Who is YouTuber Hbomberguy?

YouTuber Hbomberguy is at the centre of a viral story concerning fellow content creator James Somerton.

Somerton was accused of plagiarising a number of authors in a long video posted by the Hbomberguy YouTube account.

Somerton is known for posting videos about LGBT+ literature and at one stage had around 333,000 subscribers on the platform. However, social media users recently shared concerns for Somerton after he posted worrying messages online, following the plagiarism claims back in December.

Hbomberguy’s video was posted in December and has more than 17 million views.

Plagiarism and You(Tube)www.youtube.com

Hbomberguy, real name Harry Brewis, is a British YouTuber with 1.65m subscribers.

As a self-described “media critic and philosopher king”, most of the 31-year-old’s content involves discussing pop culture.

His other popular videos include 'Sherlock is Garbage, And Here's Why' and 'Fallout: New Vegas Is Genius, And Here's Why', which have racked up 13m and 10m views respectively.

However, some of his biggest videos have involved deep dives on conspiracy theories, debunking fake claims and debating with right-wing sentiments online. He’s hit out at anti-vaxxers and Flat Earth conspiracists in his videos before.

His biggest video to date is titled 'Plagiarism and You(Tube)', which was released in December and comes in at a lengthy three hours and 51 minutes.

In that video, Somerton was accused of plagiarising a number of authors – something which Somerton apologised for in two clips that have since been deleted.

Somerton said: "I’m really, really sorry. For the stuff in the videos, the not crediting people and – for a lot of videos, I did the opening titles thing and I tried to put, ‘This is based on this person’s research or this person’s book’, but I know now that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t okay.”

He added: "There were a lot of times that stuff just got put in, and there was no attempt at crediting anybody."

Sign up for our free indy100 weekly newsletter

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings