Interesting interview with Hbomberguy over THAT video:
For Harry, the shocking success of his four-hour video has itself brought a few internal issues surrounding a pledge he made to give away a portion of its profits to those who had been plagiarised.
“We said we were going to give away all the ad revenue that video raised and now because ad revenue’s higher in December, the video is four hours so there are more ads, and a lot of people have watched it, it’s an order of magnitude higher than we expected it to get.”
This means that the payouts Harry and the Hbomberguy team promised have increased dramatically, and, coupled with Somerton’s reaction, things have become much more hectic.
“Now, like, taxes are involved,” Harry says. “This is a substantial amount of money to be taxed on before we give it to people. It’s actually made it harder for me to do the intended purpose of the video.
“My wonderful producer, Kat, has had to set up a database to keep track of all of the things that were stolen from just to make sure we have everything correct… This isn’t like 300 bucks, which is what we expected it to be, this is a lot more.”
Good to know that something worthwhile has come from the debacle. The REALLY unexpected outcome from the whole thing, though, is surely this:
I will indeed be DAMNED. James Somerton returned just two weeks after he was blasted off the Internet to… apologise? And to reactivate his Patreon, too, but this video is what’s drawing most of the attention. Understandably so. And… YIKES.
These last two items raise an important point. I did try and watch Somerton’s video, and he basically started by talking about, frankly, having been hospitalised since Harry’s video came out. And I couldn’t watch it beyond that point, not because that’s, you know, grim as fuck (I’m assuming he’s telling the truth about this, I find it believable and I feel the people I’ve seen questioning this point are being unnecessarily uncharitable), but because I knew what the tone of the rest of the video would be if this was how he was kicking it off. From what I can see, I don’t appear to have missed much.
You may have noted, though, that my first screenshsot was of a reupload of the video… that’s cos not only did James upload what appears to have been one of the worst Youtube apology videos ever (a truly cursed subgenre), he also removed it a few hours later. Unsurprising, given that all the comments I saw before he whacked the video were bracingly negative. Alas for him, it’s so easy to download YT videos these days, and Somerton’s well enough known now, that someone was bound to save it in case he did that. Mind you, I’m still not going to watch it. I feel somehow that even watching someone else’s save and reupload of his video is just going to encourage him…
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