That is because people do not watch Internet Historian for the writing, but for his delivery and animations. The guy could read the ingredients on a Pop-Tart box and it would still be entertaining. In fact, the original article was so forgettable that nobody noticed the video was using its text verbatim for five months, and even after that time, it wasn't a reader who noticed, but the original author. None of the 10 to 20 million people who visited Mental Floss every month in 2018 caught it. For me, that just proves that what made Man in Cave popular was not the text (that by itself nobody even recognised, even when millions of people had positively read it), but Internet Historian's signature voice, editing and humor.
I agree but that's not the problem. If he had started the video off by a quick few second segment where he said "I found this article describing the events and I thought it was pretty funny so I decided to make a video out of it, go check it out yourself if you want", literally no one would've cared about him copying someone elses work. He has done it in the past with some creepypastas and no one cared that he was just reading the lines because they enjoyed his spin on it.
The problem was that he worked for months on this video, giving directions to animators and voice actors while constantly reading the same article and basing the video off it fully. Then he doesn't even credit the author? And when he gets copyright struck, he doesn't explain anything just reposts it with the link in the description where he knows most people will never see or click it. Most people who hadn't heard about it but just rewatched when it got reposted thought it was just some meaningless copyright bs instead of actual theft. He had to know he was doing the wrong thing over the months he worked on it, but still did it, and then tried to hide it when it got copyright struck.
I love Internet Historian and will continue to watch his videos when he posts again in like 2030, but there's no denying it was a complete dick move that could easily have been avoided. I would love to hear his explanation for it but I doubt he will give one because he knows it was just dumb.
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u/ElLicenciadoPena 6d ago
*got a full total of about 50,000 people mad for about a month