one positive thing i took away from the plagiarism hbomb was that young people are curious and willing to engage with complex cultural analysis done at an academic level! james somerton's following skewed young and gay, and i doubt all of them were college students. of those who were college students, i doubt all of them were majoring in literature or sociology. so his level of success in stealing cultural criticism and gay history from actual academics (among others!) means, to me, that if you just take that same genuinely meaningful and complex content and wrap it the non-intimidating packaging of a youtube video, there are many people who are downright eager to learn! they were out here PAYING for it too! in a time when the attention span of The Youths™ is a subject of concern in conversations of The Olds, this has to be a good thing.
of course now we just gotta get them this information & analysis through guys that aren't heinous thieves lol