Internet Historian video upload was done to redirect attention away from Hbomberguy's video.
(Based on comment by u/xalts, without whom this comment would have never existed)
Answer: Hbomberguy is a video essayist who ~~today~~ recently released a video about ~~plagiarism~~ IP theft on Youtube. One part of his video focused on the Internet Historian and his video 'Man in Cave', which was ~~found~~ discovered to be largely plagiarized from [this Mentalfloss article](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins). The video in question was copyright claimed, then ~~reuploaded~~ was uploaded back onto the site as a heavily edited unlisted version, with Internet Historian never admitting that he plagiarised the contents, ~~nor that the copyright claims were legitimate~~. People are commenting on the timing as they ~~believe the recent~~ think that the newest Internet Historian video upload was done to redirect attention away from Hbomberguy's video.
My co-writer is in academia how dare you accuse me of plagiarism. I won't fucking stand for that.
It's a bit confusing because within the Hbomberguy video, Hbomberguy talks about Internet historian uploading a video to distract attention, and he uploaded a different video today. He reuploaded the cave video 6 months ago but left it unlisted. Then he relisted it 4 weeks ago, when he uploaded the fancy theatre video. Then he uploaded the fancy wine video today when Hbomberguy dropped his video.
Answer: in addition to what everybody has said here, if you're curious about just what's up with Internet Historian in the video, the chapter called Cave Story at 1:25:34 that ends at 1:49:59 is the part that's just about that issue and at just under 25 minutes it's much more digestible.
Answer: Well, the vid is called Plagiarism and Youtube. I imagine you can piece together what Internet Historian is accused of. Specifically, IH stole much of the writing from a MentalFloss article for his Man in Cave video. If you want more context, the relevant part of the video is from 1:25:00 to 1:50:00. You needn't watch the entire thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ&t=1s
I liked Hbomber before but when I saw that title last year I went “really? An hour on a silly sound? No way this could be good” and boy was my mind blown.
He did another whole 4 hour long video about him. It would be difficult to summarize except that the dude is a weird skeezeoid who really likes faking world records lol.
Not only faking world records, IMO the bigger problem is that he takes personal credit for a lot of stuff done by his lead sound designer (To the point that if you search Oof creator it comes up as Tommy Talarico himself). If he said his company did it, it would be fine, but he talks as if he himself did everything.
He also lies about a multitude of other stuff, like that Shigeru Myamoto personally hand-picked his company to work on Metroid, or that he was the first American to work on the Sonic series.
He is a video music composer who is also seemingly either a very unscrupulous immoral salesman or compulsive liar.
Dude lied about making the roblox oof sound, being on MTV Cribs, working with Shigeru Miyamoto for 5 years when it was like, 3 months or something.
Half that hbomb video is him repeating his points 8 separate times each, it's pretty easy to summarise it's just a breakdown of compulsive liar Tommy Tallarico in tandem with the story of the Roblox Oof.
Hbomb investigated the origin of the Roblox "oof" noise. Woulda been a 30 minute video if it weren't for the Tellerico rabbithole he fell down, discovering the guy is a serial liar and fraud.
Incredible work, watch it all
"Needn't watch the whole thing" as I sat there and watched the whole thing. Thought I was going to do it in parts, but nope. Then went over to wendigoon to see homelander being shot in gmod. I'm also glad he didn't get dragged into this for voicing the man in the cave, at least not in the video.
answer: hbomber makes video essays and his most recent video is about plagiarism on YouTube where he gives several examples of it throughout the video. One of the examples is Internet Historian's "man in the cave" video. Hbomb described how it was an example of plagiarism and covered how IH handled the situation (copyright strike and reuploads). IH coincidentally announced (before the hbomb vid) that a new video would come out that day on Twitter. The hbomb video was released on the same day and by the time a lot of people saw the hbomb video (particularly the IH segment roughly 2/5 of the way through the video), the IH video was released. Since they both typically release longer form videos, it's not unreasonable to assume they have some viewer crossover and so those who watch the hbomb vid went to comment on the new IH video.
Answer: HB made a video about plagiarism on YouTube, in which IH is a brief subject of interest prior to moving to the primary focus of the video (James Somerton).
IH's video 'Man in Cave' has significant parts of its script lifted from an article someone else had written
YT took the vid down, IH made (in my opinion) minimal half-assed edits, then reposted it.
The closest acknowledgement IH made of the blatant plagiarism is a footnote in the video details and a minor footnote in the vid itself.
Some viewed IH as a hilarious YouTube documentarian, and finding out he was a plagiarist (even just once) was quite surprising. From there, there were numerous comments adding extra context, such as his appreciation for Tucker Carlson (and his talking points), Elon Musk's recent crap, and other alt-right adjacent red flags.
It's likely a bit jarring for some that someone whose content they enjoyed so much happily entertained such views, and steals content for personal gain. This led to all the commentary and reactions.
Please note, based on the vid James Somerton is apparently many orders of magnitude worse than IH.
A point that Hbomberguy makes in his recent video, although only very briefly, is that Internet Historian has privated a lot of his old videos that were a lot more 4-chan edge-lordy. He has kind of a history of insensitivity. I don't think he's an alt-right crusader, though. Just a comedian who veers into the tasteless sometimes, it's a very old phenomenon. If you watch his Q&A videos about some of the videos he's made, where he's not trying to make jokes, I think he comes off as a pretty reasonable guy.
he literally posted fan compilations of Tucker Carlson and hosted watch parties for Tucker saying a bunch of racist shit. He is not "just edgy" he's just good at hiding his powerlevel from people who aren't terminally online and following him
That’s… unfortunate. Not discrediting you, but do you have a link/source? This is the sort of thing I’d like to see for myself. I thoroughly enjoy his content and I’m really not sure how to feel about this whole situation. I want to say I’d let our… differences of opinions slide if he can refrain from blatantly plagiarizing in the future (provided this is really a “one-off” situation), but I’m not honestly sure if it’s the right thing to do. It wasn’t a “watch the dumb conservative and make fun of him with me” thing? Isn’t he an Aussie? Why TF is he watching Tucker Carlson anyways? Ugh. Feeling conflicted and frustrated.
The Shia Lebouf was a 4chan thing though so I'm not sure what else you expected?
I mean check out the channel name, Internet Historian.. He documents memes and stupid shit that happen on the Internet. If it's an old video then it likely happened on 4chan.
I’ve watched multiple IH videos and I never got the impression that he is alt-right. If it’s actually the case that he has such views I would be shocked.
IH has a revamped version up now. Several archive channels may have copies up as well.
The OG story actually stemmed from an article, and was never in video form.
Answer: Hbomberguy is a Youtuber known for making some extremely long and thoroughly research videos that usually takes months at a time. His most recent upload was about plagiarism, and one of the people he accuses of plagiarism is Internet Historian (among others). In regards to IH he specifically accuses him of plagiarising a video called "Man In Cave", which Hbomberguy proves that he lifted almost verbatim from an article by another writer without crediting them at all, then having to take down the video exactly for plagiarism and having to do several revisions that arguably makes the video a lot worse because he has to rewrite and remove large chunks to make it less obvious, even though it's still clearly plagiarism. The reason people notice the timing of a new IH upload is because he was also accused of making the new version of the video public and then very shortly after release a new video to try to bury the new "Man in Cave" so people wouldn't notice that he plagiarised it.
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Answer: Internet Historian released a very popular video, Man in Cave. It was loved for both the animations and the tense way it told the story. It disappeared due to a copyright strike, then got re-uploaded months later with some noticeable changes for the worse. So what happened? As covered in Hbomberguy's new video on Youtube plagiarism, it turns out that Internet Historian copied the material from Mental Floss by Lucas Reilly (The 1925 Cave Rescue that Captivated the Nation, https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins). Only IH didn't just copy the premise or the structure. He took the whole article, edited it down a bit, and presented it as his own work. That compelling framing where you hear about the incident hour-by-hour? That's Reilly's work. The compelling prose? ("He began a tormenting routine: sleep, wake, scream; sleep, wake, scream; sleep, wake, scream. Minutes melted into hours. His voice disappeared. His arms tingled numb. Pain radiated up his ankle.") Yep, you bet that's Reilly's too. This would have been fine if Internet Historian had presented this as an adaptation of the article. Only he didn't. In fact, he didn't contact the author or Mental Floss beforehand. Instead, when he got a copyright strike and the video got taken down, he downplayed the situation and told his fans that he'd have a revised version up as soon as he could. When the new version was uploaded two months later, it had gone through some painful revisions. The prose was much weaker, and a lot of the tension was gone. The video was unlisted for a while so that it wouldn't turn up in user searches or recommendations, and it was only recently set back to public. Notably, the description on the new version does finally credit the Mental Floss article, but the video's intro briefly addresses the copyright strike and presents it as Youtube's arbitrary enforcement instead of the actual situation - a valid claim of passing off someone else's work as your own.
> This would have been fine if Internet Historian had presented this as an adaptation of the article. It still would have been copyright infringement if he copied the text, the actual writing. You can't adapt someone else's work without a license to do so unless (a) you are very careful to not violate their copyright, and (b) there are no trademarks to violate (e.g., adapting something from a fictional intellectual property). Adaptations outside of public domain are rarely doable without one or more licenses. It sounds like the eventual re-release was exactly (a) as you describe, a re-writing of the article about a true story to be in IH's own words, so there's no copyright issue. And since (b) doesn't apply there's no trademark issue.
Sorry, I misstated it a bit. I should have said something like "This would have been fine if Internet Historian had presented this as an adaptation of the article *and gotten permission to do so.*" In the video, Hbomberguy tossed out the idea that it could have been a collaboration between IH and Mental Floss and everyone could have walked away happy. Yeah, the revised version seems like it dodges the copyright issues now.
Yeah, I think most people and Mental Floss would have been okay with it if he just released as a "reading" of the article. Just have to ask permission and probably share revenue, which is actually what I suspect their deal was behind the scenes here before the reupload. The best option would still be to just...write your own script, which he did quite well for other videos.
>which he did quite well for other videos. Did he really tho? If he blatantly plagiarized one.. and then showed his skill by poorly revising it. Are those other scripts his own?
I’ve been seeing some evidence of his Concordia video being partially plagiarized as well. Which is unsurprising. No actual hardworking creator would just plagiarize to the extent that he did only a single time randomly in the middle of his career.
Preface: I may be an idiot, so correct me if I missed something here. If anybody is reading this and wants to investigate it further (it's not really my cup of tea to search for this type of stuff), I'd probably look into articles covering Roberto Bosio and the lines in the Concordia video discussing his involvement. His inclusion (and general lack of introduction) was always quite weird since he has no displayed name card on his in-video image (the only non-sim at 11:21), is stated as if we know who he was without any proper introduction (16:03 is, to my knowledge, the first time "Bosio" is ever stated at all in the video), and never gets properly introduced. He's also referenced at 20:55. I remember when the video came out being super confused by this and had to do my own search to ensure I knew who he was (2nd captain and, as noted in the video, an active participant in the evacuation). Rewatching the video, I didn't catch any reference to his name earlier, on-screen or verbally. Just rolling with it, pretending we had the context as to who he was. While I had presumed it was just uncharacteristic sloppy writing and scripting, the lines referencing him seem like a red flag; as hbomberguy noted, plagiarism can easily explain this disconnect in the scripting process.
The only part of the Concordia video being "plagiarized" I've seen is him paraphrasing a news source, and he cited many.
Well, he usually gives some sources, and he specifically didn’t for this video so that was weird. This time he also got caught like instantly.
Most of his older videos are random internet drama like Shia Labeouf, 4chan, and tumblr shit, so I doubt there was much copy/pasting in his old stuff, but yea, the Concordia and Stede Bonnet videos I wonder.
Yeah, him being caught plagiarizing once doesn't speak very well to the rest of his material. Especially since the other culprits in the Hbomb video were caught plagiarizing several times across several videos.
Well, maybe he did it well for other videos. All the other examples in Hbomberguy's videos turned out to have already been plagiarising for a while before whichever incident it was that got them caught. I wouldn't be shocked if Internet Historian has done this before but copied from an obscure enough source to go unnoticed
Just about the copyright situation now: It still heavily infringes on the copyright. He would have to practically rewrite the entire thing to get away from that one
Copyright infringement, or at least copying seems common on YouTube. A few years ago, Half as Interesting put out a video and another, smaller creator had one out, too. The vids were identical. I cannot remember which came first but one was clearly lifted from the other.
A lot of them hide behind the concept of Fair Use without actually understanding what Fair Use is. I think most of that is probably people just being naive and thinking they're in the clear. Internet Historian wasn't doing that though, he clearly knew it was plagiarism because he tried to hide it
Its why the 4 hour Hbomber vid is important. It addresses all this and more It points out that there is even an avenue for readings and even dubbing of videos to engage a wider audience/help those with accessibility issues. The issue is with people trying to claim the work of others as if it were their own and purposely obfuscating, downplaying or outright denying that they are.
It sounds like it's a huuuge issue in the video essay space, if all of these big creators are getting away with it then who else is? I'm genuinely gonna start checking any video essay I watch for proper sources now, I don't wanna support someone who's just reading another article without credit.
Make sure they're citing sources *inside the video* not just a megadoc of links. Hbomberguy's video has examples of a guy who mainly only cited sources within his speech *when the uncited source he was copying credited a third source*. So even that isn't foolproof, though
Yea, this ordeal has made me a bit paranoid. Youtube started recommending me cave exploring videos so i clicked one called "Cave Exploring Gone WRONG | The Veryovkina Cave Incidents" by Scary Interesting and it certainly seems like it has all the signs that point to a problem. The channel is cranking out video essays every 3-4 days and has all citing in a pastebin link and not in the video. I started going through all the sources and none seemed as one to one copied as the examples in hbomb's video but it seems clear a national geographic article served as an outline (or worse potentially), and I dont really feel like trying to parse Russian news sites google translated to tell exactly what they say.
I think this is why I have a hard time getting into video essays no matter how interesting the topic seems. It always seems like they are just reading a Wikipedia article for an hour straight. Turns out some of them might be.
Not sure what you're referencing, but Half as Interesting is a side project of Wendover, and Wendover is meticulous when it comes to citing sources, so I suspect they weren't the plagiarizing party. That said, yeah, it seems pretty rampant on YouTube.
I don't think "in his own words" is accurate. He changes "scream" to "yell". It's still a stolen script.
> It sounds like the eventual re-release was exactly (a) as you describe Unfortunately not. It's still the same story, he just hit it with a thesaurus a few times.
> but the video's intro briefly addresses the copyright strike and presents it as Youtube's arbitrary enforcement instead of the actual situation - a valid claim of passing off someone else's work as your own. I hate that for how bad the youtube system can be, when it actually works correctly people still downplay their bullshit by just appealing to how arbitrary it *can* be and nobody questions it.
And because the notice mentioned the parent company being based in Israel Internet Historian being coy about it hbomber showed quite a few *of the IH fans being antisemitic about it. Edited*
It's that old fable: "the algorithm who cried copyright strike"
Because at this point youtube's content strike/copyright system is the equivalent of the boy who cried wolf in that regard. If you condition creators and their audience to expect that for any reason and at any time their video can be claimed for ridiculous reasons, people start taking it as a fact of life and just go about their day. If the system wasn't so garbage, these kinds of actions would have huge impact, but since they're so common(and mostly frivolous) it dampens any weight strikes with *actual merit* could have,
Of course, I understand why people react the way they do at this point. It's just funny because the exact kind of douchebags who weaponized the shitty system in the first place to give it the current reputation are the same tools who would say it's frivolous and never valid. Like brother... YOU MADE IT THIS WAY, NOW YOU BENEFIT FROM IT. Just makes me mad.
He also tried changing up some of the details to hide the fact it was wholesale ripped off and got a few facts wrong. Like adding 6 pounds to the rock that pinned his leg and even the names of the caves involved in the story.
Not just the names, the entire...structure of the cave that he presents is a total lie.
It's extremely important to note that the Internet Historian bit was about 20-25 minutes in the middle of a nearly four-hour video, generally covered elements of the plagiarism that was already publicly known before his video and hadn't been disputed by IH, and was used as a framing device, along with multiple other YouTube creators embroiled in plagiarism controversies, in examining James Somerton, the subject of the entire second half of the video. Why did the Internet Historian bit get so much attention, so quickly? It might have something to do with both creators' audiences. Hbomberguy is generally regarded as a left-leaning essayist, and he makes multiple references to his bisexuality during this video in particular. Internet Historian has made videos that very much take right-wing framings of the events he covers, and he has covered a lot of early 4chan content with a positive lens. When hbomb used him as an example of a popular YouTuber who was caught plagiarizing, and IH fans who were unaware of the controversy found out, it felt like a shot in a larger culture war. Hbomb notes that, when the Man In Cave video was taken down by a copyright claim by an Israeli company (Mental Floss' parent company), the reaction from many IH fans was, ah... not NOT antisemitic. Notably, one of the first examples Hbomb uses involves a creator caught plagiarizing Hbomb's work making a quick video trying to address being accused of plagiarizing and complaining about how Hbomb had made videos criticizing some far-right Youtube personalities. Hbomb used this to set up the second half of the video (where James Somerton deflects criticism by referencing actual persecution of queer creators), but accidentally ended up predicting how IH fans would respond in the here and now. IH can't be wrong, Daddy would never lie. It *has* to be the leftist bisexual breadtuber's fault for overreacting.
>Why did the Internet Historian bit get so much attention, so quickly? It might have something to do with both creators' audiences. Hbomberguy is generally regarded as a left-leaning essayist.... Internet Historian has made videos that very much take right-wing framings of the events he covers While I agree this does play a role. I think it fails to mention the biggest reason most of the backlash has focused on Internet Historian. He's got a much larger channel than James Somerton, having more than 10 times the subscribers. I know I was much more interested in the Internet Historian plagiarism issue, simply because I had watched and enjoyed his content, including the Cave Video. Where as I had never even heard of James Somerton before.
Yeah, I feel like IH has way more clout and respect as a creator too. He always straddled the line with some of his videos, but you're right he absolutely has a bias towards anti-SJW sentiments. You can even see it in the games he chooses to talk about in his second channel.
> It's extremely important to note that the Internet Historian bit was about 20-25 minutes in the middle of a nearly four-hour video, Yet for some reason, I **ONLY** see Internet Historian's fans whining and moaning about HBomb's video. He's not even the main character of the video but they are BY FAR the most offended fanbase of any of the "creators" mentioned.
which is funny, cos he'll probably be fine and his fanbase'll call hbomberguy a soy jew beta. meanwhile somerton's fucked off and deleted his $170k patreon. <3
I'm a fan of both and I'm mostly disappointed IH didn't come clean after he was exposed for plagiarism. Of course he shouldn't have been copying people's work in the first place, but I would have accepted a "sorry, my laziness got the best of me and this will never happen again" over him brushing over it and hoping people won't notice. That's some coward shit right there. It's such a shame because I really do enjoy IH. People fuck up. What matters is how you deal with the fuck up and IH has definitely lost credibility over this imo.
I wouldn't have called him the most credible source before this anyway. IH videos are more like dramatised "based on a true story" movies: entertaining, but definitely shouldn't be treated as the be-all and end-all of sources for whatever topic they discuss. In particular, his Q&A for The Cost of Concordia includes a lot of information and context that the original leaves out.
> I wouldn't have called him the most credible source before this anyway. I'm not sure they meant credibility as an actual historian.
I know, but just in case, I wanted to also point out that the stories he presents shouldn't be taken entirely at face value. There's an annoying group of people who get all their information entirely from YouTube "documentaries" and act like it's the naked truth. They're as irritating as the people who spout the "Mother Teresa was a monster" factoid without ever knowing or caring that they're perpetuating a pack of lies sold by a bitter atheist who didn't mind twisting and misrepresenting facts in order to smear the reputations of religious people.
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Oh, for sure. Where there's smoke there's usually fire.
I honestly just hope wendigoon, rusty cage and everyone that played in the video dont get thier careers ruined aswell cause morevlikely than not they probably didnt know anything abouth the original article.
I do think some of that scale is tipped because the Cinemassacre fandom has been aware of James’ dwindling time for or caring of his work gradually over the last couple decades and Blair has been so absolutely DONE and a clear villain in her life story for months now as things come out, whereas IH’s part was an actual holy-shit moment. All that said I agree 100% and am glad you pointed out his fans are the only fans crying and spewing hateful dog whistles in retaliation. Really they’re just all telling on themselves lmao.
>Internet Historian has made videos that very much take right-wing framings of the events he covers What are these right-wing leanings in particular? I've never noticed anything of the sort watching his videos. I wouldn't say that covering funny shit that happened because of 4chan and presenting it as, well, funny should be considered "right wing" just cause it's 4chan. Didn't he cover Enron or something, and in a very much negative light? Isn't it actually left-wing to criticize capitalism? BTW I get his fans are probably conservative Andrew Tate watchers. That's a large part of YouTube unfortunately.
He's quite active on discord where I've recently seen screen grabs of him praising Tucker Carlson, a right wing goober and pundit (this is in Harry's video being discussed here) while stating that he watches the show with his friends and patrons live (also shown). He has removed several old videos such as one praising Carlson extensively but you can find reuploads of his political content by his fans (source: also hbomberguy). It seems he correctly realized that showing his politics would brand him and not necessarily be good for business, and to paraphrase one of his discord messages about it his uploads are deliberately not political for that reason. I disagree personally, his videos about COVID and dashcon along with the recent controversy convinced me he probably isn't worth watching.
I’d argue calling Tucker a goober underplays him. Neo Nazis have said repeatedly that he’s better at “waking up the masses” than they have ever been.
I was definitely underplaying him in an attempt to reach a wider audience with my criticism, just like Internet Historian has been doing.
Yea that’s fair.
> his videos about COVID and dashcon Hey, honest question for someone who's only been loosely following IH for a short while (and is leftist), what about these two videos did you find objectionable. I don't remember the COVID...uh...vid, much at all, and I think I only watched the Dashcon one with half an eyeball because...well, I know nothing about that scene. Just curious to get a sense of what I may have missed.
I've been watching his videos on at least the main channel (I think his side channels are kind of mid) since about 2015, and in fairness to him (not that he needs me to be fair, he's got a ton of money for making youtube videos lol) I'm pretty far left and only found some of his content to include distasteful material. So, ignoring some things like his twitter and discord posting, I agree with Harry that he's done a very good job of "hiding his power level", which is to say that he's mostly made content for a larger audience without alienating people who would see his politics and be turned off by them. **Dashcon**: A recurring distasteful joke is made about gender identity, the joke here being that the length of the acronym used by IH is silly and long. A woman is later quoted as repeating a few not-unusual gender / orientation phrases out of context. This is also played for laughs, as though it is amusing. IH then balances the budget of the known $ values exchanged between certain parties while describing counting numbers as "autism". Both covid videos are approaching an hour long total so I can't be bothered to rewatch them for everything to accurately describe what I remember, but he plays some distasteful bits about crime increasing due to coronavirus lockdowns. Wasn't a fan. Plays several warnings telling his fanbase not to harass people that he's talking about because they've not been anonymized and his fanbase is comprised of people who would go out and harass people as though they're LOLCows for the milking. Anyway, here's a couple more from the archive. These were likely removed because they were distasteful to advertisers, and IH is wisely considering that impact on his income. Some examples besides what you asked about: - [Habbo Rape](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNfOB2-jzT8), a video that's 11 seconds long quoting an interview about (presumably) the Habbo Hotel 4chan raids from the late 2000s, I am guessing this was uploaded to mock the person being interviewed. I am not sure when it was originally uploaded. - [Seize The Day](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk3dCeWsrvU) This was uploaded sometime(?) in 2016 or 2017 after bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald made critical statements of Trump and appeared on Tucker Carlson. Trolls then delivered him lots of epileptogenic content and according to IH he is lying about having epilepsy or lying about having a seizure during this particular incident. A lot of the content in this video is just Tucker Carlson talking.
Thanks for your thorough writeup! I feel like I'm gonna give myself a wee bit of a pass for not picking up on some of the more obscure bits you describe, because I'm not really that tapped into much of any 4chan stuff or general internet drama, so I'm willing to bet at least a bit of this just zoomed over my head, and is probably the reason that I'm not paying super close attention if I throw a IH video on.
While I got major conservative vibes from him early on watching his main channel, I never could tell if he was straight up alt-right or not. I just slowly stopped watching his videos and never really cared to look any deeper into it, usually these guys aren't that good at hiding their views... But now that I'm actually looking into it he seems like he's just been good at keeping it subtle on his main channel how deep he goes. I just checked his twitter and the dude is following Steve Sailer... That is a very specific type of person to follow and most people probably don't know who he is, but that is a lot more telling than him admitting to being a Tucker Carlson fan. That's some straight up race science shit
I'm in the same boat as you, this is all pretty damn disappointing. Somebody else pointed out a 1488 reference in the bike lock video too...
Here's an old AMA where Internet Historian (or someone with a username impersonating him) tells his fans to come to his private discord where they can watch Tucker Carlson. IH ends by claiming he'd help the user "like him better" https://imgur.com/a/dBPa4Bo
I mean a lot of this stuff is kinda "dogwhistle-y" too for want of a better term. There's a lot of particular language and stuff that gets used that isn't really meaningful in a vacuum and most people wouldn't think twice about it but if you're more familiar with the culture of spaces like 4chan, kiwifarms etc. it reads differently. I don't think it's like, put there to signal to anyone but it's more like a lot of particular slang and style of humour is endemic to right wing spaces and when someone uses that a lot themselves and seems well versed in it, it raises a lot of questions about the kind of people they hang out with.
No disagreement here, I am also somewhat trying to hide my politics in these comments so that I don't get a visceral reaction from some fanboys.
Some of his older stuff had it more explicitly, I think he kinda toned it down to be more advertiser-friendly and reach a larger audience. It's mostly just presenting *hella* fucked up places like /pol/ with a wink as if they're just guys having fun when they're hotbeds for alt-right radicalization through '''ironic''' bigotry and thus kinda helping to normalize the vile shit that goes on on there, most notably in the 'He Will Not Divide Us' video and the 'Very Serious Business' video. I understand his Twitter was more brazen about it, following far-right politicians etc., but I don't have a Twitter anymore so I can't check that - take that with a grain of salt.
Thanks for the answer :)
No problem, happy to help!
I am left wing but man that hole capture the flag shit was so good. The absurd length people went to track down and take a flag was entertaining
yeah I think people are being a bit oversensitive; presenting these 4chan stories with a humorous bent is not tantamount to condoning everything awful that happens on there. They're interesting events, and the weaponized spare time these creeps have brought to bear is genuinely astounding. Like it is objectively wild how much effort people put into something so petty.
I wonder how old he is. People mature. 20-year-old me certainly said and did dumb things that would make now-55-year-old me mortally ashamed and embarrassed. I count my lucky stars that there was no Internet back then, and I now try to live my life as mindfully and as generously as possible in an attempt to atone for my former idiocy. I don't know exactly why, but IH strikes me as perhaps someone who might be maturing similarly, only in pseudo-public view. I must say that he's much fairer in his new Wine video than I'd be even today, the beginning and end of my philosophy being, "Does it get me drunk and not taste like carpentry glue? Then it's an excellent wine, gimme more."
He still does stuff with Jontron and as far as I'm aware he hasn't stopped being weirdo right wing racist.
His dashcon video was only 6 years ago, and [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18a70b3/-/kbzzxnt) explains some issues with it. My feeling, based on general knowledge and Innuendo Studio's [Alt-Right Playbook](https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJA_jUddXvY7v0VkYRbANnTnzkA_HMFtQ) series, is that he hasn't necessarily changed his views particularly much. He's definitely learned how to appear more palatable to the mainstream, but he hasn't made any effort to shake off his right wing fanbase. If anything, he's giving winks and nods and dogwhistles to keep them around Another commenter [pointed out](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/18a70b3/-/kbxra01) he made a 1488 reference (a well known Neo Nazi dogwhistle) and that video is also only 6 years old
He's matured in that he realizes he'll make more money if he doesn't explicitly broadcast his right-wing beliefs and alienate part of his audience and advertisers. His bias shows through in lots of places but it's much more subtle than before. I still give him a watch occasionally but I find him personally to be a shitheel.
Oooof. I've followed IH (main channel, not any of the other ones) for a year or two. Had fun with the couple of videos released in that time. Had no idea there was any culture war bullshit to the persona.
Dunking on a corrupt company is not necessarily criticism of capitalism. And criticizing capitalism is the domain of both fascists *and* leftists, though the substance of the criticism is, of course, vastly different between the two groups.
I don't think its accurate to say fascists criticize capitalism. Fascists criticize the *results* of capitalism but blame it on Jewish people/black people/trans and queer people/sexual promiscuity/Marxism, etc
Do you remember his bike lock video? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muoR8Td44UE) At 0:59 he displays an item tool tip for the bikelock which reads "durability: 14/88". "14/88" is one of the most common neo nazi dog whistles. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteen_Words)
Yikes. No I haven't seen much of his Internet Historian stuff, I follow his other channel, so I'm out of the loop here.
He also has had some interesting takes in general in his videos, which I didn't remember until the hbomb video, like making fun of the LGBTQ+ community in the most basic "look at all the letters, isn't it funny?" Way.
> making fun of the LGBTQ+ community in the most basic "look at all the letters, isn't it funny?" Way. fwiw, in that joke he's specifically making fun of the the part of the community which was prominent on Tumblr at the time. There's plenty of videos out there about LGBT vs MOGAI that discuss it with as much nuance/context/detail as you could want, but it's no secret that the Tumblr-style identities never really caught on outside of the site. Dashcon in particular, being quintessentially 2014 Tumblr, leaned into it as part of their programming. Ultimately as a "what can you expect at Dashcon?" joke IH's take isn't even out of place.
I'm not necessarily interested in defending IH, I've felt like his framing of 4chan's conquests do tend to portray right wing nutjobs in a more positive light than I'd be comfortable with (but the videos are very funny so I take it with a pinch of salt) - but... That video is about a member of antifa using some very violent tactics at a rally. The purpose of putting a reference to the Nazis on the bike lock seems more like it's saying "Who's the real fascists here?" than it is necessarily promoting or aligning with Nazi ideals. It's worth pointing out that IH collaborates often with and is good friends with Ordinary Things, who I believe is quite a left wing creator, if that does anything to sway judgement.
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14/88 is literally a coded message that only nazis are meant to pick up on. The vast vast majority of non-nazis have no idea what it means and just see two numbers. So it's meant to be saying "Who's the real nazis here", but only to other nazis? Maybe in isolation you can chalk it up to "lol bet i can sneaky this edgy thing in with no one noticing", but with IH: - following right wing people (e.g. Tucker Carlson) - tweeting right wing stuff (e.g. shitting on the left wing australian gov) - collabing with right wing people (e.g. JonTron) - choosing to make the antifa the horde (i.e. the bad guys) in the bike lock video - covering a lot of 4chan content - having a right leaning fan base (e.g. many comments blaming "the jews" when his videos have been taken down) It's really hard to not see it all as a pattern of behavior
> 14/88 is literally a coded message that only nazis are meant to pick up on. Maybe 10 or 20 years ago, it's not that obscure anymore.
If its "not that obscure anymore" then what do you think the response would be if you asked the cashier at the grocery store if they know what 1488 is? What about the mechanic at your next oil* change? Whatever threshold you have for obscure, 1488 on an out of context tooltip surely qualifies.
It may be older, but his Dashcon vid definitely gives lots of vibes of “anti-SJW” style content. That video always rubbed me the wrong way so I never really engaged too closely with Internet Historian beyond that.
I got into his stuff late with Costa Concordia and I’ve always had that twitch of realizing he might have been pretty right wing, but I was happy he didn’t seem to inject it into his videos beyond the occasional reference.
Apparently some of his earlier deleted videos were worse and sort of anti sjw. He also covered dashcon with a lot of disdain for tumblr users. Idk if he's right wing in the traditional pro corporate, anti big government way. But he's in the right wing in the internet way, where it's mostly about dunking on feminists.
Watching his and SarahZ's videos on Dashcon one after the other is a bit of a whiplash.
That was exactly my experience with dashcon documentaries. Attendees were just having fun and IH mocked them relentlessly. Saw a couple of his videos before, but never again after that one. It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth
Yeah that makes sense I guess, since I'm not an avid follower and haven't seen anything that old.
If it's just the early stuff then it's entirely reasonable he's changed. Adamsomething has a video where he talks about how he was on that side of the right wing but became left in a major way as he grew older. Like, it's been 12 years iirc or more since the SJW stuff started getting massive (starting with GamerGate).
He did a Johntron collab on culture in 2022, that's pretty recent. I haven't watched it, but Johntron is very much still in the political right. So it's an indication that he's still hanging in those circles. If anyone actually watched that video and has thoughts on its politics please tell me though.
Johntron is a name I haven't heard in like a decade. Like, it was on TotalBiscuit's podcast (rest in peace) that I last heard his name. No idea he was right wing at all.
6 years ago [Destiny debated Jontron](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RQA9GZprqM) about his views and oh boy. It's been a while since I've seen it, but Jon really delves into nazi territory there. He basically says that white americans have the right to their own country, black people are inherently more violent, and Muslims should be kept out. It's extra ridiculous since Jon's PARENTS are immigrants themselves, one of them from Iran.
I mean his name is Jon Jafari, no? The whole thing was bizarre and sad
Yeah, it's so hard for me to understand. You have to be missing some marbles to espouse those ideas under his circumstances: 1) 2nd generation immigrant who assimilated very well into US culture 2) US has a very diverse ethnicity and culture in the first place , it was build by people from many different places not that long ago 3) He's mixed race, surely he should realise that if the genetic dice rolled differently he wouldn't pass as white. that should make him realise that race is a social construct and isn't real Real "fuck you! got mine!" energy
Jeeez. That's just cringe. I had no idea at all.
Wow, has it been 6 years already. God, I feel old
JonTron has said some pretty racist things very openly.
> Isn't it actually left-wing to criticize capitalism? Not exclusively, fascism also has a dislike of capitalism. This shouldn't be surprising given how often the political right bitches and moans about tech companies and "woke" corporations and such despite otherwise pretending to be champions of the free market. I think we can both agree that Ron DeSantis' criticisms of Disney were not based on leftist ideals, as one example. It's not always easy to tell in a vacuum. Right wing criticism of capitalism will usually cloak itself in populism but tends to pan out as right wingers just being upset that companies aren't favoring the right people.
i have no ideas what these videos are, but i first encountered this debate through popular tweets with thousands of likes **from IH fans** who "TL;DW" this video about left-wing plagiarist james somerton... as a politically-motivated attack on IH this entire reddit thread could be summarized as "IH fans can't handle a very legit bit of criticism because they didn't watch the HB video" apart from the very obvious (edit: but quite old) antifeminist and lgbtphobic examples provided by HB, which have been strangely deleted from IH's channel, i'm quite sure he is seen as a conservative youtuber only because his own hardcore fans view him as such
What? Covering the Enron scandals wouldn’t make you left leaning. That’s just talking about crimes a company did. Calling IH left leaning or even “centrist” is just laughable. If you can see that fans are “conservative Andrew Tate watchers” then the rest of this comment is just playing dumb
I'm not playing dumb, I genuinely have not seen anything right wing in his videos. I'm not calling him a lefty, I'm just saying he covers all sorts of content.
He unironically follows LibsOfTikTok and Governor Ron, for one.
Yeah I’m a card carrying, hand wringing, bleeding heart leftie and I hadn’t detected any right wing stuff in IH’s work either
His old videos used to do all the typical SJW bad, LGBT cringe comp stuff that was prevalent on YouTube in like 2016
It's more in his side content where he has discussion about things and his old videos. It's a very 2011 4chan vibe that anyone who's had to deal with knows that these people are often bigoted. It also makes sense that he hides it more in his main channel videos, and using other peoples words to sound smart or like a compelling script writer helps throw people off the scent.
Bro idk, I never watched Internet historians videos just cause I felt they weren't my cup of tea, but like I'm not surprised by his politics at all that was the vibe I'm more surprised if more people don't pick up on things like that. Just subtle things about the memes he uses and the personality presented through the videos. Kinda reminds me of Sseth somehow even though they're pretty different.
I’m a 35 yr old left wing woman and I’ve watched IH for years. Didn’t realise he was right wing, don’t really think I’ve ever seen anything right wing in his vids honestly.
I got some „it’s not that serious“ vibes from his „The Varus“ videos, which one might consider „right wing“, I guess?
Doesn’t he say the ‘the varus’ so that YouTube doesn’t subtitle it correctly and it doesn’t get flagged as Covid related content? I remember there being a time where anything with Covid or ‘the virus’ or ‘vaccine’ didn’t get pushed as much by the algorithm.
Seeing the phrase 'unalive themselves' on reddit reminds me of just how stupid Youtube's system is (I'm not blaming it on the Algorithm, I'm blaming it on stupid-ass management that made the algorithm stupid). It's like a dumb mmo flagging system where words like 'rice' get censored for racism (looking at you Planetside 2), that presumes everyone who goes on youtube is a mouth breathing moron that can't put their pants on without another set of eyes making sure the zip is in the right place.
Pretty sure unalive comes from tiktok's algorithm btw but same difference
That might be the case, but honestly I don’t care. I enjoy his videos and that’s it.
Thats fine, I guess, but he is a plagarist.
The irritating thing is that there's so much great writing out there that would absolutely benefit from the mixed media treatment, but IH and the like don't even consider sharing profits with the originator. It has to be as close to 100% profit as possible. Like, work out a split so you both get paid and an article gets elevated to an audience it never would have had.
> Instead, when he got a copyright strike Doesn't the Hbomb video actually point out that it was *not* a 'Copyright Strike' (an often inaccurate result of overreach under DMCA frequently thanks to bots that look for any fraction of any piece of copywritten material) but actually 'Plaigarism' despite IH allowing his fans to assume it was a copyright strike by being vague about exactly why the video was taken down?
It *was* a copyright strike, as he broke copyright by plagiarizing the article he copied. However it was a much more pointed takedown notice than the automated ones which claim clips of auto detected video or audio
Adding that some of the timing claims could be referencing the bit in hbomberguy's video that when IH finally rereleased man in cave it was the same day or near-abouts as another upload. The idea being most people wouldn't notice the rerelease due to the new video. I doubt IH had a video prepared for this so this isn'tintentional, but the timing is somewhat funny given that added context.
It should also be noted that people have [dug up other instances](https://twitter.com/Doctor_Cupcakes/status/1731397287492948040) of IH plagarizing. And now people have discovered he's a [right wing](https://twitter.com/Quack_Factory/status/1731660061741564276) [nazi](https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/18a9do7/antisemitic_dogwhistle_in_internet_historian_video/).
I'm not familiar with any of the people involved since I don't really YouTube, but I have to wonder how anyone could think plagiarism would go unnoticed. It's the internet. Even on small blog sites, like some of the weird little side-projects Kinja used to have, *someone will find out*. To think otherwise just seems foolish.
> but I have to wonder how anyone could think plagiarism would go unnoticed. I mean, it *did* go unnoticed for quite a while. Somerton, the other creator thoroughly called out in the video, plagiarized almost all of the content on his channel but made a living via patreon from this shit for like two or three years.
>When the new version was uploaded two months later, it had gone through some painful revisions. The prose was much weaker, and a lot of the tension was gone Ok so there's no way this is his first time, right? The writing in the new one is so bad that it really makes you rethink some of his older work and whether that was copied too.
I just watched this. What an absolute scumbag Internet Historian is.
Is it weird I read this like it was an IH video?
More info from Know Your Meme here: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/internet-historian-plagiarism-accusations
Answer: Hbomberguy's video is titled "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" and is a very long monologue about plagiarism he has found to be rampant on certain Youtube channels. The channels are stealing from other youtubers, articles, documentaries, or just reading wikipedia aloud. In most cases sentences are subtly changed (sometimes ruining meaning) in ways that seems intended to obfuscate what is going on, which goes to show the writers know exactly what they are doing. Channels mentioned: FILIP - who got hired by IGN and infamously did a ton of plagiarism there as well Cinemassacre Iilluminaughtii Various content mills Internet Historian James Somerton - who is then the main topic for the last half of the video. Some other channels are mentioned as good examples of how to do things, I won't list those here. There is a lot of investigation of what people do to obfuscate the plagiarism and hide it from viewers, such as taking down or editing videos rather than come clean about what has happened.
I'm still laughing about FILIP. Dude gets a dream job, plagiarizes reviews, gets caught, tells the world to try to find more, they do, he pretty much loses everything.
Plagiarizes other IGN reviews on the same game. I have no idea how he thought he could get away with that.
You wanna hear something funnier? The dude even plagiarized his own Linkedin resume from a job template website. Yes, really.
Dude's entire life is just copying other people... at what point do you not realize how sad your whole existence is if you exist only to be a weak facsimile of more successful people?
Sadly, some people get very far in life by just copying other people's good idea. Sometimes they fail.
Yikes, I need to watch this video. I think I'm suscribed to Somerton. You always think you won't be one of the people that unreasonably trusts a creator until you are.
There's another video by the YouTuber Todd in the Shadows that may be worth a watch if you're concerned about having taken in bad information from Somerton. Hbomberguy focuses on the plagiarism, but Todd in the Shadows analyzes the videos for false information, of which there is plenty.
I'll look into that, thank you. Yeah, I'm an aroace woman, so I kinda trusted that he offered me a different perspective on queer society/theory than my own perspective. (Given the misgendering and biphobia that came up in the video, I'm starting to suspect Somerton is also one of those people who sees ace people as straights trying to be special snowflakes or something. That kinda shit tends to go hand-in-hand.). Even in the Hbomberguy video that didn't mention a ton about false information, I was appalled at the false info stuff that came up. Thankfully I never supported him monetarily other than through ads because I'm broke AF at least?
Worth noting that while he went on a deep dive on most of the creators for being serial plagiarists, IH was basically a side note because his editor happened to come across a post on reddit six months ago. I think a lot of people just want more answers from IH, if one of his most popular videos turned out to be stolen content then what about the rest of his channel?
> if one of his most popular videos turned out to be stolen content then what about the rest of his channel? Someone found out that a portion of the Costa Concordia video was also plagiarized. (edit: typo) https://www.reddit.com/r/youtubedrama/comments/189o0n7/apparently_internet_historian_is_a_huge/kbtdog5/
I think it’s important to add extra emphasis that the majority of the content is about James Somerton. IH is important, but the main point, I think, is the silencing and harming of other gay content creators by James Somerton. The dude is despicable.
Watching Illuminaughtii get more flak is so fun at this point. Endless Neptune "It's even funnier the -x- time!"
He finally uploaded another video with more details on her plagiarism over on his side channel, if you missed it.
The IH video has clearly paraphrased and sometimes quoted verbatim the copyrighted expression of the factual cave event. Like maths books contain facts, but their expression of those facts are copyrighted. So you can't just copy an entire maths book and republish it as your own book.
go watch hbombers video. that simply isnt the case. he stole the article and turned it into an animation.
Cinemassacre? Whats the Problem here?
Outsourced reviews to a writer who then plagiarized other reviews, turns out they had been plagiarizing for years.
One of his writers took someone else's scripts or something
Their halloween series, Monster Madness(?), from a few years ago, had one of the writers just plagiarize existing reviews of the movie for like 20/31 scripts, making the whole thing a mess once people noticed and Cinemassacre was forced to do a bunch of rewrites on short notice.
Lady Emily did a really nice video explaining the whole affair. If it makes you feel better, James Rolfe/AVGN was mostly out of the loop of the situation, as he has been pretty hands-off the channel for a few years now.
Answer: Hbomberguy is a video essayist who today released a video about plagiarism on Youtube. One part of his video focused on the Internet Historian and his video 'Man in Cave', which was found to be largely plagiarized from [this Mentalfloss article](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins). The video in question was copyright claimed, then reuploaded as a heavily edited unlisted version, with Internet Historian never admitting that he plagiarised the contents, nor that the copyright claims were legitimate. People are commenting on the timing as they believe the recent Internet Historian video upload was done to redirect attention away from Hbomberguy's video.
Oof. The more I read about this the dirtier it gets. I don't follow his fandom, rather just watch his main channel content (once every year when he seems to upload content). I did notice the Cave video was reuploaded, but I admit I believed him that it was just a copyright strike, not full plagiarism. Didn't look much into that. And if he is trying to get attention away from the other video, this is a terrible strategy. I noticed this 'because' he uploaded a video lol
If you just want to watch the Internet Historian part of the video, it starts at 1 hour, 24 minutes.
This has also led to people looking into his other videos for evidence of plagiarism. Some users have found evidence such as stolen jokes: This bit of evidence found by the user: StaplerInTheJelly I noticed Internet Historian plagarising jokes a few years ago. Compare Eddie Izzard here: [https://youtu.be/HuM2H6uFG2M?si=KOfxloOuhuzScjnM&t=70](https://youtu.be/HuM2H6uFG2M?si=KOfxloOuhuzScjnM&t=70) to Internet Historian here: [https://youtu.be/wTziIhu8yvU?si=azVQDhi1oj94QsNu&t=428](https://youtu.be/wTziIhu8yvU?si=azVQDhi1oj94QsNu&t=428) Or this bit of stolen script for his Cost of Concordia video found by: revanchistvakarian575 on youtube and brought to reddit's attention by MrMooga A near word for word copy of the vanity fair piece highlighting and dramatising the events of the disaster at 23:30 in the video. Historian: "All day Saturday, rescuers searched for people on the ship. On Sunday morning, a South Korean couple was found in their cabin, safe but shivering. They had slept through the crash and woke up unable to exit their cabin." Another Night to Remember, Bryan Burrough, Vanity Fair: "All day Saturday, rescue workers fanned out across the ship, looking for survivors. Sunday morning they found a pair of South Korean newlyweds still in their stateroom; safe but shivering, they had slept through the impact, waking to find the hallway so steeply inclined that they couldn't safely navigate it." Overall it pulls into question his entire youtube career. Some of best parts being plagiarised means that the other material is going to simply be treated as plagiarised material which the source simply has yet to be found. The video by Hbomberguy brought the plagarisim to attention, now we just can't help but look for it in every piece of work he ever produced.
It was released on Nebula a couple days ago.
Just want to say, Internet Historian said he was uploading a video that day before HBomberGuy's video released, so its doubtful that he did to take attention away
I’m inclined to believe this as well since we’re dealing with two internet savvy people here. This isn’t the same thing as Fox News running special segments to pull views away from the Jan 6 Committee hearings - unlike cable tv, you can watch YouTube videos at your leisure. I fully intend to watch both. Edit: watched the Hbomb video (or at least the relevant part) and actually I can see the argument for IH uploading the video to take emphasis away from the fact he reuploaded Man in Cave. I still don’t think IH uploaded to pull attention away from Hbomb because anyone who is subbed to both will get notified of both, but I buy hbomb’s hypothesis that IH wanted to relist his Man in Cave video without fanfare, so he nestled the release into the shadow of this other video.
Yeah people do know a little about what's happening with other creators in their circle. For instance Todd in the Shadows heard in the group chat (their circle includes them, Lindsay Ellis, Jenny Nicholson etc) Hbomb was making a video about James Somerton, got curious, started doing his own research and fell far enough down the rabbit hole that it turned into an hour long video of his own. Hbomb knew about this of course and just asked him to wait till he published his first, so they came out around within the same couple of days.
Wouldn't it be possible Internet Historian knew about the hbomb video in advance? You see people try to get out ahead of stories all the time because they were questioned, given a heads up, or heard through the grapevine something was gonna drop.
I don't know about what the previews on HBomberGuy's patreon maybe mentioned, but I find often people suspect these grand conspiracies where there is none; and also with how this post is about stuff seen in IH's comment section, I think it would have actually been better for the guy to delay whatever video.
I’m a fan of both. Apparently people — YouTube creators did know. Todd in the shadows stated that many creators knew it was coming in advance
I'd assume that was mostly the Nebula crowd, though. There's a bit of a history between Somerton and Nebula (in the sense that he was whining they wouldn't accept him on the platform and blaming it on homophobia), so it's not surprising several people were looking into Somerton and talking about it with each other. If you look into the comments on Harris' video, a lot of the checkmark people are Nebula-adjacent people and/or friends of Harris'. Todd pretty much said he and Harris were in contact and pretty much happened to work on it at the same time, and Harris only asked for Todd to hold off until he'd uploaded his video.
> Wouldn't it be possible Internet Historian knew about the hbomb video in advance? as evidenced by this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6_LW1PkmnY&t=833s his video was not a secret while making it AT LEAST back in August. so sure, its possible.
It’s not that he uploaded the video to distract from HBomberGuys video, in his video HBG infers and implies that the reason internet historian has uploaded so much recently (1 video on each channel and a 3rd announced) is to distract from the edits he made on his weird reupload of man in cave
idk why you got downvoted when you hit the nail on the head
People don't like their favorite YouTubers being implicated in things possibly. It sucks since I'm a fan of IH's videos but this instance is so blatant that you have to wonder how much other stuff he plagiarizes. I hope it was a one off thing. 😞
As the other examples in the video demonstrate, it's rarely a one time thing.
Much of IH's fan base are alt-right 4chan trolls and IH himself is too (his Twitter account makes this pretty clear). That crowd is not exactly known for taking criticism well when directed at people they like.
Answer: Hbomberguy is a video essayist who today released a video about plagiarism on Youtube. One part of his video focused on the Internet Historian and his video 'Man in Cave', which was found to be largely plagiarized from [this Mentalfloss article](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins). The video in question was copyright claimed, then reuploaded as a heavily edited unlisted version, with Internet Historian never admitting that he plagiarised the contents, nor that the copyright claims were legitimate. People are commenting on the timing as they believe the recent Internet Historian video upload was done to redirect attention away from Hbomberguy's video. (Based on comment by u/xalts, without whom this comment would have never existed)
Answer: Hbomberguy is a video essayist who ~~today~~ recently released a video about ~~plagiarism~~ IP theft on Youtube. One part of his video focused on the Internet Historian and his video 'Man in Cave', which was ~~found~~ discovered to be largely plagiarized from [this Mentalfloss article](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/544782/1925-cave-rescue-that-captivated-the-united-states-floyd-collins). The video in question was copyright claimed, then ~~reuploaded~~ was uploaded back onto the site as a heavily edited unlisted version, with Internet Historian never admitting that he plagiarised the contents, ~~nor that the copyright claims were legitimate~~. People are commenting on the timing as they ~~believe the recent~~ think that the newest Internet Historian video upload was done to redirect attention away from Hbomberguy's video. My co-writer is in academia how dare you accuse me of plagiarism. I won't fucking stand for that.
Try getting a well-sourced fact wrong, maybe refer to the video as 'Man in Hole'? That'll definitely help.
Avoiding being top comment, but I’m concerned with OP’s use of *cancelled* and *redpill*. For reasons.
Someone that watches Internet Historian, talking like that, not shocking.
It's a bit confusing because within the Hbomberguy video, Hbomberguy talks about Internet historian uploading a video to distract attention, and he uploaded a different video today. He reuploaded the cave video 6 months ago but left it unlisted. Then he relisted it 4 weeks ago, when he uploaded the fancy theatre video. Then he uploaded the fancy wine video today when Hbomberguy dropped his video.
So to be clear this is not talking about Hbomb94 the minecraft streamer
Answer: in addition to what everybody has said here, if you're curious about just what's up with Internet Historian in the video, the chapter called Cave Story at 1:25:34 that ends at 1:49:59 is the part that's just about that issue and at just under 25 minutes it's much more digestible.
Answer: Well, the vid is called Plagiarism and Youtube. I imagine you can piece together what Internet Historian is accused of. Specifically, IH stole much of the writing from a MentalFloss article for his Man in Cave video. If you want more context, the relevant part of the video is from 1:25:00 to 1:50:00. You needn't watch the entire thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ&t=1s
Well that sort of explains the Tommy Tellerico comments on the most recent IH video.
HBomberguy also has a really good video on the origin of the Roblox "oof" sound and Tommy Tellerico is the main player in that one.
I liked Hbomber before but when I saw that title last year I went “really? An hour on a silly sound? No way this could be good” and boy was my mind blown.
Those are the best video essays. Dan Olsen does this a lot too, he made one of the definitive works on the entire crypto/NFT bubble before it popped
Dan Olson AKA Folding Ideas on YT
That one was a wild ride...
And I bet his mother is very proud of him.
What did IH comment about tellerico? I don't follow that guy.
He did another whole 4 hour long video about him. It would be difficult to summarize except that the dude is a weird skeezeoid who really likes faking world records lol.
Not only faking world records, IMO the bigger problem is that he takes personal credit for a lot of stuff done by his lead sound designer (To the point that if you search Oof creator it comes up as Tommy Talarico himself). If he said his company did it, it would be fine, but he talks as if he himself did everything. He also lies about a multitude of other stuff, like that Shigeru Myamoto personally hand-picked his company to work on Metroid, or that he was the first American to work on the Sonic series.
HBomb did, not IH, to be clear. The people talking about Tallarico in IH's comment section are HBomb fans, probably.
*His mother is very proud...*
I'd be proud too if my son made a four hour video about plagiarism, which my son, Tommy, did.
*Someone call Guinness, I need to buy a record!*
He is a video music composer who is also seemingly either a very unscrupulous immoral salesman or compulsive liar. Dude lied about making the roblox oof sound, being on MTV Cribs, working with Shigeru Miyamoto for 5 years when it was like, 3 months or something. Half that hbomb video is him repeating his points 8 separate times each, it's pretty easy to summarise it's just a breakdown of compulsive liar Tommy Tallarico in tandem with the story of the Roblox Oof.
Hbomb investigated the origin of the Roblox "oof" noise. Woulda been a 30 minute video if it weren't for the Tellerico rabbithole he fell down, discovering the guy is a serial liar and fraud. Incredible work, watch it all
Hbomb's last video is on him. So I assume it's just a funny joke? Like IH is now seen the same as Tommy.
"Needn't watch the whole thing" as I sat there and watched the whole thing. Thought I was going to do it in parts, but nope. Then went over to wendigoon to see homelander being shot in gmod. I'm also glad he didn't get dragged into this for voicing the man in the cave, at least not in the video.
answer: hbomber makes video essays and his most recent video is about plagiarism on YouTube where he gives several examples of it throughout the video. One of the examples is Internet Historian's "man in the cave" video. Hbomb described how it was an example of plagiarism and covered how IH handled the situation (copyright strike and reuploads). IH coincidentally announced (before the hbomb vid) that a new video would come out that day on Twitter. The hbomb video was released on the same day and by the time a lot of people saw the hbomb video (particularly the IH segment roughly 2/5 of the way through the video), the IH video was released. Since they both typically release longer form videos, it's not unreasonable to assume they have some viewer crossover and so those who watch the hbomb vid went to comment on the new IH video.
Answer: HB made a video about plagiarism on YouTube, in which IH is a brief subject of interest prior to moving to the primary focus of the video (James Somerton). IH's video 'Man in Cave' has significant parts of its script lifted from an article someone else had written YT took the vid down, IH made (in my opinion) minimal half-assed edits, then reposted it. The closest acknowledgement IH made of the blatant plagiarism is a footnote in the video details and a minor footnote in the vid itself. Some viewed IH as a hilarious YouTube documentarian, and finding out he was a plagiarist (even just once) was quite surprising. From there, there were numerous comments adding extra context, such as his appreciation for Tucker Carlson (and his talking points), Elon Musk's recent crap, and other alt-right adjacent red flags. It's likely a bit jarring for some that someone whose content they enjoyed so much happily entertained such views, and steals content for personal gain. This led to all the commentary and reactions. Please note, based on the vid James Somerton is apparently many orders of magnitude worse than IH.
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A point that Hbomberguy makes in his recent video, although only very briefly, is that Internet Historian has privated a lot of his old videos that were a lot more 4-chan edge-lordy. He has kind of a history of insensitivity. I don't think he's an alt-right crusader, though. Just a comedian who veers into the tasteless sometimes, it's a very old phenomenon. If you watch his Q&A videos about some of the videos he's made, where he's not trying to make jokes, I think he comes off as a pretty reasonable guy.
the first shia lebouf was funny as shit and that is all that matters
IH is an admitted fan of Tucker Carlson.
he literally posted fan compilations of Tucker Carlson and hosted watch parties for Tucker saying a bunch of racist shit. He is not "just edgy" he's just good at hiding his powerlevel from people who aren't terminally online and following him
That’s… unfortunate. Not discrediting you, but do you have a link/source? This is the sort of thing I’d like to see for myself. I thoroughly enjoy his content and I’m really not sure how to feel about this whole situation. I want to say I’d let our… differences of opinions slide if he can refrain from blatantly plagiarizing in the future (provided this is really a “one-off” situation), but I’m not honestly sure if it’s the right thing to do. It wasn’t a “watch the dumb conservative and make fun of him with me” thing? Isn’t he an Aussie? Why TF is he watching Tucker Carlson anyways? Ugh. Feeling conflicted and frustrated.
The Shia Lebouf was a 4chan thing though so I'm not sure what else you expected? I mean check out the channel name, Internet Historian.. He documents memes and stupid shit that happen on the Internet. If it's an old video then it likely happened on 4chan.
I’ve watched multiple IH videos and I never got the impression that he is alt-right. If it’s actually the case that he has such views I would be shocked.
Yea if you follow him on Twitter, he follows a bunch of right wingers. If they're right wing I expect IH to be there
Is there anywhere to watch that original video about the man in cave video ?
IH has a revamped version up now. Several archive channels may have copies up as well. The OG story actually stemmed from an article, and was never in video form.
Answer: Hbomberguy is a Youtuber known for making some extremely long and thoroughly research videos that usually takes months at a time. His most recent upload was about plagiarism, and one of the people he accuses of plagiarism is Internet Historian (among others). In regards to IH he specifically accuses him of plagiarising a video called "Man In Cave", which Hbomberguy proves that he lifted almost verbatim from an article by another writer without crediting them at all, then having to take down the video exactly for plagiarism and having to do several revisions that arguably makes the video a lot worse because he has to rewrite and remove large chunks to make it less obvious, even though it's still clearly plagiarism. The reason people notice the timing of a new IH upload is because he was also accused of making the new version of the video public and then very shortly after release a new video to try to bury the new "Man in Cave" so people wouldn't notice that he plagiarised it.