Category: Media

Wow. I watched this across multiple sessions and it was worth every minute. It’s a well-researched and engaging essay by hbomberguy, an essayist known for his really in-depth videos. This video starts talking about examples of people taking verbatim from other writers and creators with no care for proper credit or respect. Then it gets really deep into one incredibly unfortunate instance.

As an aside to the main narrative of the video, I think it also hits on the importance of digital literacy and critical thinking skills. If the average person can’t separate the cheap knock-off shit from actual work then we’re doomed. We’ll learn things that are not true by people who appear as educators but are actually charlatans. It’s hard to unlearn things and this grifter-level shit just makes it harder to have a shared understanding of a topic.

The people being called out in this video themselves don’t appear to know (or maybe they do know, which is even worse) how actual research and citation works! They just want to make a quick buck. Ugh.

I’m going to sound like an old man, but what if young, impressionable, people are watching this? Do they grow up thinking this is how it’s done? Where, like, they might think plagiarism is just how you get by and everybody does it so it’s OK. Are they even aware they’re being fed BS? I wonder if this sort of lazy work reinforces the roundabout logic of “my side can’t win so I reject reality” we see so often when folks are presented with information that contradicts their understanding.

The whole thing boils down to if you don’t understand how to cite your work, you end up making a bad book report.