Popular gay YouTuber deletes online presence after video accuses him of rampant plagiarism

Bisexual British YouTube essayist Harris Brewis (also known as hbomberguy) has published a viral four-hour video largely accusing gay, prolific YouTube media critic James Somerton of making thousands of dollars from videos that repeatedly passed off other LGBTQ+ cultural writers’ work as his own.

Somerton, a self-described “marketing expert” with a degree in business administration, had published numerous videos on queer themes in TV and film, earning nearly six million views and 267,000 subscribers. His videos’ scripts sometimes added or changed words in other writers’ sentences to make them seem like his own, and Somerton sometimes lied to cover up his alleged misdeeds, Brewis said.

Related:

10 Black gay YouTubers & LGBTQ vloggers who are bringing queer color to the small screen

Black gay YouTubers aren’t always easy to find, but we’ve located 10 Black LGBTQ vloggers whose work is fun, fierce, and eye-opening.

Brewis’s exposé contained numerous clips of Somerton speaking alongside images showing the allegedly stolen text of the original, uncredited works themselves. Soon after Brewis published his exposé — which has been viewed nearly seven million views in just six days — Somerton disabled all his YouTube videos and deleted his X, Discord, and Patreon social media accounts, making himself unreachable online. Brewis has pledged to give any money raised by his exposé to the authors whose work Somerton allegedly stole.

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.

Daily

Weekly

Good News

In Brewis’s exposé, he demonstrates how one of Somerton’s 2020 videos about gay encoding in Disney films contained entire passages seemingly taken from Sean P. Griffin’s 2000 gay Disney book Tinker Bells and Evil Queens, and another of Somerton’s 2020 videos about gay cinematic themes seemingly used words and video taken directly from the 1995 documentary of gay film critic Vito Russo’s book The Celluloid Closet.

At least 22 of Somerton’s 56 YouTube videos contain plagiarized content from numerous writers, Brewis said, and that only includes the instances that Brewis has discovered so far. One of Somerton’s videos on film theory reportedly included entire uncredited passages taken directly from Wikipedia articles. One of Somerton’s hour-and-25-minute-long videos about queer tropes in horror films allegedly used work from 18 different writers. While Somerton named half of them in his video’s opening credits, his video never mentioned which specific words or ideas belonged to others, Brewis noted.

When publicly accused, Somerton would sometimes temporarily take down his offending video — citing a “citation error” or “copyright issue” or telling others that he was just “too busy” to have credited other people’s work. Several times, he would later note the original source material his work was “based on” at the bottom of his videos’ written descriptions. In other instances, Somerton merely deleted his videos altogether or deleted just the plagiarized segments and re-uploaded the newly edited versions without much further explanation, Brewis said.

Somerton has repeatedly written online posts and broadcasted livestreams in which he denies plagiarizing altogether. He has also credited his co-writer Nick Herrgott with writing most of his scripts (something Brewis doubts). Somerton has reportedly accused his critics of launching a “deliberate homophobic campaign” to harass “a queer creator,” Brewis said. One woman who publicly noted Somerton’s alleged theft of Griffin’s and Russo’s works on Twitter (now X) reportedly received so many death threats from Somerton’s fans that she locked her social media accounts and went into hiding.

One writer, Rachel Brands, had a paid subscription to Somerton’s Patreon account, a site where content creators solicit funds to create new works. She told Brewis that she later discovered that Somerton had plagiarized her work in one of his videos; a theft that she herself had unwittingly helped fund.

Gita Jackson, an author whose work Somerton allegedly used without attribution, called him the “George Santos of YouTube,” referencing the gay former congressman who stands accused of illegally fundraising on a false life story. Brewis accused Somerton of his own fraudulent fundraising as well.

In addition to reportedly making $170,000 per year from 4,050 subscribers on his Patreon fundraising account (before he recently deleted it), in February 2022, Somerton launched an IndieGogo crowdfunding campaign that raised $65,000 to start Telos Productions, an LGBTQ+ film production studio. The studio hasn’t produced any work in the 16 months since, which Somerton attributed to the death of his mother, trouble finding actors, his relocation from Vancouver to Toronto, and significant time and money costs to incorporate the company in Canada (a process that Brewis said takes $200 Canadian dollars and just a few minutes of paperwork).

Despite promising ten months ago to add an update page to Telos’ website to keep donors informed, no such page has been added — the website’s donation page still works however, Brewis noted. Telos’ social media accounts have since announced new films in development (different from the ones mentioned in the original crowdfunding campaign). Somerton promotes these projects by making “movie posters” with text placed over stock photos, but Telos has otherwise remained inactive, Brewis said.

Near his exposé’s conclusion, Brewis says that Somerton’s repeat plagiarism isn’t a “one-off mistake or a misunderstanding or a ‘citation error’ — this is a pattern with no sign of stopping.”

“James has become one of the biggest LGBT YouTubers in the room, essentially absorbing all the support and attention that would have otherwise gone to people who actually do work,” Brewis said. “Other gay video essayists have to come up with their own opinions and actually write them. They can’t compete on volume with a guy who’s willing to rip off dozens and dozens of other people.”

He also said that Somerton’s plagiarism has helped “erase” numerous queers writers by denying them their due credit and denying his viewers the chance to learn more about their work. Brewis pledged to continue investigating all of Somerton’s videos — which he downloaded before releasing his exposé — in order to identify all of the uncredited authors.

Shortly after Brewis published his exposé, Somerton initially said that the video hadn’t uncovered any previously unaddressed accusations of plagiarism. Later, however, Somerton wrote on his now-deleted Patreon account, “I wanted to say that I am very sorry. I’m in a terrible headspace right now…. I will say something more extensive once I’ve prepared myself emotionally… I’m heartbroken that I’ve lost your trust and just hope that someday, with a lot of work, I can get it back.”

Commenting on the accusations, Vox reported, “The less-famous queer writers and YouTubers whose work was seemingly lifted for Somerton’s videos… are often not compensated or credited adequately for their ideas in the first place. Having a creator who also is part of the LGBTQ community steal from his peers in order to earn money for himself is a community harm.”

within 24 hours of Hbombs video, James Somerton:

-deleted his discord
-deleted his twitter
-disabled comments on most of his youtube videos
-posted this on his patreon, only for him to delete the post and then his account soon after pic.twitter.com/oKdnqfxyPy

— 🌲F0rtune🌲 (@F0rtuneL0wT1er) December 4, 2023

Editor’s Note: This article originally misidentified Somerton‘s last name as Somerset.