This past week I watched a video called “Plagiarism and You(tube)” made by HBomberguy. He described in great detail the strategies that several YouTube personalities used to steal intellectual work from other people. The mix and match of text, images, video, and style was dizzying. The environment described by HBomberguy is a strange one, with actors who are perversely at odds with the ethos of writing to remix described in Ridolfo and DeVoss (2009). The remixing work that plagiarists do to hide their actions is fascinating, but profoundly empty. While not archetypical, YouTube is a social media website and all the engagement, interaction, and collaboration that occurs in such spaces is also (to some extent, at least) encouraged and embraced by many of the creators that post their work there. Ironically, at the heart of the “work” of a plagiarist though, seems to be a refusal to engage with the work of other people. HBomberguy explores this, suggesting that YouTube plagiarists seem to have a warped idea of how creativity is accomplished and that the work they steal is in fact beneath their respect.
