Episode 212: Fandom Truthiness
In Episode 212, “Fandom Truthiness,” Elizabeth and Flourish break down the recent pair of (GREAT) video essays on James Somerton, a YouTuber known for queer (and often fandom-related) media analysis who’s been wholesale lifting passages from others’ articles and books—while playing fast and loose with the truth in his original writing. Somerton himself fed plenty of falsehoods into the fannish ecosystem, but how much of this is about a pattern of, to borrow Stephen Colbert’s phrase, fandom “truthiness,” which we can see far beyond a single bad actor? Plus: they read and respond to a pair of letters about “The RPF Tipping Point.”
Show Notes
[00:00:00] As always, our intro music is “Awel” by stefsax, used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:00:51] “Truthiness” was from the very first episode of The Colbert Report in 2005, during a segment called “The Word,” a direct stylistic parody of The O’Reilly Factor. Apparently Colbert came up with the term just before taping that day:
“‘It’s not stupid enough,’ he said. ‘We’re not talking about truth, we’re talking about something that seems like truth—the truth we want to exist.’ Then he had an idea: ‘Truthiness.’ He now displays, on a bookshelf in his office, a sampler embroidered with TRUTHINESS inside a gold frame.”
[00:01:14] Elizabeth, in fact, watched The Daily Show when it was helmed by its original host, Craig Kilborn (1996-98):
A note for younger generations: don’t believe any of those aesthetic posts. This is what the 90s were like.
[00:05:16] That’s Episode 210, “The RPF Tipping Point,” a conversation with Zan Romanoff about her new podcast, On the Bleachers.
[00:05:38] For Flourish:
[00:18:57] Elizabeth’s article on Cumberbatch and his reaction to Sherlock fans and fanworks was published in October 2014. And if anyone’s forgotten what some celebrity commentary on fic—not even RPF!—was like at the time, here’s an excerpt from one of the pieces that inspired this response:
“Cumberbatch is referring to the rapacious slash fiction community that has turned his chilly, acerbic, and distinctly asexual Sherlock into a lustful cock monster. ‘It’s always, like, one of them is tired, one comes back from work, the other is horny, a lump appears in his trousers, and then they're at it,’ he says. ‘It's usually me getting it—I'm biting Watson's dog tags.’ Perhaps, I suggest, making Holmes and Watson gay is a way to remove other women from the picture. ‘Yes, yes,’ he replies enthusiastically. ‘I think it's about burgeoning sexuality in adolescence, because you don't necessarily know how to operate that. And I think it's a way of neutralizing the threat, so this person is sort of removed from them as somebody who could break their heart.’”
[00:27:15] Pillow talk update: Nick first pronounced “Barthesian” as “Barth-ian,” then amended it to “Bart-ian.” Clearly “Bar-THEEZ-ian” is still correct.
[00:27:25] Our interstitial music throughout is “Sad marimba planet” by Lee Rosevere, also used under a CC BY 3.0 license.
[00:29:41]
[00:31:53] 🥴 + 😵💫 = X
[00:33:40] This piece by Max Read is an extremely sharp analysis of MrBeast, plus great insights into the YouTube attention ecosystem more broadly. When it was published in June, MrBeast had 150 million subscribers; now, he has 217 million.
[00:34:48] FACT CHECK: James Somerton ran an Indiegogo campaign to fund the queer production studio that produced zero things, not a GoFundMe.
[00:35:30] The four-hour video that started it all (we swear those four hours just fly by!!):
[00:37:39] Helpfully, Tumblr user thetreetopinn put together a list with links to a lot of the articles and books mentioned in the video.
[00:40:00] Todd in the Shadows’ video debunking some of the truly bananas things Somerton made up (this one is only two hours!!!) (also it’s apparently age restricted so you’ll have to watch it directly on YouTube).
[00:45:04] That’s “Please Stop Asking Me To Sue James Somerton” by Gita Jackson (and if you’re interested in supporting an independent, worker-owned gaming journalism site, definitely check out the rest of Aftermath!).
[00:51:00]
The two Rosies in question—J. Howard Miller’s on the left and Norman Rockwell’s on the right, though note Miller’s was never called “Rosie the Riveter.” The actual history is certainly jazzier (more interesting) than that random guy’s false claims.
TL;DR: Rockwell’s Rosie was a lot more masc than most American women-in-wartime-industry propaganda, but she was still the most popular image in this broader campaign. She’s also, aside from holding her sandwich and “riviter” (seems to be called a “rivet gun” or, as the U.S. Department of Labor calls it, “rivet tool,” which is BASICALLY “RIVETER”) stomping on a copy of Mein Kampf.
In the *1980s*, feminist printmakers took Miller’s—which originally was displayed for just two weeks—and began selling copies of it. These historians suggest the Rockwell image with its stomping on Mein Kampf was too pro-war for the contemporary feminist movement; this piece suggests it was also because Miller’s was in the public domain (IT’S ALWAYS COPYRIGHT!!) but Rockwell’s was not.
[01:01:34] Elizabeth clearly couldn’t remember Alexander Avila’s name in the moment. Check out the entire “Are They Gay?” series; Elizabeth thinks of the Cherik one often:
[01:10:00] That’s Episode 208: “What Fans Owe Each Other.”
Transcript
[Intro music]
Flourish Klink: Hi, Elizabeth!
Elizabeth Minkel: Hi, Flourish!
FK: And welcome to Fansplaining, the podcast by, for, and about fandom!
ELM: This is Episode #212, “Fandom Truthiness.”
FK: [laughs] Which, I would say, also involves some discussion of, like, plagiarism—
ELM: Nonsense.
FK: —not understanding concepts…
ELM: Yeah, all right. So truthiness, people may remember, is a word that was created by Stephen Colbert, when he was the host of The Colbert Report, a satirical show that spun out of The Daily Show.
FK: In the past.
ELM: I feel like this is ancient history at this point. It was a long time ago.
FK: There are some people who did not get all of their news from [both laugh] a satirical news show, unlike me for my entire twenties.
ELM: [laughs] That wasn’t me. That wasn’t me. [both laugh] My teen years, as well. I was watching The Daily Show from very early on.
FK: Yeah, look, they would make—if it was worth me knowing about it, they would make fun of it.
ELM: [laughs] So the Colbert character on that show, “truthiness” was meant to be kind of in the spirit of the Bush Administration, sort of untruths that, you know, sort of, like, it feels right, you know?
FK: [laughs] Yeah, it might be an emotional truth. [ELM laughs] Not a fact, but an emotional truth. Like, “There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
ELM: Felt right to those guys, I guess. So bringing back that ancient word, because this episode is primarily about the recent four-hour video by hbomberguy about James Somerton, a now-disgraced queer YouTuber, who was a massive serial plagiarist and fabulist. Actually, fabulist is too fun a word. Liar! Truthiness creator.
FK: And, it’s important to note, wrote—“wrote.” Didn’t write, [laughs] made videos stealing the words of people about a lot of fandom topics, and not just media that fan culture is into, but also sometimes specifically fandom things. And, like, I don’t even know how to describe the way that he got things, like, wrong, but also stole other people’s words that were more right and made them wrong. Very weird. Very, very, very talented to be able to do this. I don’t think I could do this.
ELM: His one true talent is the ability to baldly steal huge passages of other people’s work, and then whenever he says an original thing, it’s false and doesn’t make any sense and contradicts the things he stole. So…
FK: But he stole a lot of things from people that you’ve, like, if you’re listening this, you’ve definitely read their writing about fandom and fandom-adjacent topics, like Joelle Monique, Gita Jackson, you know, so he’s stealing people that we talk about on this podcast all the time, right?
ELM: Right. OK, so it has been a little bit of time since this video came out. I think that if you are familiar with this, if you watched it, this may feel like a bit of old news. I know there’s definitely listeners who will not have watched it. I have spoken to multiple people who were like, “I’m not watching that. Four hours? No, thank you.” Right?
FK: That was me before Elizabeth insisted, [laughs] and let me tell you, it was four well-spent hours, like, go and enjoy this. [laughs]
ELM: Right. So for all the people who don’t know what we’re talking about, or who saw the timestamp and were like, “Nah,” we’ll do a bit of summarizing. And it’s not just that video. There was also an additional follow-up video the next day, kind of a parallel video by Todd in the Shadows that was—the first video, hbomberguy, was about plagiarism. It wasn’t just about this one YouTuber, but it was mostly about him. Todd in the Shadows was about James Somerton, and it was debunking dozens of his truly bananas lies.
So if you are not familiar with any of this, or you only just kind of heard about it passing, we can summarize it a little. And if this feels like old news, if you watched these videos a week and a half ago, and you’re like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” hopefully we can kind of connect this to fandom and fandom patterns. Because absolutely, so many of these topics were directly about fandom things and kind of invented fandom villains. A real “make up a guy” energy or, in this case, “make up a white woman—a straight white woman” energy. Stuff about, like, Yuri on Ice and Our Flag Means Death and vampire media and you know, oh, the Red, White & Royal Blue thing recently [FK laughs] and all this stuff.
So yeah, all of this is, like, it’s deeply intertwined with fandom, and I’m quite certain that we are seeing the residue of these videos all throughout fandom, and we have for all the years that he’s been making them, because he was very successful in this niche of, like, kind of queer media analysis.
FK: Right, and I think that we see some of the same patterns that he’s displaying in other people—
ELM: A hundred percent.
FK: You know, across the internet, and we can talk about that. But before we get more into any of this, we have a couple of responses to “The RPF Tipping Point” episode that we wanted to read and just quickly respond to.
ELM: OK, so that was two episodes ago. You may recall, we had Zan Romanoff, the cohost of On the Bleachers, which is about, I guess the still-going relationship of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. [FK laughs] Who knew? Really has a lot of staying power. It’s been what, eight, nine weeks now? I don’t know, is that about right?
FK: Yeah, sure.
ELM: [laughs] Your favorite—Travis Kelce—and we talked about these kind of murky lines around RPF, biopics, you know, speculation about celebrities, celebrity journalism, that kind of stuff. And we talked specifically about this book that was a very hastily written, filing-off-the-names RPF kind of thing called Roughing the Princess, which received a lot of backlash, because it was seen as exploitative of their relationship. And so the first letter is about that. Do you want me to read it?
FK: Yeah, go for it.
ELM: OK, so this is from Smith. Smith writes:
“Dear Elizabeth and Flourish,
“Big fan of the pod. I just finished listening to Episode #210, ‘The RPF Tipping Point,’ and I found it fascinating. I had zero clue any of this was happening, with the Roughing the Princess situation, which is a weird series of words for me to type knowing that they’re referring to Taylor Swift. But once I realized what the episode was about, I was convinced you would be talking about the quality of the piece more, or, I guess, in a different way.
“By that I mean simply: If this novella had been incredibly well-written and would have struck a chord with a large reading audience online and maybe been well-reviewed, would some of the people who are against it now be talking about it in the same way? If it had been a quote-unquote ‘good book,’ even using real interview quotes and including what I am assuming is explicit, self-indulgent sex in it, would it then have been maybe seen by fans as sort of acceptable in the same way that grainy video taken without consent often is—i.e., a fan telling themselves, ‘This caters to my interests, feeds into my pop culture obsession, and doesn’t make me personally uncomfortable, so it’s good now, actually’?
“Interested in your thoughts,
“Smith.”
FK: Thank you, Smith. This is a good question. I personally think the answer is no, and here’s why. I don’t think that the reaction to these things has much to do with their quality…ever, because I just don’t think that most people [laughs] have a particularly finely tuned, like, sense of the quality of writing. I think that people, you know, either enjoy it and find it more-ish or they don’t. And that’s about it. More-ish, meaning like, you know, “I want to read more.” And—
ELM: Not like Othello.
FK: Yeah, not like Othello. That sounded really weird.
ELM: Every time you say it, I only, you know…
FK: Yeah, shout out to my former coworker, Sascha, who used this term and infected me with it, and now it’s, like, such a valuable term to me that I can’t stop even though I understand that it doesn’t sound right. [ELM laughs]
And, by the way, I believe that this author can write books that people find gripping, because she’s written a bunch of successful books that people clearly find gripping. So I don’t think that it can possibly have to do with the quality. I think the quality must be good enough. I mean, not having read it, the quality must be good enough that people could have enjoyed it. Right? I think this is much more in the category of, like, fans going after a journalist for saying something about a K-pop band that they didn’t like, right? That’s the category I would put it in almost.
ELM: That’s interesting. I’m not sure I agree with you. Hmm.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: Hmm. Yeah.
FK: Hmm! [ELM laughs] You have elicited the Muppet noise.
ELM: So [laughs] I do think there was a tenor of this particular commentary that there was a cheapness to it.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: And maybe this is just a romance thing, right? And it could have been by the best romance novelist ever, and people still would’ve—and not written in, like, four days, which it was, right? And people, you know, like, like a carefully written—
FK: Yeah!
ELM: —book by a really respected romance writer, I still think it would have elicited some of the same reaction, because of the way that people talk about romance.
FK: Mmm. Mmm hmm.
ELM: But, that being said, I do think because of the speed of it—like, I think part of it is contextual. Like, I think that all of this stuff, and any example we can come up with, you’re gonna find people saying, “You shouldn’t have done this, it’s exploitative,” right?
FK: Right.
ELM: Like, we’d given the example in that episode of Blonde, right? Which was written by Joyce Carol Oates, who’s, like—
FK: Right.
ELM: You know, she’s, like, she’s a shitposter, but she is one of the most respected living American authors, right? You know?
FK: Yeah, absolutely. Yup.
ELM: Respected for her constant shitposts. [laughs]
FK: She is! She has earned the right to shitpost [laughs] just as she wants.
ELM: No, no. It’s just, keep on going, JCO. But, you know, like, people—and as Zan pointed out in the episode, Marilyn Monroe is long-dead, right? You know, like, obviously there’s a lot of discussion now about how exploitative all the factors surrounding her were at the time, right? And this feels like kind of adding on, right? In a way that, like, it’s kind of a—she’s a unique case, in a way, that if you’re making a biopic of, like, I don’t know…
FK: Right.
ELM: Like, do people call the movie Gandhi exploitative? Right?
FK: Yeah. [laughs]
ELM: You know what I mean? Like, there’s elements here, right? You know? Of, like, “Oh, people always saw her as an object, and she’s been dead for decades, and you still see her that way.” Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: So there were some similarities in the response to that, of, like, “It’s exploitative to write about this person who lived, and you’re just kind of using her.”
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: But I do think there was an element of the Roughing the Princess conversation that was very much about, like, cash grab.
FK: Sure sure sure.
ELM: No one calls Blonde a cash grab, right? You know, like, cheap, quick, you know, like, exploitive—
FK: Right.
ELM: —in a, “You’re trying to seize the moment,” right? It was just quick and dirty.
FK: Right. But that could have been—but it could have been, you know, I mean, whatever. Some people write masterpieces in a night. OK, maybe not that often.
ELM: No. [laughs]
FK: But, like, you know—it could have been—I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure that it was limited by how quickly it came out. But, like, maybe what you were saying is, it’s more contextual. I think that given how quickly it came out, it wouldn’t have mattered if it was, you know, the monkeys typing ended up with Shakespeare. [laughs] Like, I think that it still would have felt so quick. Is that what you’re saying also? Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, no. Yeah yeah yeah. I think so. Absolutely. Yeah. And the context matters, right? And there’s a big difference between the way people see traditionally published romance versus self-published, right? You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: And obviously, for the people who are avid readers of self-published romance, I think that they perhaps don’t have these hang-ups. But I do think that the culture at large does, right? And sees that—
FK: I think that’s right.
ELM: —a lot of self-published romance as kind of disposable trash. Right? You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: And yeah, exploitative, in the sense of, like, because it’s so blatantly monetized—transactional, right? You know? Like, people—
FK: Right, especially as compared to RPF, in that—
ELM: Right. Right right right.
FK: —as we were talking about. Yeah. OK.
ELM: So I think it’s tricky, but you know, like, I think you’re always gonna get people who get upset about the idea of writing about real people, because you don’t feel like you got the vibes right, you didn’t do them justice. You weren’t cruel enough to them, right? Like, whatever the reason is, people have these—I mean, it’s so funny, you brought up that example of The Crown, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, because it’s so generous to them, it’s so—” And you were like, “No, it’s because people think it’s mean to them!” You know? And it’s like—
FK: I mean, people think both!
ELM: This so funny. I had not encountered anyone in the latter camp, I’ve only encountered people who are like, “This is awful propaganda, and it makes them look way better than they are.”
FK: That’s because you know lots of British people. [ELM laughs] And I know a lot of embarrassing, like, royalists from Canada. [laugh]
ELM: Wow, I like how you just pinned it on Canadians and not on Americans, who…
FK: Oh, there’s some embarrassing royalists from the United States, too, [ELM laughs] but…
ELM: I don’t know, a lot of this is so contextual. So, like, yeah, I mean, I guess if you had to ask me to say yes or no, in agreement to Smith’s letter, I would probably lean towards no along with you, right? I don’t think if this had been a different genre—
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: —or written slower or of a higher quality, I don’t think that would have substantially altered our response to it, because I certainly think not amongst her fans that see any sort of fictionalized version of her as a violation.
FK: Agreed. Yeah.
ELM: Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So, tricky. But interesting. I appreciate the letter.
FK: Yeah, definitely. OK, we have one more letter.
ELM: All right.
FK: Which is from coffee ghost. Coffee ghost writes:
“Hi Flourish and Elizabeth!
“I just listened to your episode ‘The RPF Tipping Point’ and I really enjoyed it! I am not involved in RPF personally, so it’s always really cool to hear about what’s going on in that part of fandom and how people are thinking about it.
“While I was listening to the discussion of how public figures react to hearing about RPF, I realized there was a similar argument used back in the early 2000s to say that fanfic itself was bad. The argument went that if an actor heard about explicit fanworks involving their character, they’d feel like they’d been forced to think about being sexually involved with a coworker. And I think that in at least one instance, an actor said as much in an interview.
“I don’t know where I’m going with this except to note that the, uh, fandom Overton window has shifted pretty drastically since then, and if I remember right, the corresponding community ethic that evolved was, ‘Well, don’t show the actors your fanworks.’ And this has obviously been complicated by fanart, and the way tweeting fanart at creators has become more acceptable. However, fanfic continues to be, as far as I can tell, more siloed in fan-only spaces, and I don’t think that’s just for copyright reasons.
“There are obviously differences between writing fanfic about fictional characters who have a particular actor’s face and writing RPF about the actor themselves—but I’m not personally convinced that delineation is as concrete as it seems, especially since I’ve seen people argue that fanfic involving fictional characters is unethical because there is, in a TV or movie fandom, a real person involved in embodying them. We’ve created this distance between fanfic and the associated real people involved in making the text. That was a thing that we did, in the last 30 or so years, to the point that, even when fans of a fictional ship behave badly towards those creators, we—at least in fandom—don’t say that we should scrap fanfic altogether.
“It makes me wonder if something similar could be done for RPF, because I’ve seen plenty of non-RPF shippers project, editorialize, and sometimes even intrude on an actor’s personal relationships because of their feelings about a fictional pairing. I’ve seen them write about how quote-unquote ‘disappointed’ they are in an actress, or demean or even sometimes berate them on social media, because they got together with an actor who portrayed a different character than their favorite. RPF really isn’t unique in inspiring bad behavior, or even conspiracy theories that make showrunners’, writers’, or actors’ lives a little worse.
“At the same time, I’m sure that not every RPF shipper and writer has a deeply internalized, Barthesian view of a public figure’s public life as quote-unquote ‘a text.’ That approach is a theoretical framework, and doesn’t describe the emotional draw of any type of shipping—RPF or not. And I think that the desire to be ethical about things exists in tension with a lot of more basic human desires—to be right, to get exactly what you want, to have senpai notice you. [ELM laughs]
“I’m not sure how to wrap this up, but for me, the connection to conspiracy theories and social media platforms was probably the missing piece. I think it ties back to your episode ‘What Fans Owe Each Other’ a little: We move in these spaces that make Community(TM) a really difficult thing to achieve, that make norms really difficult to develop in an enduring way, and to some degree, encourage bad behavior. I don’t think it’s solely platforms’ fault, but I do think they put a bit of a stumbling block in people’s way.
“That doesn’t really address the issues around publishing that you raise in the episode, but I’ll have to think about those a little more, and honestly, I’m not a published author or involved in publishing, so I don’t have a lot of experience to speak from.
“Thanks again! I’ll be revisiting this episode a lot and also reading some new books.
“coffee ghost.”
ELM: Thank you so much, coffee ghost. Wait, is coffee ghost gonna read Roughing the Princess? Is that what I’m— [FK gasps] that’s what I’m hearing right now? No, I’m kidding.
FK: Where—how can I read Roughing the Princess? [ELM laughs] I want to read this book. I keep opining about it without having read it.
ELM: Let Flourish know.
FK: I really need to fix this. If anyone has the PDF, let me know.
ELM: [laughs] Such a good letter. Thank you very much.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Oh man, there’s a lot here, I feel like.
FK: Do we think it’s Barthesian or Bartheesian, by the way? I had to make a pick. I don’t know how to say that.
ELM: [snorts] Um…
FK: It’s Barthes. Barthes-sian?
ELM: That sounds—that doesn’t work for me. I like—Bartheesian sounds cool. Yeah.
FK: Right? Bartheesian sounds cool, but his name is not said “Bartheez,” [both laugh] or “Barthez,” you know? All right, sorry, I just had to get it down that that was not me not knowing how to say Roland Barthes’ name. [laughs] It was me not knowing how to use that adjective.
ELM: Oh wait, um, let me get out—I have my little sticker sheet. What color sticker do you want? Gold?
FK: Yeah, I think I deserve a gold star for trying really hard. [both laugh] OK, go on, let’s get back to actually discussing this.
ELM: You looked at me for, like, for three seconds. You were like, “What stickers?” [both laugh]
FK: I—look. [both laugh]
ELM: Don’t worry, I can get you some gold stars if you want.
FK: I do want.
ELM: You know those classic sheets? Those stickers are pretty good.
FK: I actually have one.
ELM: Oh, yeah?
FK: I have one in my closet right now.
ELM: Who do you give stars to?
FK: Usually I put them on my Christmas cards.
ELM: Aw, that’s cute! That’s sweet.
FK: Yes, the gold stars are cute at Christmas. Anyway. Go on.
ELM: Yeah. All right. Oh, man. It’s—there’s a lot. There’s a lot here. You know, I…it’s interesting. It’s really interesting, the “fandom Overton window” is such a great line. And, like, it’s kind of interesting thinking about the sort of crisscrossing trajectories on the fictional side, right? When you’re thinking about, you know—we’re not talking about ancient history here. I, you know, fought with Benedict Cumberbatch. We had an honest man-to-man fight, as if he actually—I’m kidding. I wrote a critical article about Benedict Cumberbatch. That was fewer than 10 years ago, when he was explicitly saying in media coverage, you know, “They always have me, you know, getting fucked by Watson,” or whatever. Or, like, you know, and it’s like, yeah, there’s a reason why you don’t show actors. This is because for years, when they were exposed to this, they would literally make comments like, “You think this is me? You’re showing my—” You know what I mean? Right? It’s not like guessing about how they felt. They would explicitly complain about it, right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And yeah, like, for many years, long before that, for decades before that, that kind of, you know, firm fourth wall, don’t show it to them, right? And these were kind of these leakages. But over the last 10 years, we’ve also seen a huge rise in people—especially in fandom, but in the broader culture—who [laughs] are posting things about how, like, fictional characters can’t consent, you know what I mean? And, like, and how upsetting it is to see things happen to them on the screen, because it’s a violence against the character or whatever, you know what I mean? And so it’s like, this kind of double-crossing of the way, you know—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I do think some fans may be able to draw these firmer and firmer boundaries. Then you have other fans coming at them at a different angle, not being able to draw the boundaries at all. And so it’s like, of course, they’re not gonna—you know what I mean?
FK: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing that this got me thinking about was how strange and funny it is. I guess it makes sense. But how fanart became this thing that people show actors. I mean, like, whatever. Fairly recently, I realized that people had shown Gillian Anderson all of this straight-up porn featuring her and Fox Mulder.
ELM: Wow.
FK: And she was chill about it, too, by the way. Like, she was like, “Yeah, I look good.” And I was like—
ELM: No, what you just said, “Gillian Anderson, featuring her and Fox Mulder.”
FK: Yeah, I don’t want to think about being David Duchovny. I mean, it was but, like, I like—
ELM: But the fact that it’s—yeah, it’s weird that you just split it that way, right? Like, featuring Scully and Mulder.
FK: Yeah, that’s because I actually want to be friends with—I want—that’s because I want to be friends with Gillian Anderson. But I don’t want to be friends with David Duchovny.
ELM: Again, that’s a rich contradictory text just inside of your head alone.
FK: A rich contradictory text. My point being that it’s funny to me that it’s become kind of OK to show fanart in that way.
ELM: Sort of. I think it’s—no.
FK: [overlapping] Sort of. Not for everybody. But it’s become more—
ELM: [overlapping] I don’t think you see hardcore stuff getting shown, right?
FK: Not usually. This one did—that was why this surprised me, right?
ELM: Yeah.
FK: Because I was like, “Oh, someone showed that to her.” I don’t think that it was a person that—she may have found it herself. But she’s talking about it. Holy shit.
ELM: Right.
FK: And I mean, she’s not the first actor to be in that position and to be chill about it. There’s a moment in Trekkies where the actors who play Tasha Yar and Data talk about this, and they’re like, “Yeah, some of it’s very flattering.” [both laugh]
But anyway, I think it’s funny, because that’s, like, so visually the person, whereas in fic, you’re talking about the character. You’re not looking at, like, a photographically realistic depiction of an actor. You’re reading about a character. So you would think that that would be less invasive in some ways, because you’re not talking about—you know what I mean? You’re writing about Dana Scully doing this thing, not Gillian Anderson. And they’re not the same person, right?
ELM: Counterpoint: I bet if you were to do if you were to count it all up, there’s a lot more explicit explicit fic than there is really explicit describe—showing sex acts at length, getting deep down right in there, the way that explicit fit often does.
FK: Yeah, I think that’s right. That’s true.
ELM: You know? It’s not like I don’t see it. And maybe—
FK: Yeah, but in art, there’s less of it.
ELM: Yeah, right? And part of that, I think, I mean, a lot of that is harder to find, for obvious reasons. They make it, you know, explicit artists will usually make it harder to find, because they don’t want to get subjected to—
FK: Wisely so. [laughs]
ELM: —takedowns on a platform, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah, yeah.
FK: But it is still—I mean, I agree with you on that, that there’s like more volume. I mean, but I guess that’s part of why people want to share art in general with an actor, right? Is that they think, “Oh, this is flattering. It’s you!”
ELM: Yeah…
FK: I’m just wondering about how this evolved. And I’m not sure how.
ELM: Yeah, I mean, I think that, like, I think it’s impossible—I mean, now we’re talking—this isn’t really what coffee ghost was talking about. We’re talking about talking about the difference between art and fic.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: You know, I think, also part of that is, I mean, I guess coffee ghost does bring this up a little bit. Part of this is, like, the hand of the market kind of imposing itself, right? I think that you’re seeing way more—way, way, way, way more fan art than you did 10, 15, 20 years ago, right?
FK: That’s for sure.
ELM: And part of that is the capability of the platforms. Obviously, part of that is because norms change, people started selling their work, right?
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: You know, and people like you in your old job highlighting the—
FK: Definitely.
ELM: —you know, the tame, you know, G-rated non-shippy, right? Obviously, these social media managers and marketing people highlight some shippy stuff, if it aligns with the show, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But, like, then there’s more of an incentive for an artist to create something that will be shown, and that alters what they want to make, and they’re not making their heart’s desire or whatever.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: So, like, I think it’s impossible to talk about that kind of, those divergent paths without talking about those forces.
FK: Yeah, and it is a little bit beside the point. I’m sorry that I took us away from coffee ghost’s excellent letter.
ELM: I think it’s, like, all swirling together. I just think that this is such an interesting letter. And one thing I was thinking about while you were reading it is, like, so much of the RPF stuff from fandom, to me, comes down to how much objection there is within fandom.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: Right? And maybe there’s a parallel there that makes me think of possibly an earlier era of broader fandom, about the way that neckbeards used to talk about fanfiction—and now they talk about it like it’s some PC thing they’re not allowed to talk about. They’re like, “You can’t say—” You know, like, the Devin Faracis of the world or whatever being like, [FK laughs] “Guess you can’t say that or the SJWs will come after you,” or whatever, right?
FK: Uh huh.
ELM: There was, you know, when we came into fanfiction, that was definitely the prevailing attitude about it.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And I feel like there’s a parallel. There are still huge portions of even fanfiction fandom and huge portions of celebrity fandom, you know—which maybe is even, you know, it’s just a Venn diagram but not fully overlapping—have an issue with RPF.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And I feel like if those groups didn’t, then we’d be having a very different conversation, but instead that internal discomfort and the weird double standards and the lines that people create, you know, and this thing I was talking about earlier about people being less able to even tell, like, the fictional character can’t consent or whatever, [FK laughs] you know? Then getting that muddled with what you’re doing when you’re talking about a real person?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: I don’t know. It’s just, I feel like it’s just gotten—it’s messy, you know?
FK: I do know.
ELM: You know it’s messy.
FK: I—believe me, I know it’s messy. But yeah, I mean, I don’t think we have any answers. I don’t know that were any specific questions, but it’s really interesting thinking about this.
ELM: No. Just great thoughts.
FK: And the idea of the fandom Overton window, thank you for bringing that into my life, because I’m going to use that in the future. [laughs]
ELM: Thank you for making Flourish figure out how to say B-A-R-T-H-E-S-I-A-N.
FK: Barthesian? [ELM laughs] I think I should have gone with Barthesian. I really do. I should have gone with Barthesian.
ELM: I’m certain that professors every day say it out loud. There’s got to be some prevailing pronunciation.
FK: All right, great. Everybody who did more than a master’s degree [laughs] in Media Studies and has to think about Roland Barthes on a regular basis and say words about him—
ELM: Does your husband, who's a tenured Media Studies professor, ever say that word out loud?
FK: I would bet you dollars to donuts that he will have no better idea than I do how to say Barth—[flaps tongue]—ian.
ELM: That’s some pillow talk for you guys later. It’s a fun topic. [laughs]
FK: Thanks, I’ll report back. OK, should we take a quick break and then get on to the main part of the episode?
ELM: Yeah, let’s do it.
FK: OK.
[Interstitial music]
FK: All right, we are back. And let’s do our little business, shall we, before we get on?
ELM: Our little business.
FK: Our little business! Our little business being talking about patreon.com/Fansplaining, which is how we make this podcast.
ELM: Yes, it is. So we are hard at work making the next Tiny Zine. It will be going out over the end of the year holiday stretch.
FK: And it’s going to feature the first piece of fanart that I will have shared with the public in, like, probably ten years.
ELM: Ten years ago you shared fanart?
FK: I’m pretty sure I shared—well, maybe more than ten years. When I was in high school, I definitely shared some fanart.
ELM: Well, you weren’t in high school ten years ago.
FK: Oh God, don’t tell me that! That’s horrifying. I’m so old. [laughs]
ELM: I’m sorry to report to you, you were in high school—
FK: 20 years ago.
ELM: More than 20 years ago.
FK: Oh God.
ELM: Even more.
FK: No, it was 20. I haven’t had my 20th reunion yet.
ELM: That’s when you graduated.
FK: Shh!
ELM: [laughs] All right.
FK: Hush.
ELM: Oldsters. So it will be featuring some writing by me and some drawing from Flourish and a special guest, TBD. We will announce it when that’s finalized. And that’s for patrons at $10 a month. And if you up your pledge, you’ll get one. If you sign up afresh, not only will you get that, but you’ll get an extremely cute enamel pin shaped like a fan and access to 30-plus special episodes, including the one we’re going to be doing in a few weeks on House, M.D., the greatest show ever made. I haven’t started watching it. You’re in it. You’re there.
FK: Oh, I am so there. I had forgotten. I had forgotten. [sighs]
ELM: Yeah, I don’t think—like, every gifset that I see of House, I’m like, “I remember that episode.” And I’m like, “Did I watch this entire show? Like, when did I watch this, and how do I remember?” I just saw the gifset of the one when he’s on the plane and he, like, recruits three strangers who kind of look like the three of them to, like—
FK: Yes!
ELM: —play the roles.
FK: Yes.
ELM: And I was like, “I remember that so vividly.”
FK: Yeah, no, I watched—I mean, this was, like, House started at a time. Like, I was saying to Nick, I was like, I think that this was the last show that I watched solely on real television, like, on cable or on, you know—
ELM: Yeah. Yeah.
FK: Or broadcasts. I don’t think—I never own the DVDs. I’ve never streamed it before.
ELM: It would play on, like, back-to-back marathons or USA whatever, right? And you’d be like, “I’m in!”
FK: [overlapping] Exactly! Like, I think I saw all of it—exactly.
ELM: Some afternoon where you’re hungover.
FK: Mmm.
ELM: And they’re like, “We’re playing nine Houses,” and you’re like, “I’m not moving. Here I am.” [both laugh]
FK: I’m—I am stuck to this couch with my Gatorade—
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And some really gross medical stuff. [both laugh]
ELM: So, as a reminder, the special episodes, including that one and all the ones we’ve done in the past, all the “Tropefest” ones, that’s at $3 a month. And even just $1 month really helps us. patreon.com/Fansplaining.
FK: And if you don’t have money or don’t want to give us your money, that’s cool. You can help us out by spreading the word about the podcast, especially about our full transcripts that come out at the same time as every episode. And by writing in and giving us comments, thoughts, ideas for episodes. This is actually a large part of how we make the podcast, is through the support of listeners like you, or readers if you’re reading the transcript.
So you can do that by writing to fansplaining at gmail.com. You can do that by putting stuff in our ask box on Tumblr. We’re @Fansplaining over there. At fansplaining.com, there is also a box that you can write into and it will email for you, to us. Or you can call 1-401-526-FANS and leave us a voicemail, which we find especially delightful.
ELM: The only thing left to say is, of course, we are still on Twitter. I was gonna say our social platforms, [laughs] and that was the one that came out first. For now. For now. We’re still posting there. Because it does seem like that is the main place we’re still in touch with some people, but we are also—
FK: Every time you say Twitter, you know the emoji with, like, the little squiggly mouth squiggly mouth?
ELM: Squiggly mouth? No. Oh, yeah!
FK: Yeah.
ELM: The one that’s, like, that looks like it just got off a roller coaster?
FK: [laughing] Yeah, that’s how I feel.
ELM: Yeah. I feel like the one that I’ve enjoyed recently with the swirly eyes.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Yeah. That’s like, “Oh, God.”
FK: Uh huh.
ELM: Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and our most popular platform, obviously, Tumblr.com.
FK: Great. OK! So let’s talk [ELM laughs] about how much this dude sucks.
ELM: [laughing] OK, let’s try to limit ourselves. [FK laughs] Let’s not explain this for more than five minutes, is what I’m gonna say.
FK: OK.
ELM: OK! So if you watched this video, if you’re steeped in this world, just ignore us for five minutes. [FK laughs] OK, so James Somerton—
FK: I’m timing us, by the way. We’re starting. Yeah—I’m timing us.
ELM: Yeah, I’m looking. I’m looking. All right. So James Somerton, YouTuber. You know, not like, it’s not MrBeast, right? You know—that’s a famous YouTuber, by the way, Flourish. I don’t know if you’re aware. He’s the most popular YouTuber.
FK: Thank you. I know, MrBeast. [both laugh]. I know that you’re suddenly a YouTube expert.
ELM: Oh, yeah, I don’t think I mentioned on the podcast. I’ve done some YouTube work this year. And now I suddenly know a lot about YouTube. And it’s a little weird, actually.
FK: You do. You know more about YouTube than me. But sometimes it’s like, you know, there’s moments where I’m just like, “Elizabeth…”
ELM: A lot of people don’t know who Mr—we were out—this is not a part of our five minutes. We were, I had my holiday concert this weekend. And you and several other my friends, were out for drinks after.
FK: It was great, by the way.
ELM: Thank you very much. And in my corner of the table, we were talking about MrBeast. Several people hadn’t heard of him.
FK: Wow.
ELM: Mm hmmm. But my dad had, so you know.
FK: Your dad!
ELM: He’s hip. He knows.
FK: Hip dude. OK. All right. James Somerville is a YouTuber.
ELM: That’s not his name. James Somerton! [laughs]
FK: Look, I used to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I turned any word that begins with “summer” into Somerville.
ELM: OK, I’m doing this explanation then.
FK: You are.
ELM: OK, so, you know, not a huge, not a huge creator. But, like, as you may know, YouTube, you can make a lot of money on YouTube, like, relative to other platforms, right? For a variety of reasons.
FK: Yes you can.
ELM: And so, you know, he was, like, probably making substantial revenue off his YouTube videos. And he also had a Patreon with thousands of subscribers. I’ve seen it reported that he was making $170,000 a year from his patrons.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: We make—
ELM: Even given that he’s paying people—
ELM: We make, like, what, $14,000 a year?
FK: Yeah, right.
ELM: Yeah, he’s paying one other guy.
FK: Even though he’s paying somebody—
ELM: Sure.
FK: He’s still, like, he is a professional YouTuber making a professional salary making YouTube videos.
ELM: Right. And additionally, two years ago, he launched a GoFundMe to create a queer—he’s a—so he’s a queer YouTuber. That’s his shtick, right? And he talks about queer media analysis, queer history, and he created a production studio. And he raised, I think it was $65,000 for that, right? To make independent, queer short films, right? So that’s just to give you a sense of, like, how much money he was making off of these videos and his persona. Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: And also to give you a sense of his platform, right? Thousands of people liked him enough that they paid him money every month, and obviously millions of people watched his videos, right? So this weekend, [laughs] which will be two weekends ago now, when this comes out, a YouTuber named hbomberguy released a four-hour video about plagiarism. And it was—it’s so well done. I know four hours, a lot of people are like, “No.” But, like, give it a whirl. You could watch it—don’t sit down for four hours and watch it. Watch it in bits, you know? Because it’s, like, he manages to hold the thread. You said as you’re watching it like, “I can’t believe I was this engaged for a four-hour thing.”
FK: Yeah, I can’t believe that I have watched—I think it was about halfway through when I was like, “I can’t believe I’ve watched two hours of a YouTube video about plagiarism, [ELM laughs] and I’m still going to watch the rest, and I’m enjoying it. This is weird.”
ELM: It’s really—it’s really, really well done. And so the first half is about some other YouTubers, different kinds of plagiarism. Some stuff that’s a little shady and maybe not straight-up plagiarism, but, like, really bad practices, like, you know, passing people’s words off as your own, but then putting a link to where you took it from in a giant list of links and being like, “There, I cited it.” And it’s like, “Well, literally, no one’s going to know that because they just watched a video. They’re not clicking on your stupid link,” right?
FK: Right. His point being that plagiarism is endemic in a lot of spaces on YouTube for a variety of reasons. One of them being that it’s kind of hard to track down in that, like, if somebody’s just saying things to you, and it sounds smart, and you don’t recognize where it’s coming from, yeah, of course, you think that they they’re the one who came up with it, right? You know?
ELM: Right. Right.
FK: Why would you assume this? Unless you happen to be very familiar with whatever they’re plagiarizing, you wouldn’t know. And because it’s not a text, it’s not like you can just put it—you’d have to type out what they’re saying and like, you know, there’s more steps.
ELM: Yeah.
FK: It’s YouTube, you know? You think it’s conversational.
ELM: Right, exactly. And so I felt like the first half of the video was so great at establishing all of that right? You know?
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And then he pivoted, and he was like, this video is about the worst person in the world, James Somerton, [FK laughs] who, it turns out, isn’t just a casual plagiarist but a massive serial plagiarist. And throughout the rest of the video, he painstakingly details dozens of incidents of where he stole words directly from a huge host of journalists, independent bloggers, The Celluloid Closet, the famous documentary about the Hays Code. [laughs]
FK: I was gonna say, every—at one point I was like, you know, what’s funny about this is I feel like I’ve already seen all of his work, because so much of it was just stolen from a basic Media Studies syllabus—
ELM: Yes.
FK: —circa when I was in grad school. I was like, “Oh, Tinker Belles and Evil Queens? Yeah, I’ve read that book. I guess I don’t need to watch that video. Richard Dyer? Very familiar with his works, don’t need to look at that.” [both laugh] You know? I mean, it was kind of pathetic, honestly, except that he was passing off all of these big ideas and Media and Film Studies, as though they were his unique insights.
ELM: Right, it was never it was never, you know, “according to, you know, theorist whoever, quote…”
FK: Which is fine, like, actually great. Like, do a Media Studies—
ELM: That’s good!
FK: Like, Intro to Media Studies YouTube channel where you introduce people to all of these thinkers. That’s wonderful, love that. [laughs] But that’s not what he’s doing.
ELM: One of my favorite parts was where he was literally just reading off the Wikipedia for different, like, film theory styles. And in the video, [laughs] he just was showing how he’s literally reading the Wikipedia, hbomberguy just clicks on the various subpages—
FK: Right.
ELM: —of film theory and just, like, highlights them as he literally reads word-for-word off Wikipedia pages, which is just like, “This is what you’re paying money for guys.”
FK: But it also wasn’t just that bad. Because [laughs] this guy, not only did he have sort of this enormous amount of plagiarism, he also had a few axes to grind, which included having a huge chip on his shoulder about women. And actually, like, women in fan spaces. [laughs]
ELM: Specifically fandom women, yes.
FK: Specifically fandom women who he interpreted all as straight white women every time he discussed this. And so a lot of times, he would end up going on rants about how awful straight white women were, in ways that were [laughs] actively antithetical to the thing he had just plagiarized and claimed as his own words. It’s really bad.
ELM: Right. And so then, where a lot of that is highlighted, and hbomberguy brings that up and highlights it, and it’s really great that he did and, you know, like, also instances of kind of casual transphobia, especially, you know, misgendering trans people.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Framing them as women, people who are not women, you know, and famously so. And so this video came out and the next day, [laughs] a second video hit the James Somerton, as the tweet said, and it was by a music YouTuber called Todd in the Shadows, and his backstory on this was, you know, he said, “YouTubers talk to each other. I heard hbomberguy was doing one on James Somerton, and this guy’s really annoyed me since I started noticing some of the things in his videos seem like outright lies. And I checked if it was OK to make this and focus on the lies, and hbomberguy said, ‘For sure. I’m just focusing on the plagiarism.’”
And so he put out a two-hour YouTube video that we both then proceeded to watch as well. And it was like this, like, exquisite cycle of torture and relief because they’d play some clip. These are all the things that James Somerton said in between reading someone else’s words verbatim. These were the things that he embellished that were outright lies, right? You know? And kind of bananas. Like, completely out of left field readings, like, misreadings, misunderstandings of basic Media Theory things.
FK: But some of them weirdly truthy, right? Like, the one that you shared with me, that I have to say is still my favorite, is the one where he was like, “When Tolkien [ELM laughs] initially wrote Lord of the Rings, he got dragged for it being, like, too soft and pastoral.” The funny thing is, if you had not actually read Lord of the Rings, like, the book book, if you’d seen the movies, and if you had some idea of, like, the hobbits prancing through the Shire, I could imagine you being like, “Oh, sure truthy.” That doesn’t sound nuts, you know? Yeah, like, he got blackballed by the other Oxford professors for not being masc enough. After all, the one thing I know about Lord of the Rings is that people run around singing songs all the time. However, [laughs] this is just absolutely bananas the opposite [both laugh] of what Lord of the Rings is actually like, what it’s about—like, there’s not—
ELM: Or the reception of it. There was no—
FK: Or the reception! Neither of these is true!
ELM: That was not how it was received in any way.
FK: Nobody could read Lord of the Rings and think, “Oh, yes, [laughs] this is a book about everyone’s deepest emotional feelings at all times.” Yeah, there’s some feelings but, like, bro, [laughs] there’s mostly violence.
ELM: [laughs] Yeah, my favorite part in that little bit was he said the only contemporary critic who complained about it being too pastoral was a Marxist who said the pastoral stuff was, like, too upper class. [laughs]
FK: And they were right, by the way. That was an insightful commentary. But point being though, like, this is where we get to this truthiness thing, right? Because he’s saying these things. I mean, well, the plagiarism was also sort of truthiness in that, like, like I said, I think that if I just heard him—if I just turned it on and just heard him saying some of this stuff, I would have been like, “OK, this is an annoying guy, and he’s saying some Media Studies stuff. Who cares?”
ELM: Yeah. For the non-published—for the stuff that’s not, like, famous books.
FK: Right.
ELM: For the ones that are random articles from journalists and outlets you’ve heard of, like Vice and Vox and things like that, and journalists that we know, you know?
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: But, like, I wouldn’t recognize, you know, Joelle Monique was one of the plagiarized authors who was on one of our Comic-Con panels. I wouldn’t have recognized the words of any of Joelle’s articles—
FK: Right. And even—
ELM: —ever, even though I’ve read some of them, you know? I barely recognize my own words, if I see them out of context, you know? [laughs] I’m like, “Oh, that person sounds smart.” You know?
FK: Right. Even some of the more famous things I think I would have been like, “OK, like, whatever. It’s a little bit like reheated Media Studies.” But I don’t recognize every word that Richard Dyer ever wrote, you know?
ELM: Right.
FK: I don’t know why I keep coming back to him. I think it’s because he’s, like, featured in the video. But the point being, like, that’s truthiness in one way, but this is truthiness in another way, because I could also imagine if, like I said, if I hadn’t read Lord of the Rings just being like, “Oh, sure, that sounds plausible enough.”
ELM: Sure.
FK: You know? Because it does.
ELM: Right.
FK: If you don’t have the context, why would you ever look into that more? It’s a lie, but it’s truthy lie.
ELM: Yeah. So I think that the hbomberguy video is very much about the harms of plagiarism. And he was very good at stressing how this hurts so many queer creators, right? And I think it’s especially relevant to this podcast, because, you know, as you said, a lot of these journalists are, you know, a lot of this stuff is—and I’m going to feature some of it in the newsletter this week. It’s, like, the kind of journalists that people in fandom read, who are writing about—like, he ripped off Gita Jackson writing about, like, fans’ complicated feelings about Attack on Titan, right? You know?
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: That’s the kind of stuff in the news that like, you know—and I’m glad that some of these journalists are being open about it now—probably got paid $500, $1,000 for a piece at a place like Vice or Vox. If that, you know?
FK: Yeah, I was gonna say, max. That is not what they were paying, [laughs] you know?
ELM: Yeah, well, I mean, it depends on, like, how much experience you have or whatever, right?
FK: Yeah yeah yeah, for sure. For sure.
ELM: Yeah, to be clear, Slate.com starts at $200 an article, FYI, so…
FK: Exactly. [laughs] Yeah. Womp womp womp.
ELM: Let’s just call out some people here. You know, and this guy’s over here making thousands and thousands of dollars a month to, you know—and that’s the—there’s an injustice, there. There’s a cruelty to it. And Gita Jackson actually wrote a really fantastic response saying, “Stop asking me to sue this guy. That’d be costly. I’m probably not going to win. Also, I don’t own that intellectual property. Vice does. So it’s not even my call. But stop telling me to do this, because, you know—” They had a great line that was about the difference between, like—actually, I have it pulled up right now, and this is in the final paragraph.
“When I was a union rep at Kotaku,” they write, “we often talked about the difference between cathartic actions and strategic actions. It is cathartic to point and laugh at Somerton, and cathartic release has its place. But as we move forward, we have to think about how we can change the material conditions that led to a James Somerton existing, or else it will happen over and over again.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: So I thought about that, like, cathartic versus strategic, and I think that the video itself is very effective at talking about the kind of systemic harm to queer creators, queer YouTubers, most of the people who were writing these articles and ripped off are queer journalists, you know? Already making, yeah, like you said, like, not even $700 an article. A lot of these smaller outlets that fans read, like, something like a Polygon or a…I don’t know what. Any comic book site probably pays more like, you know—not Polygon, but these comic book sites pay like $50 an article at best, you know what I mean?
FK: And honestly, even the academics, like, a lot of these academics are not like famous chair professors somewhere, right?
ELM: [laughs] Right.
FK: People who are writing these books are not necessarily—just because they’ve written something, which is, like, widely read in Media Studies does not mean that they have a great academic job somewhere. I don’t know where all of these people are, but I bet some of them are at—you know, they’re teaching way too many classes. They’re not getting paid very well. They’re living in the middle of nowhere. They’re not living a fancy life. They’re certainly not making, [laughs] you know, money off this book.
ELM: Yeah, any book, you know, like, how much are academic advances? It’s like, compared to even, you know, nonacademic books, it’s almost nothing, right? You know?
FK: Exactly.
ELM: For the amount of work that goes into it, right?
FK: Oh, Lord. [laughs] Yeah.
ELM: So there’s that, and there’s the broader questions of why plagiarism can flourish on YouTube in particular, that I think he’s very smart on. But it was the second video, it was the Todd in the Shadows video debunking all of the lies, that really got me started thinking about fandom, because I recognize so many, like, mistruths.
FK: Hmm.
ELM: Truthy, vibey things that I see in fandom every day and I have seen for years. And you think, how many people, especially younger people, queer fans, who had never heard any of these arguments before and were really thrilled to find someone speaking authoritatively about them, listened to everything he said, took the good words that he was stealing along with the bad words he was making himself, accepted as fact the many, many times he makes up a guy saying, “Oh, of course some people, you know, reacted this way to Yuri!!! on Ice…” And it’s like, “Show them to me!” [both laugh]
FK: Yeah, my favorite one was where he was like, “Of course, there’s all these straight women who insist that Yuri!!! on Ice is not gay in any way, shape, or form. [ELM laughs] And they keep coming into my comment section.” And God bless him, but hbomberguy went and tried to find a single one. Not even a straight woman, just a person, any person who had said this—
ELM: No, it was the other guy who said it. Or they both did it?
FK: I think they both did it! And there was not a single person!
ELM: I saw a comment on one of his videos—one of his posts, because I was looking at his Tumblr. He still has a Tumblr up, even though deleted his Patreon, James Somerton. And one of them someone had written, “Are the straight women in the room with us right now?” [both laugh]
FK: Right, like, it just—not—I mean, a strawman is too small of a word [laughs] to describe what he’s doing here, right?
ELM: Straw straight woman. Yeah, absolutely. And this kind of idea, “Oh, there’s this mythical—these are the critiques that we’re facing.” Right? And so it’s not just the things that he was saying, which I’ve certainly seen many of the things he said be repeated in fandom.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: But it’s more the way it’s the actual act of doing it, and the way that, you know, the putting the truthiness, the vibe space feeling out in the world. And it’s super funny, because we’d already agreed to do this topic. And today, a post went on my dash on Tumblr. I don’t know when this is from. It was one of those that had a lot of replies to it, you know, all in a row. And it was about Norman Rockwell’s paintings, and actually it was kind of an interesting post, because the OP in the very first one was like, “I just learned about Norman Rockwell.” And then was reacting very earnestly to, like, a Norman Rockwell painting. And then one of the replies further down was like, “OP, here’s some more information about when Norman Rockwell.” And I was like, “This is actually quite sweet, that this person just learned about this extremely famous American artist. And then people aren’t like, ‘Are you stupid?’ They were like, ‘Hey, here’s some more facts about this guy.’” Right?
OK, so a ways down this thread, this guy puts up a picture of Norman Rockwell’s version of Rosie the Riveter. I think it’s just called “Rosie.” And it is a very large butch lady who’s, like, you know, guns out— [FK laughs] What’s it? Funs out guns out—what’s the expression?
FK: Sun’s out—OK.
ELM: Sun’s out—sun fun gun?
FK: Sun’s out, guns out.
ELM: [laughing] OK, there’s no “fun” in the expression.
FK: Because when the sun’s out, you gotta wear your muscle tee, so that everyone can see your fine arms.
ELM: Just, this is a real butch-looking lady, and she’s holding her, like, whatever, welding equipment it is that riveters—the thing you rivet with.
FK: That you rivet with! [both laugh] Can you tell that Elizabeth is not a butch lady?
ELM: I don’t work in heavy industry and neither do you, so maybe you don’t know what you rivet with.
FK: Oh, I don’t know, but I also didn’t attempt to say.
ELM: [laughs] And she’s got a sandwich in one hand. Very famous image. And this guy captioned it saying that, like, “Norman Rockwell also painted this, but it was like, the gender was too much for the U.S. government, so they suppressed it.” They, like, went with the one that you know, which is a much thinner, smaller—the classic Rosie the Riveter image, you know? The one that’s now on, like, magnets and stuff. Right?
FK: Yeah, she’s more femme. She’s still Rosie the Riveter.
ELM: Yes.
FK: But she’s more femme than the—
ELM: She’s cute.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: They’re both cute in their different ways. And the next one was someone saying, “Hey, this Norman Rockwell image that you say was suppressed, was on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post. The U.S. government put it on Treasury bonds. The other one they were talking about, didn’t even become famous until after the war.” And then they said something along the lines of, like, “History is already, like, you know, misogynistic enough. You don’t have to jazz it up,” right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it was like, this is a Somerton-esque—.
FK: Yeah yeah yeah.
ELM: This is like Somerton. This is not—this is some other guy, but it’s like, why did you… Why did you make this up?
FK: Well, but the insightful thing is, yeah, you don’t have to jazz it up. They were jazzing it up, right? That’s what so much of Somerton’s lies are about too, is, like, he’s jazzing something up to make it fit with his worldview.
ELM: Yeah. Well, I saw many comments, you know, in response to all this, about his work in particular, that was, like, “There’s such a history of queer discrimination and oppression. Why are you making up versions of it? What, like, why don’t you talk about actual injustices that have happened or are happening? Why are you fabricating this?”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And it’s something that I think we see in fandom spaces constantly, right? You know, saying, “Some people are saying…” And it’s like, “Are they in the room with us, too?” You know? It’s like, I don’t know who we’re talking to. It’s exactly a strawman thing. It’s like, there’s already plenty of problems in fandom. What agenda are you serving? Do you think if you make this flashy—like, obviously, James Somerton, and perhaps this Rosie the Riveter guy that I just encountered in passing, know that, like, if it feels true, and it makes them mad, people are going to engage with it more, right? “Oh, that’s not fair!” Right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But again, like so many of the Somerton examples, it’s like, there are real things to get mad about relating to this topic. And it’s not, you know, the fake women who think Yuri!!! on Ice isn’t gay, right?
FK: Absolutely. But something that you said just now, I think maybe ties into why people are doing some of this. I’m thinking of instances where people that I know have said, “Everyone’s so mad at me because I did X.”
ELM: Hmm.
FK: Or, “I’m really getting piled on about Y.” And to be clear, internet pile-ons absolutely exist, and we have talked about them extensively. And also, in at least a few instances, I have looked on people’s social media, and I’m like, “You got two comments [ELM laughs] that were kind of shitty.”
ELM: Sure.
FK: And to you, it feels like you’re being piled on. But if you post on your Tumblr top-level and say, “I am getting so much—” You know what I mean? Like, “I am getting so much pushback on this.”
ELM: Yeah.
FK: And again, I’m not saying—OK, maybe, I don’t know, maybe some of these people also got 10,000 anonymous comments or something that, like, I’m not seeing. I guess that’s possible. But I usually feel like when you get a bunch of anonymous comments like that, often you’re also getting public ones.
ELM: Right.
FK: So it seems like if I can’t, you know—I have generally refrained from calling people out about this in the moment, because it doesn’t feel like a very nice thing to do or helpful to them emotionally because they’re obviously, like, not happy with the way that they’re being responded to. And they’re telling an emotional truth. But [laughs] it’s not always a factual truth. Right?
ELM: Sure. Sure.
FK: Sometimes that just pours gasoline on a fire of, then other people get mad about it, right? And then it blows up.
ELM: Absolutely. Yeah, they’ll get mad on your behalf. It’s like, “Well, I absolutely understand why someone would respond that way, because they’re a monster,” right?
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Like, “Oh, that makes total sense, of course you got that response.” Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I do think that’s only a tiny fraction of what James Somerton was doing, right? And there are actual instances that are—
FK: Oh, agreed. Agreed. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. There are actual incidents that are called out where he’s like, “You know, I’m getting these death threats.” And everyone’s like, “I looked—maybe they were private but, like, seemed like one person was slightly criticizing you.”
FK: Right.
ELM: You know? And now you’ve said there’s hoards of people saying this. There’s this this this, right? You know? So much of the fact-checking video was like, “I looked. I looked over a long time, and I do not know what you’re talking about.” Right? And, like, one of the very best parts—did you get to the part with the Jeffrey Dahmer shipping?
FK: Yes! [laughs]
ELM: [laughs] Yeah. He had this claim that everyone was shipping—because of the Evan Peters, you know, the Netflix thing—they were shipping Jeffrey Dahmer with his, like, lightest-skinned victim, because straight white women who like shipping serial killers because they’re monsters are also racist. And again, as he said in that video, they could be racist. This is not the reason. This is not the evidence, right? You know? No one is giving anyone a pass.
FK: There’s plenty of evidence that people in fandom are often quite racist about things. But this one maybe is not it! [ELM laughs] You could have picked, I don’t know, a lot of other things. [laughs]
ELM: And so, he was flashing all on the screen, he was like, “I looked at Reddit, Twitter, AO3, Wattpad, you know, LiveJournal.” He’s, like, listing all these things [laughs] looking for all the people, all the different ships with Jeffrey Dahmer involved, and it seems like it’s mostly Jeffrey Dahmer/You, seemed to be one of the most popular ones. But he couldn’t find even one instance of this, and it’s like, did James Somerton just totally make this up? Did he see one person mention it in passing, and that’s impossible to find in the giant deluge, you know, they didn’t write a story and post it on AO3?
FK: Right.
ELM: You know? Or did he just totally make it up because he had some theory? You know, like, it’s so hard to say, because so much of this is hard to check. Like, maybe you did see something in passing, right? But so much of it—
FK: And it sounds truthy. Like, I would believe it, I guess.
ELM: Sure.
FK: You know, if somebody told me that there were a bunch of people who were shipping Jeffrey Dahmer and his lightest-skinned victim, I’d be like, “Sure, that kind of tracks.”
ELM: Of course!
FK: Yeah!
ELM: Of course, fandom always does that, of course. Right? You know?
ELM: Fandom is kind of racist. It is. That’s true, but, you know, and yet somehow it does still matter whether this particular thing is true or not. [laughs]
ELM: You know, it’s the “feels true.” And that’s directly related to the truthiness thing that I really, it gets me so much, like, you know, did I ever tell you about the time we had, like, a mistruth in the seltzer group I’m in? Well, you’re technically in it too, aren’t you?
FK: Yeah, well, I’ve had to back away from it because I now burp so badly whenever I drink seltzer that it makes small children stare. [both laugh] So it’s yours. Your seltzer group now, unfortunately.
ELM: [laughing] Did you leave the group so you wouldn’t be tormented by discussion of seltzer that you can’t have?
FK: I actually, I didn’t leave it, but I did, like, stop seeing the posts, because… yeah.
ELM: Mute it? I’m so sorry, Flourish. You’re really missing out on—
FK: Because I really miss seltzer! [laughs]
ELM: —one of life’s greatest drinks.
FK: But I need to not sound like an episode of Ren & Stimpy all the time.
ELM: [laughs] So there’s this group on Facebook that I apparently—I invited a lot of people that I’m friends with into this group that I joined years ago, probably 2015 or 2016. And they’re—not to blow up their spot—but there was a bit of a brouhaha when the hard seltzer craze began. Because some people in the group started posting about, like, White Claw, which as you may know, is not seltzer in any way. It just uses the word “seltzer” on a shitty sugary malt beverage.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And seltzer, for the record, does not have sugar in it.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It’s a carbonated beverage with no sugar. So [laughs] someone posted a screenshot of a tweet from White Claw that was something about how, like, they loved cops. And someone in the replies was like, “You made this up. [FK laughs] I went to look. This does not exist.” Right? “You Photoshopped this.” And the person, instead of saying, “You’re right, you got me,” said, “Yeah, but it feels like something they would say.” And I was just like, “Holy shit.” Like, we’re talking about White Claw, who cares? But also, like, obviously, I’m going to look and be like, “White Claw? People who like White Claw seem shitty. Of course the company likes the police. Like, that all feels right to me.” You know? “It’s all together things I don’t like, White Claw and the police.” You know? Sure, I’ll just see that. And I wouldn’t think to fact-check it. I’d be like, “Oooh…” You know? Like, “Oh, that brand took a stance.” You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Obviously, the person who fact-checked them was like, “That seems like—” To be fair, it did seem like kind of, it was like, “Whoa, that doesn’t seem like good business to—”
FK: No! [laughs]
ELM: “—be so pro-cop!” [laughs] You know? But it was the response from the person who created it that just kind of chilled me.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: It was the, like, no repenting. It was just like, “But doesn’t it feel true, though?” You know? And I was like, this person is ostensibly on my side—
FK: Right.
ELM: —in the grand scheme of sides, right?
FK: Right, they also don’t [laughs] think that cops are great, but…
ELM: They dislike White Claw and they dislike cops, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know, like, we are in the same broad camp. Right?
FK: Right.
ELM: But, like, it’s so insidious. And you think about all the things, you think about this Rosie the Riveter thing that we were talking about this earlier. It’s the kind of thing that you’d scroll past. If I hadn’t gotten the version of the reblog with the thing debunking it, I wouldn’t have thought twice about that. I would have been like, “Oh, you know, that image, actually, I’ve seen that picture a million times. Seems weird. I didn’t know the government suppressed that. Cool. Next fact, like, next post.” You know?
FK: Exactly. Why would I even—I mean, maybe I wouldn’t, like, spread it around without looking into it. But I also wouldn’t have, like, not—and then I might even have, like, regurgitated it later and been like, “Oh, yeah, did you know? I don’t know where I learned this, but…” And of course, it’s a total lie.
ELM: It’s hard. It’s like, what am I going to do? Sit here and fact-check everything I hear? You’re going to watch a YouTube video and sit there and fact-check it? That’s not my job, you know? But it’s like—
FK: And yet, now I feel like I kind of need to!
ELM: Right! And I mean, I do hope this is a, you know, this is a wake-up call for some folks. And I feel like there’s a real generational challenge here too, because it is true that for younger people, a lot—YouTube is a massive source of learning. Right? You know?
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And I know tons of people who get a lot of their information and commentary, people our age, not just people who are younger than us, from YouTube video essays, right?
FK: Oh, absolutely.
ELM: You know, like, there is no oversight. You’re relying on people being good guys who care about fact-checking.
FK: Spoiler alert, humans are not usually good guys. [laughs]
ELM: Yeah, no, and especially in a place like YouTube, where you can so easily—the views are so directly monetized and by a lot, right? You know?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: If you plagiarize, if you work for a media outlet that you’ve heard of, and you plagiarize, you’re risking so much, right? Because they will fire you immediately, first of all.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: They won’t just be like, “Oops!” You know? Like, “Well, you still have all the money.” Right? You will lose your job.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And if it’s a big deal, you probably won’t get another job, because no one wants that. They have actual liability, right?
FK: No, yeah.
ELM: You’re accountable to a large corporation, probably or, you know, there’s lawyers, you know? All this stuff. There is zero oversight on YouTube.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Right? You could say literally anything, and who’s gonna stop you? And, like, you know, there was an example, there was a queer creator that James Somerton ripped off, the one who makes the “Are They Gay?” videos.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Right? And, like, they showed in the video, a whole exchange that that person had with him, right?
FK: Yup.
ELM: You know? And it was just like, “Well, I’m a smaller creator. So I guess I lose.” You know? That was the kind of takeaway of it, right? Like, “There’s nothing I can do.” And the video is so good at showing a super-famous YouTuber ripping off a medium-famous one, you know? And it’s just like, you know, the point being made of, people plagiarize people that they think are beneath them, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You’re not stealing from someone who’s bigger than you.
FK: I mean, hell, there was the thing in which he stole some AMV that someone made [ELM laughs] instead of getting his own clips, like, you know? Not even cutting into the—not even cutting the clips. Not even downloading the AMV and just, like, using those clips because he was lazy, but, like, using them as they were edited together! [laughs] It’s like, really? Yeah, because he doesn’t think the AMV makers are doing anything artistic. And certainly, they aren’t as important as him. They don’t have millions of views like he does. So why would he… All right, now I’m just getting mad. [ELM laughs] I feel like we need to bring this back away from just being mad.
ELM: It’s very easy to get mad at him, because he’s awful. I just feel like, it’s hard to say, you know, I did see some commentary that I was a little like, “Mmm…” Where they were like, “Oh, now I understand where—” I saw this on Tumblr. It was like, “Now I understand where all these people are getting these arguments in fandom about X, Y, and Z.”
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And it’s like, OK, that may be overstating this man’s influence, right?
FK: Sure.
ELM: You and I had never watched a James Somerton video prior to seeing these stupid, awful clips [laughs] in these two videos.
FK: No. And thank God, because he is annoying. But…
ELM: Also, yeah, like, that’s been—it’s, like, that’s a separate opinion I hold, [FK laughs] that you would have to pay me to watch it in a normal context.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: But some of it is just, like, it’s a little bit chicken and egg, you know?
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Obviously, he’s deeply attuned to the discourse, because he’s stealing people’s commentary within the discourse, right?
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And because his only talent is stirring up foment and getting more people to pay him money for that anger and that, you know, sense of righteous, you know, speaking truth to power.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Obviously, he’s deeply aware of the fandom discourses that he’s kind of tapping into and poorly repackaging. You know what I mean?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, the Yuri!!! on Ice, like, yeah, these mythical straight women who say that it is not gay at all, where on Earth is this coming from? But absolutely, I am not in this fandom, I might even have your Yuri!!! on Ice muted because of the volume of it. And I am still deeply aware that there was a huge discourse about whether the kiss “counted,” you know? Or Japanese prudishness—
FK: Right.
ELM: Or Japanese norms or blah, blah, blah, you know? I know all these different facets of this discourse.
FK: Because you couldn’t avoid it. [laughs]
ELM: No! Unavoidable, right? And so it’s like, I think it’s a little easy to say, “Oh, it’s all because of this guy!” You know? It’s like, clearly not. Clearly he was watching this happening too and figuring out the way that he could further his agenda.
FK: And frame it.
ELM: Yeah, exactly. Because, like, you know, if you haven’t watched these videos, he’s, as you said earlier, he’s got a massive agenda, right? You know? And he’s got certain narratives about queerness that don’t align with reality, that he’s just pushing and pushing and pushing, right?
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And trying to cherry-pick the sources that he steals and then undercutting them by saying his own batshit things, you know? And it’s like, I don’t know. I think one thing I was thinking about is, what are we left with here? Aside from, like, banishing this man from the face of the Earth, right? And maybe, like, a class-action lawsuit. By the way, the $65,000 or whatever he collected to make these films, he’s done nothing, which does feel like something—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —that maybe his GoFundMe backers could sue for fraud.
FK: Something, yeah.
ELM: If they wanted, but it really left me stumped, because, like, yeah, this example, this just in passing happened today, Rosie the Riveter man on my dash. I don’t have the time or the desire—
FK: Mmm hmm..
ELM: You know? I certainly don’t have the, like, ability, the bandwidth to sit there and fact-check every single thing.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And, like, I don’t often share. I wouldn’t share a post like that. Someone put this on my dash, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: Like, I mostly reblog pictures, right? You know?
FK: Right.
ELM: I have to really feel like, if there’s a factual thing going onto my dash, I would like linked sources, and I do click on them, right? You know, I saw one earlier today, and I was like, “I don’t know if that sounds right.” And I clicked on it, and it led to a Vox article—
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: —by someone I respect, and I was like, “OK, never mind.” [FK laughs] You know? Like, “All right, you know, I’m going to doubt this less.” Right?
FK: Yeah yeah.
ELM: Because I know that person had to get sources for their work—
FK: Right.
ELM: And it was checked by multiple editors, and, like, there are legal ramifications for them being misleading or, you know, misconstruing.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: But it’s not the job of the audience to be the fact-checker, right? And so I don’t really understand, and especially for people that are getting their information in longform on YouTube and in shortform on TikTok, with no sources, I don’t know what anyone is supposed to do. And then add on to this, which hbomberguy touches on at the end, but is really the most chilling thing about this, how much easier Jameson Somerton’s work is now with ChatGPT, right? [FK laughs]
FK: Oh, yeah.
ELM: Where it’s very easy to plagiarize now, because just paste in the article and say, “Rewrite this in a different style.”
FK: Yeah.
ELM: You know?
FK: It’ll do a better job than James Somerton was doing. For sure.
ELM: Not very good. I love that hbomberguy—all the examples, it was about how bad people were at rewriting sentences, just, like, getting the clauses wrong—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —and, like, repeating words and things. I was like, “This is pedantic and great. I really love this. Thank you.” And, like, people can’t tell that the Pope didn’t wear the puffy white jacket. You know, people can’t tell this and that with all these images. Like, I saw this stupid, stupid picture the other day of a cat looking thrilled to be stealing a fish, and it was so obviously AI-generated.
FK: Oh, yeah, that picture! Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was stupid—
ELM: No!
FK: It was charming, but it was stupid.
ELM: It wasn’t charming if your pictures of cats are all ugly cartoon versions of cats. It had its mouth open it was grinning like a human, and then it had, like, it was, like, running on two legs like a human, and the fish was kind of in its—
FK: OK, this is also partially because you are triggered by cartoons. You do not like them at all.
ELM: It is not! Anyone who—
FK: So you have, like, a squick.
ELM: It’s not! I like plenty of cartoons. I don’t like ones that look, like, squiggly or like Ren & Stimpy. You know? That look ugly.
FK: OK. [laughs]
ELM: That’s not the problem here. I mean, it looks ugly in a different way. Cats don’t look like that, you know?
FK: They don’t look like that. It’s true.
ELM: Whenever, if anyone Photoshops a grin on a cat, I am embarrassed for them.
FK: OK.
ELM: They look cute with their normal faces! [FK laughs] And all these people were like, “This is so funny!” And then someone was like, “This is obviously AI.” And the woman who posted it responded, “I still loved it!” You know? And it’s the same. It’s like, “It felt right to me.” You know?
FK: I don’t know, I mean—
ELM: No.
FK: —the Pope and the puffer jacket was funny.
ELM: No!
FK: I’m not saying it’s not insidious. I am saying it’s funny. [laughs]
ELM: I mean, like, it all feels like we’re fucked. That’s the end. That’s my conclusion. We’re doomed.
FK: Great. Well, [ELM laughs] on that uplifting note, I really don’t know what else to say about this either. Because I think it’s something that basically, we’ve always known that people needed to be better about this as responsible internet users, but it feels like it’s becoming even more pressing. And that’s it, I guess. I mean, maybe just talking about it helps. I know that it will make me think twice about random stuff that I see that feels truthy, whether that’s in an interpersonal fandom context, whether that’s in a, “here’s a factoid that may or may not be true, but that I saw on the internet,” or whether it’s, you know, a longform YouTube video, and maybe that’s the best that we can do, is try to be a little bit, yeah, a little bit more skeptical.
ELM: More skeptical, but then it’s like, what does that mean in practice?
FK: I don’t know.
ELM: You’re watching it, you’re watching a long YouTube video and you pause it every two minutes Google something?
FK: I don’t know.
ELM: That’s not realistic. You know, you wouldn’t do that watching a documentary, right? Because you feel like there are structures in place to make sure.
FK: Yeah.
ELM: But I’m sure there’s documentaries that are full of falsehoods too, right? You know, it’s like, if you if you’re not gonna get sued for it, then certainly—
FK: Yeah.
ELM: —there aren’t a lot of consequences for, you know, twisting the truth, right?
FK: Yeah.
ELM: And so it’s like, I don’t know. And then it’s like, it ties back to the “What Fans Owe Each Other” conversation, and this sort of, like, incentivizing—platforms incentivizing bad behavior, incentivizing you to write that the U.S. government is sexist because they didn’t like this hot butch lady, you know? And it’s like, did that guy do that so he would get likes on Tumblr? You know, like, that’s a currency people want.
FK: Or did he really think it, because someone told him the lie? I don’t know.
ELM: Do you think he saw it in a YouTube video?
FK: All right—
ELM: It wouldn’t be a James Somerton video. That man would never post anything that suggested misogyny existed.
FK: Womp womp… All right. [ELM laughs] All right. I think that’s the snake having its own tail, we have to wrap up. [both laugh]
ELM: Well, we’ll put lots of links in the show notes. If you haven’t watched this, watch it. Watch it, it’s really good.
FK: Yeah, I mean, I—yeah, like, six hours of YouTube videos about this or more, don’t regret it.
ELM: You can’t look away. No, I mean, it’s just, it’s very sharp commentary. Like, it’s good, and I think it says something really vital about this moment right now, beyond this.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: But I think it’s important for fandom, people in fandom, to see and to see the echoes. Like I said, chicken and egg.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: Like, this guy did not invent these arguments. He was capitalizing on the way that conversation already happens in fandom.
FK: Mmm hmm.
ELM: And people were then parroting what he said. And then it’s this terrible cycle. And someone probably out there is doing the same thing at a smaller scale, you know?
FK: Yep.
ELM: Or with different twists on a different subculture’s or whatever.
FK: It’s bad.
ELM: So anyway, everyone knew that Yuri on Ice was gay, whether you liked that kiss or not, is your own problem.
FK: Great. OK—
ELM: Because it aired at 2:30 in the morning, the gay witching hour, I believe the line was. [laughs]
FK: The gay witching hour. All right, Elizabeth, it has been a pleasure discussing this with you, even though we just got mad a lot.
ELM: I’m so glad that you took my word—you were just looking for someone to give you permission to watch this.
FK: Apparently!
ELM: You were like, “I wasn’t gonna do it, but now that you said…”
FK: I wasn’t going to, but it was tempting. But then I was like, “I can’t spend four hours on this.” Yes, I can. Yes, I can.
ELM: You’d be surprised how many, uh, how four hours just flies by, [FK laughs] when you are watching it in little chunks.
FK: Indeed. All right, I’m gonna talk to you later, after falling down another YouTube hole, possibly.
ELM: Our year in review! One more episode of the year. [FK gasps] I’ll see you then!
FK: Wow.
ELM: More AI thoughts coming. [laughs]
FK: Oh, God. Bye, Elizabeth!
ELM: OK, bye, Flourish!
[Outro music]