Social media has become engulfed in debate after British YouTuber Hbomberguy accused a fellow content creator, Internet Historian, of plagiarism, sparking this week’s biggest social media drama.
Hbomberguy, real name Harris Michael Brewis, is most known for his lengthy video essays covering topics like vaccinations, flat earth theory, gaming and pop culture. In his latest video, which finishes at a whopping 3 hours and 51 minutes, he made some startling revelations that have since broken the internet.
Internet Historian and Hbomberguy drama explained
The video, entitled “Plagiarism and You(Tube)”, has currently amassed over 2.9 million views in just over 24 hours. Hbomberguy alleges that New Zealand YouTuber Internet Historian, real name Anthony McCormack, stole his most popular video from a Mental Floss article.
The documentary in question is called “Man in Cave” and dives into the story of American explorer Floyd Collins. The adventurer was most known for exploring miles of interconnected caves in the Kentucky area before he was tragically killed in 1925.
In his essay, Hbomberguy revealed that “Man in a Cave” had been taken down by YouTube after they received a copyright claim from Pro Sportority.
Internet Historian’s video allegedly stole content from Lucas Reilly’s article, The 1925 Cave Rescue That Captivated the Nation article. Several lines showed up in both the original article and the video essay.
Despite being taken down by the platform, Internet Historian reposted the video numerous times. It is currently on his channel and boasts 1.8m views.
“Right now he looks like a plagiarist and a liar and a coward who’s willing to ruin his own video and let it gather dust unlisted in the corner to try and hide what he did,” Hbomberguy scathed in his essay.
Twitter is split between Hbomberguy and Internet Historian
While Internet Historian is yet to respond to the claims, fans on either side are debating the topic fiercely on social media. On X, formally known as Twitter, one person wrote: “…feelin’ real embarrassed to’ve said I was an internet historian fan right about now.”
Another agreed: “The funniest thing about this whole Hbomberguy thing is seeing accounts called something like loliconepsteinfan1488 who obviously haven’t watched the video being the only ones defending Internet Historian. His reputation would truly suffer less if you stayed silent.”
In contrast, others have leapt to Internet Historian’s defence, with one penning: “So Internet Historian creates a video using Mental Floss’s article without their permission, they copyright claim the video, Internet Historian and Mental Floss work it out, and 6 months later HBomberguy decided to interject himself into something that didn’t involve him.”
