i was going to just edit this into my tags because it was an afterthought but its important enough im going to make a whole reblog:
i had literally never heard of james somerton before this whole thing. he apparently has an audience primarily of young queers who, through no fault of their own!!!!!! do not have the life experience yet to immediately clock this as bullshit. somerton is NOT unusual. people make shit videos about everything, even subjects that are much more recent and much less important than the history of gay survival. PLEASE assume everything you hear from youtube essayists in nonsense until you double check it. i mean everything. "ultimate creepypasta iceberg explained"? 9/10 of that type of video is just. bullshit. made up.
PLEASE talk to older people. talk to people who are older than 40 and 50. the 20th century was not a long time ago, there are tens of thousands of people on this very website who were in their 20s, or older, on 9/11. ask them why marriage equality was important to the AIDS movement. ask them what their parents told them about the 1960s. ask them if "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was considered shockingly sexual and improprietous when it was released IN NINETEEN SIXTY-THREE (another somerton claim that is so insane i cant even start to explain how angry it makes me).
and even more recent, smaller, stupider stuff! we were there when Slenderman was posted on Something Awful the first time. we know the full name and twitter handle of the guy who invented Smiledog.jpg. we know what the first SCP was and where and when it was posted. we know what "based" means and its entire etymology. we were there. just ask. these people are LYING TO YOU, because theyre making tens of thousands of dollars telling you bullshit that can be disproven with one trip to wikipedia. i sort of get it but i sort of dont, because im not a piece of shit!
