Suicide and You(Tube)

A lot of people hate me, and they spend a good amount of time letting me know.

People have sent me death threats, sent me gory videos and photos, tweeted naked photos of me at my family members, and painstakingly matched interior shots of my house to old rental listings so they could dox me.

The purpose of this harassment—the fun of it, I suppose—is to inflict psychological harm.

It’s a game. If I sleep soundly, make art, and spend time with loved ones, I win. If I kill myself, they win.

As someone on Twitter said a few days ago, they look forward to my inevitable “sewer slide.”

Because my phone is the main vector for these psychological attacks, I have a second phone I use for entertainment only. No DMs, no social media, no nothing. This is the phone I sleep with.

Yesterday morning, like many mornings, I broke my rule and checked Reddit while still in bed. The first thing I saw was James Somerton’s apparent suicide note, posted to his private Twitter account:

If this message is live it means I scheduled it before ending things. I have videos scheduled to go out over the next couple of days. Nothing new. I just wanted Nick's portfolio of work to be available. I've left directions that any money from those videos be donated to The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention. They've tried very hard to pull me back but there's simply no life for me anymore. I've lost everything... My only friend, my livelihood, my name... And it's all my own fault. The world will be a little bit better off now. Goodbye.

I believe suicide is a form of murder. You’re killing a defenseless human being, even if it’s you.

And like most murders, suicides are preceded by distorted thoughts, dysregulated emotions, and little foresight. One study found that nearly half of suicide attempts occur after just ten minutes of ideation. (Deisenhammer, Ing, Strauss, Kemmler, Hinterhuber, and Weiss, 2009.)

I’ve known a couple people who killed themselves, and many more that have tried, and one common variable I’ve noticed is the intense shame about being a burden. Look at James here—claiming to make the world a slightly better place by leaving.

This sense of worthlessness was probably instilled in him when he was a child.

I know nothing about the guy, but let’s imagine how it could happen. Say he has some narcissistic, unhappy parent who makes him feel like it’s his job to bring them joy. It’s an impossible task, but he does his best. Making a miserable person feel briefly happy is a wonderful feeling, so the highs are high, but the failures are punishingly bleak. The unbearable weight of all-encompassing responsibility becomes one side of the coin of sociopathy, which in turn births the other: a corresponding feeling that nothing is his fault.

He adapts to the excessive shaming by living and breathing shame. Sometimes he brings it on himself intentionally, other times he lies to evade it, but most importantly he loses the ability to decide on his own terms whether things are his fault.

James then blossoms into the pathological liar we know today. But no one wants to be a pathological liar—it’s a defense mechanism. This fictional tale serves to illustrate that James came from an environment where this was his best option for survival.

The problem is that lying itself is shameful, and one predictor of suicide might be the tendency to fix problems with more of the thing that is causing them.

I have a similar habit. Sometimes when I feel utterly hopeless and alone, I want to check social media, even if the harassment is the reason I want to die in the first place. Hey, maybe somebody said something nice about me, right? You never know.

Social media is already designed to generally make you feel bad with occasional jolts of euphoria so you get addicted. Your drug of choice will always make you feel bad and then offer itself as a cure. When social media is your job, or your main locus of identity, the addiction is significantly more powerful because the feelings become so all-encompassing that nothing else can matter.

Ironically, many social-media-addicted people will helpfully suggest that you just “log off” or “touch grass” if you are feeling suicidal—effectively mocking you for feeling bad, continuing to make you feel bad, and suggesting you stop reading their own comments all at once.

For example, upon hearing about James’s apparent suicide note, one Reddit user wrote:

This isn't an EDP, James Bear, or Onision situation. What James Somerton did was fucked up, but not bad enough for me to wish death upon him. If he has genuinely attempted suicide and survived, he should take a very long, if not permanent, hiatus from videos. Because he is clearly not in a healthy enough headspace to be in the public eye.

For scale, EDP tried to meet a 13-year-old (who didn’t really exist) for sex, James Bear had sex with his 9-year-old sister when he was 13, and Onision is facing two lawsuits alleging he used his platform to groom minors into having sex with him.

I don’t think these people should kill themselves.

I’m laying all this out so you can see that James was psychologically fragile and destined for an implosion that should have happened in a therapist’s office. Instead, he built a career on lying, enjoyed an artificial respite from his suffocating shame, and then was plunged into those intolerable depths by another YouTuber and their combined audiences.

hbomberguy, real name Harry Brewis, describes himself on Twitter as a “Gaming Youtuber, Media Critic, Philosopher King.”

On Patreon, where he has over 19,000 patrons donating at least $2/month, his profile states: “I live in a cabin in the woods and browse the web. I used to have a real job, but now I make videos for the internet for some reason.”

I suspect the cutesy bios are calculated to soothe the cognitive dissonance of a self-described “libertarian socialist” accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions, in donations from his devoted lefty audience.

Brewis could easily live off his YouTube earnings alone (especially in a cabin), but, despite earning a minimum of $38,000 per month on Patreon, his bio rationalizes his standing request for donations:

With Patreon support I can afford to pay a Producer to keep current and future projects on track, and hire artists, musicians, animators, and researchers to enhance the work as much as possible.

Support also helps me get better production equipment, various props, and subscriptions to software like the Adobe Suite, which you have to pay for every month or you can't use it any more, because that's how the world works now.

He makes it sound like he’s giving all the money to lovable artists and musicians, and meanwhile it’s greedy Adobe who makes the unnecessary demands for monthly payments.

My intuition here is that Brewis suffers from his own imposter syndrome and is haunted by survivor’s guilt. Similar to Somerton, he believes he doesn’t deserve what he has, and what may look like manipulative grifting is more likely a desperate justification of his own right to exist, something he’s probably been doing since he was a child as well.

This would also explain Brewis’s obvious hatred for Somerton. Being discovered as a fraud is Brewis’s nightmare, and I believe this compelled him to expose Somerton’s plagiarism and simultaneously define himself as honest and deserving of his own successful career.

And isn’t that what we humans do? Even sperm are sociopathic. In our survival-oriented minds there’s no such thing as intrinsic good, there is only winning.

And win he did. The epic takedown video, titled “Plagiarism and You(Tube),” runs just under four hours, about two of which are devoted to Somerton.

According to socialblade.com, Somerton lost 73,000 subscribers (out of 336,000) within a week. After an initial denial and some poorly-received attempts at an apology, Somerton deleted his Patreon and Twitter, turned off comments on YouTube, and retreated from the internet.

Brewis’s subreddit, r/hbomberguy, has chronicled and celebrated every minutiae of Somerton’s downfall.

At least, that’s my interpretation. Brewis’s fans mirror his indignance as well as his thinly-veiled snarky contempt, but I’ve been the lightning rod for plenty of faux outrage, and I’d recognize those hateful little squeals of joy anywhere.

r/hbomberguy comment, December 3, 2023:

No James. I’m (almost) sorry but there isn’t coming back from this. No sob story is fixing this, no excuse is going to mend this or make it right. You have been lying to us for years, straight facedly lying. […] The game is done, the train has pulled into the station, the curtain has dropped and the show is over. In five years, ten, maybe more you’ll be forgotten about; you might be able to slink back to a local gay bar, you might be able to mend your real personal relationships, and get back to life as it is, but your time as a figure is done.

r/hbomberguy comment, December 3, 2023:

I'm gonna be totally honest, I'm trying really hard not to slip totally into schadenfreude and -vibrate with glee- watching this misogynistic parasite crash and burn. […] You're right to feel pity for James. I'm just too disgusted by him to be able to.

On December 20, eighteen days after the release of Brewis’s video, Somerton posted an apology video in which he tearfully states that he had just been hospitalized after a suicide attempt.

He then offers a slippery apology claiming he didn’t know he’d plagiarized (this isn’t credible given the evidence presented by Brewis), and shifts back to explaining how much this has negatively impacted him:

[…] I’m really, really sorry. And I’m not sorry that I got caught. I’m sorry for ever doing it. I honestly didn’t realize that I was hurting people. And now that I know that I was hurting people, I’m just really sorry. I lost my best friend because of this. Nick and I have been best friends since 2012 […] and he hasn’t spoken to me since this happened.

Even when he acknowledges the “outright lies” in his videos, he makes a point of implying that Nick Herrgott, his co-creator, was to blame for their inclusion, despite mourning the loss of Herrgott’s friendship just moments ago.

The r/hbomberguy discussion post about the apology video currently sits at 4.4k upvotes, making it the fifth most popular post in the subreddit’s history.

Comment with 1.2k upvotes:

People thought they were getting James’s opinions on media, with some academic sources thrown in to bolster his arguments. People thought he was giving HIS OPINIONS. […]

Pathological liars don’t have opinions. They are constantly in survival mode and their only opinion is they want security.

Comment with 374 upvotes:

Im truly sorry he felt he needed to go so far as to hurt himself, but Im not taking stock into anything he says given his astonishing history of lies, deceit, and manipulation. […] This “apology” is a pity party and Im glad that people are calling him out on the trauma dumping, half baked response. I thought it would be bad, but not THIS bad.

Suicidal people need someone to tell them that they deserve to live, even if they are a trauma dumping liar. In fact, if they’re at the point of attempting suicide, they probably don’t have the best social skills and are some type of asshole.

By that point Somerton’s Internet presence had been completely dominated by Brewis’s video, so it was probably safe to take the suicide attempt claim at face value and stop talking about him.

This is when the r/hbomberguy subreddit should have banned all mention of Somerton.

Comment with 416 upvotes:

"I didn't realize I was hurting people." Damn, James. The people who your fans harassed viciously because those people told the truth about your plagiarism and you lied to cover your lies... […] You don't think some of them had mental health spirals or did something to themselves as a result of the attacks? Even setting aside the plagiarism, this piece was messed up.

[…] If you didn't realize that those things were hurting people, then you really need to work on your awareness. […]

This commenter could work on their awareness, too. Since the commenter is admitting that a large volume of these exact types of comments can push someone over the edge, they should stop dogpiling the suicidal guy.

Back in December, I only watched an hour of Brewis’s video before I had to turn it off.

I started watching YouTube regularly in 2010 when a friend of mine showed me RedLetterMedia’s Phantom Menace review. It’s a wild, instructive, depraved, and extremely vitriolic 70-minute takedown of the first Star Wars prequel.

At the time, billionaire celebrities seemed like distant, invincible people (now we all know that is far from the truth), and I was happy to have someone mockingly articulate why the Star Wars prequels felt so off to me. It actually became a new way to enjoy Star Wars, albeit at George Lucas’s expense.

I eventually began to consume all of RedLetterMedia’s content, including their B-movie review show, Best of the Worst.

But, as the years went by, my opinion of their content began to sour. This was a sad process for me—I’ve seen many of my own fans go through it with my work—but I increasingly found myself wincing at their jokes at the expense of old and fat people. Then I began to question the morality of Best of the Worst as a whole, which exists solely to mock people who make bad movies.

The nail in the coffin was probably RedLetterMedia’s release of their own movie, Space Cop. It was poorly-received by fans, including me, not because it was bad, but because it was bad on purpose. This recontextualized all of their content as mean-spirited and cowardly, and the whole channel became depressing.

The RedLetterMedia crew were clearly once aspiring filmmakers. They didn’t learn all of this shit because they wanted to film themselves shitting on movies—they wanted to make them. But since achieving success on YouTube, they’ve only made one, and they didn’t take any risks or show any vulnerability.

What used to seem like good-natured humor started to read as bitterness. They were mocking these goofy, clumsy, shitty filmmakers because they were actually jealous of them. While Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman did make some low budget films when they were younger, they clearly no longer feel brave enough to risk failure, and now they sit in their chairs and ridicule those who do.

On one hand it’s comforting, like a raging thunderstorm giving you an excuse to sit by a cozy fire all night. On the other hand they’re reinforcing and monetizing the audience’s fear of failure to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars each month.

I’ve gone through this same cycle with several other YouTubers. Dan Olson, Karl Jobst, Angry Joe, Jenny Nicholson, KiraTV—they’re talented creators, but ultimately they just make hate content.

The truth is that there are very few situations where a smug, scathing video essay is morally warranted, and audiences tend to clutch their pearls about minor issues to justify the hate content they consume. Yes, Somerton plagiarized and his content is therefore unethical and dull—got it, now move on and watch something else.

Instead, we harangue him until he kills himself.

[A reader and fellow substack writer (https://www.substack.com/@sorryisaidthat) pointed out in the comments of this post that YouTube bears some responsibility in this. While victims of plagiarism can file copyright claims themselves, it is risky and potentially costly to do so. Without a built-in way to report complex or subtle bad behavior, mob justice becomes the default.]

Yesterday, after I read Somerton’s suicide note, I started to have trouble seeing the words on my phone.

I was getting a migraine. The halo was long and horizontal, just under the focal point of my vision, which meant I had to look at each word individually in order to read anything. I kicked myself for not hydrating adequately.

I don’t get migraines often—the last time I did, I had just interviewed a psychologist about Dr. K’s exploitative streams with a creator named Reckful who killed himself a few months after.

Upon realizing this, and seeing that my pee was actually pretty clear-looking, I wondered if maybe I’m not doing as well in the don’t-kill-yourself game as I’d previously thought. As a sensitive, vulnerable person who makes provocative content, I’ve placed myself in a precarious position, haven’t I?

I spent the next eight hours in bed, willing away the blindness and thinking about what people would say if I killed myself.

Would Shoe0nHead, who said I “deserved being beaten with a bunch of hammers,” celebrate openly?

Yeah, probably.

My most hated opinions are always about empathizing with pariahs. Pedophiles, mass shooters, rapists, Nazis, and now plagiarists like Somerton and that wretched Claudine Gay.

As of this writing, Brewis himself has made no public statement regarding Somerton’s suicide note. His most recent mention of Somerton was a pair of tweets from four days ago:

James has released a new video, and it's pure content mill. His list of sources (which is a step up at least!) makes it abundantly clear he just loosely paraphrased his favorite True Crime podcast.

That said, congratulations to James on his non-plagiarised video!

Regarding the suicide note, Brewis’s producer gave this cryptic reassurance on Twitter:

Multiple people have been in touch and I'm not in a place to disclose anything, but I wanted to let people know that things might be okay as soon as is possible.

Here are two Reddit comments from the same user:

Two days ago, 1.6k upvotes:

I have a strong dislike for James but no one wanted this outcome. I hope it isn’t true and he’s somewhere safe getting crisis care. Hating someone’s actions and still wanting them to stay alive can absolutely coexist and definitely should.

And just after Somerton’s first suicide attempt:

He needs to leave YouTube. Forever. Disappear and go get a job as a telemarketer since all he’s good for is reading other people’s words to scam people out of their money.

I understand this user is not purposely trying to make Somerton kill himself, but telling a suicidal person they are worthless is irresponsible and shouldn’t be normalized in any creator’s community or on any platform.

Another pair from a different user:

Two days ago, 1.4k upvotes:

I hope he doesn’t follow through with this. Just because he’s no longer credible as an essayist doesn’t mean his life is unredeemable.

And after the first suicide attempt:

James Somerton went from being a mildly interesting character on the fringes of LGBTQ YouTube to having his name become a synonym for plagiarism. He’s now far more recognized as a cheat and a liar than he ever was as an essayist. […]

What if you had to choose? Push one button and James Somerton gets to cheat and manipulate his way through life. Push another button and he kills himself.

Would you get out some masking tape and a sharpie and label the suicide button “I’m just calling out bad behavior,” and then push it?

In a firing squad execution, one executioner is given a blank round that fires no projectile. That way, every shooter can comfort themselves with plausible deniability.

In 1919, a British soldier who’d been part of a firing squad that executed a deserter, wrote:

“I had the satisfaction of knowing that as soon as I fired, from the absence of any recoil that I had merely fired a blank cartridge.”

(Simon, 2021.)

---

Deisenhammer EA, Ing CM, Strauss R, Kemmler G, Hinterhuber H, Weiss EM. The duration of the suicidal process: how much time is left for intervention between consideration and accomplishment of a suicide attempt? J Clin Psychiatry. 2009 Jan;70(1):19-24. Epub 2008 Oct 21. PMID: 19026258.

Webb, Simon. Fighting for the United States, Executed in Britain: US Soldiers Court-Martialed in WWII. Pen and Sword Military, 2021.