This is not a diss on hbomberguy. Far from it – I’m a fan of his work, frequently left in awe at the commitment of his research and his ability to weave it together into a coherent narrative (all the moreso because I get the impression he makes his videos on the fly, as he’s researching – more than once, a video slows down for him to say “I wanted to stop here, but…”). The ideal consequence of this essay is not him deleting all his videos and shutting down his channel and I don’t want him to stop and I don’t even want him to change anything he does – really, this isn’t even about him so much as what he represents, how people react to him, where he might go in the future, and how none of those things are an unalloyed good.

This is written less than a fortnight after he immolated James Somerton’s career, spawned by two realisations. One: Harris “hbomberguy” Brewis is a comedian and producer who has discovered a talent for intense research and critical thinking that has led him to expose conmen and frauds, interweaving these exposés with left-wing social commentary contextualising them within a larger system without ever losing that sense of humour, and hey, haven’t we heard this story before? I don’t want to leave any doubt here: I believe Harris is this generation’s Jon Stewart. If I were a man less cynical about what humans do in a group, I would say this is our chance to do over without the mistakes of the past, but I’m not that man – not only are there going to be many cheap imitations coming in Brewis’s wake, he’s very obviously identifying some of them in that very video.

Which leads me to my second observation: “Plagiarism and You(tube)” has led to the most material effect Brewis has ever had on the world. I’m going to be critical here, so I’ll say upfront that exposing Somerton’s fraud and plagiarism is a good thing, I just think it’s best to qualify exactly how much good was done and how it was done. First of all, like so many ‘cancellations’, nobody destroyed James Somerton except James Somerton. I don’t mean in the sense that his actions brought about his downfall – I mean literally, as soon as the video came out, Somerton deleted his Youtube channel*, Discord channel, and other social media. There is an unavoidable truth that must be faced up to: we on the left love our moral outrages exactly as much as the right loves theirs. It feels so good to lord one’s moral superiority over others, and it’s very easy to convince oneself that all you have to do is point out the evil in the world.

(*I considered throwing in a Brewis-style “this is foreshadowing” joke back in the first paragraph but decided against it)

It doesn’t quite work like that. It worked on Somerton because a) he apparently does give up in the face of shame and b) he’s in exactly the correct position for Brewis to attack his audience and reputation. He was really a peer to Brewis – on the same level of fame and power. On the other hand, despite his gleeful (literal) hatchet job, Ben Shapiro continues to generate fame and fortune long after Brewis roasted the shit out of him. Obviously, this is because Shapiro has a strong audience that has very little crossover with Brewis. There’s also that Shapiro is fuelled by shame – not just personally, in that he will double down in the face of it, but in that his audience soaks it up, more and more convinced of his correctness given that the ‘wrong people’ hate him. From one perspective, Brewis’s video on Shapiro was a commercial strengthening his brand.

(This is why I’m averse to publicly (and sometimes privately) joining in on hating public right-wing talking heads, particularly the ones who seem to primarily operate on Twitter. Making leftists angry is what they do for a living, and I’m too proud to be a right-winger’s product)

That said: Brewis is also an artist. The thing about being an artist is that everything you make – good and bad – is part of your development. Those futile – even self-defeating – strikes against bigger targets were things he needed to work through to get to where he is now. Obviously, there is the development of the filmmaking craft; his writing, his performance, his editing. There’s also the accumulation of resources; the money and time to make these deep-dive investigations, pulling up every video he can to make his argument and show the patterns that pop up, as well as having a producer and other staff. Most of all, there’s the audience – if I made a video about James Somerton, even one exactly as clear-eyed and detailed and funny, it would sink like a stone because nobody’s ever heard of me. Brewis drew you in by striking at an easy-but-immortal target and now he can do some real good.

Which leads me to the intangible positive qualities of Brewis’s work. Many of his fans credit him with teaching them to see the world through a more critical eye and educating them on media literacy and critical thinking by his example. In my case, I tend to enjoy his deep dives into topics I was already aware of but don’t specifically know much about; my favourite of his works is “Vaccines and Autism: A Measured Response”, because I was as shocked and amused as he was by the revelation that the connection is based on literally nothing. It was a genuinely educational experience about something that’s very important with an amusing perspective to carry me through.

On top of all of this… he’s really fucking funny. I can talk all I want about the real consequences of engaging with right-wing demagogues, but I can’t deny that I enjoy living in a world with the phrase “SELL IT TO WHO, BEN?! FUCKING AQUAMAN?!” I believe things that are aesthetically pleasing – beautiful, funny, entertainingly gross – don’t need to justify their existence. I believe Brewis is, if anything, more concerned about his work’s effect on the world and the limitations of what he can do than I am and recognises how much of what he does affects individuals without changing the systems that generate them; as he points out, while Somerton is (at least for now) no longer a threat, it’s still quite possible for another grifter to rise and no visible way to prevent that which may not cause even more disastrous consequences (I find his observation that ‘giving Youtube even more censorious powers to prevent another Somerton would be catastrophic’ to be quite poignant). I believe there is a moral path forward, and a moral path forward as a fan of his, even if I don’t know what it is yet.