Iilluminaughtii

{{hatnote|Were you perhaps looking for the actual [[Illuminati]]?}}
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[[File:Iilluminaughtii.webp|165px|thumb|Her YouTube Icon]]
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'''Blair Zòn''' {{lived|January 23 1993}}, known as '''iilluminaughtii''', is an American [[YouTube]]r who has gained infamy over the years for making factually inaccurate and plagiarized content all while being the absolute worst as a person. The account has over 1.25M subscribers as of 2024.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20240114092353/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpDmn2FfVYdPIDwRTcf5-OA iilluminaughtii] ''YouTube'' (archived from January 14, 2024).</ref>

==Plagiarism==
{{main|Plagiarism}}
[[File:Screenshot of sources.png|165px|thumb|right|A screenshot of lines 10-30 of her pastebin.<ref>[https://pastebin.com/L6KCq0ba Untitled]</ref> Now tell me, could you figure out which of these sources is the documentary she watched just by looking at it?{{efn|It's line 24.}}]]
One thing that is particularly infamous about Zòn's content is how she commonly takes other media, mostly documentaries and articles, and does little more than remake them for her audience. [[Hbomberguy]] in particular took notice of this and, on 4/20/2023, uploaded a short video onto [[Twitter]] showing examples of her copying the documentary ''MMR: What They Didn't Tell You'' for her own video on the [[anti-vaccine movement]].<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20230420232431/https://twitter.com/Hbomberguy/status/1649191520883429376 Personally, @iilluminaughtii, I would define plagiarism as something a bit more specific, for example copying someone else's documentary directly into your script] by @Hbomberguy (11:21 PM · Apr 20, 2023) ''YouTube'' (archived from April 20, 2023).</ref> Hbomberguy later discussed this in greater detail in his video "Plagiarism and You(Tube)" where he not only talked about this incident, but made note of how much of the video that was not from said documentary consisted of her reading other articles, most of which she took from the [[Wikipedia]] page of [[Andrew Wakefield]], and he discusses her video on the Fyre Festival and notes how it is essentially identical to the documentary on the subject found on Netflix.<ref name=plagiarism>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDp3cB5fHXQ Plagiarism and You(Tube)]</ref>

Of course, nothing is inherently wrong with using other sources in your content in order to create something original, however the issue with her work was that she was not only using clips from documentaries, but she was also repeating the narration — frequently word for word — while downplaying how large of a role this content played in the creation of her work. Going back to her video on the Fyre Festival, Hbomberguy notes how she briefly mentioned watching it for research at the end of her video and gave no other reference, in spite of the fact that most of her information came from that film in particular. Furthermore, he notes multiple examples of Zòn blurring out logos, watermarks, and other associated credits found in the original content for no other reason than her not wanting her viewers to have to look at the word "Netflix" on the vast majority of her footage (i.e., not including attribution, a key element of plagiarism).<ref name=plagiarism/>

In response to the claim about plagiarizing her vaccines video, Zòn uploaded a video defending herself in which she claimed she did credit the documentary that she used for research, specifically, she made it a link in a pastebin she put in the description of her videos. Comically enough, she herself was unable to refind the link to the documentary when scrolling through her sources in order to make this point,<ref name=plagiarism/> which goes to show the issue with this line of reasoning. Although her crediting of the source does make this slightly better than if she were to have not acknowledged the documentary in the first place, the fact that viewers would have so much trouble finding her sources (remember, she made the citation list and even she was unable to refind it) goes to show that she is, at the very least, not engaging in proper crediting of the material she is using.

===Those in glass houses===
On 4/20/2023, Zòn wrote a Twitter thread accusing the editors of YouTuber Legal Eagle of attempting to copy her style, noting emails they sent to her editors asking how they do certain effects, such as their use of stylistic choices like torn paper over quotes and highlighting the words they're reading.<ref>[https://imgur.com/a/jFu4YNk Illuminaughty deleted tweets]</ref> 

Of course, much of this is too generic to be considered part of her "style" as she calls it, and Legal Eagle himself noted this in a tweet responding to these accusations, where he also mentions that his channel had been using these elements long before Zòn did.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20230421003304/https://twitter.com/LegalEagle/status/1649152164495781914 Plus the two 'styles' (a pseudo paper rip and a highlight) are extremely common on YouTube. The editor you're talking about, didn't even design either of those two elements.  Again, we've used them for 3-4 years at this point.] by @LegalEagle (8:44 PM · Apr 20, 2023) ''Twitter'' (archived from April 21, 2023).</ref>

Zòn did apologize for this the following day, although she did not make said apology public until a week after the fact.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20230428180039/https://twitter.com/iilluminaughtii/status/1652000183104811010 To @LegalEagle although I have apologized privately, I would like to do so now publicly. I am sorry for making editing styling claims that were inaccurate. I jumped the gun, thought hastily, and should have messaged you privately to hash things out. I am sorry.] by @illuminaughtii (5:21 PM · Apr 28, 2023) ''Twitter'' (archived from April 28, 2023).</ref> However, this incident is still notable if only because of the odd [[hypocrisy]] that Zòn presented in this situation. One would think somebody who so consistently borrows from the content of others would be more understanding of asking for help regarding the use of a rather basic stylistic choice, but instead she seemed to be under the impression that she personally owned these specific forms of editing.

==Factual errors==
Another common issue with her content is, to be blunt, she gets things wrong on a rather consistent basis. Going back to Hbomberguy, he uploaded a video on his second channel with the title "Iilluminaughtii and the perils of lazy video essays" where he goes into detail about exactly this, specifically noting her misunderstanding of the [[Stanford prison experiment]] and her incorrect statements regarding the lore of the video game series ''Silent Hill''.<ref name=perils>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=403eGkWv4MA Iilluminaughtii and the perils of lazy video essays] by H.BurgerGuy (Dec 5, 2023) ''YouTube''.</ref>

To be more specific, she uncritically repeated the conclusions from Stanford prison experiment when most people working in the modern [[psychology]] believe it to be a flawed study with notable methodical errors that keep it from being useful when it comes to understanding how humans would act in such a situation, and incorrectly says the entire video game series ''Silent Hill'' is based off of the town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, when in actuality that is only true about the movies (Hbomberguy even note that people involved with the games have corrected this numerous times).<ref name=perils/>

Hbomberguy is also far from the first person to note how frequently Zòn gets things wrong. One of Zòn's most popular videos, with nearly three million views at time of writing, is her 8/29/2020 work "The Aftermath of Seaworld."<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOkx6A02ero The Aftermath of Seaworld]</ref> However, the video was full of nonsense, to the point where on 12/15/2020 a user a Tumblr named Derangehyena-Delphinidae made a post documenting twenty three different errors present in the video.<ref>[https://derangedhyena-delphinidae.tumblr.com/post/637608962844475392/numerous-issues-with-the-aftermath-of-seaworld numerous issues with “The Aftermath of Seaworld”]</ref> This is far from the only time this happened, those in Vocaloid community have also had to take it upon themselves to correct Blair on her misinformation in the past, with both a Google Document<ref>[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bdIyOtb4Hd8sG8St0TZhOZxJ8dOmvP7ZpQoAJD0twPU/edit Misinformation and Innaprorpiate Comments Regarding The Video]</ref> and a commentary<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaR2CSUYty8 Let's Talk About Illuminaughtii's Vocaloid Video | feat.@sors3750​]</ref> being made by those knowledgeable about the topic regarding her content. Her videos on [[PETA]], regardless of what one thinks about the organization, have been shown to be based around misinformation primarily spread from astroturfed sources.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzX8g3vGPXY Why Everyone Hates PETA (it's astroturfing)]</ref> Her video on BIID makes a series of mistakes about the disorder.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qowPHZb4LEc Iilluminaughtii's (Un)Truth about BIID (Transableism)]</ref> Her video on Veganism had several factual errors and was described as "lazy" by one user who commentated on it.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g96KpzP0wp8 iilluminaughtii's lazy vegan takedown]</ref>

Basically, any time she makes a video on a topic, those who are actually knowledgeable about what is being discussed find several flaws in her content.

==Laziness==
If the previously mentioned plagiarism and incorrect statements fail to give it away, her videos are incredibly lazy. She has previously acknowledged making three videos every week, with all of them being around four-thousand words in length, and its clear she does not have the ability to make videos that fast unless she refuses to do independent research or even put in the most basic effort to make sure her videos are of quality. Going back to Hbomberguy, he notes multiple examples of her videos being filled with failed takes that she just decided to leave in, or failures to pronounce things important to the topic at hand which could have been easily fixed.<ref name=perils/> However, things have gotten worse quality-wise as time has gone on, with a video at the tail end of 2023 infamously having her audio cut out for five minutes.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGoQzIp0g10 The Dark Side of Disaster Relief]</ref> This is not even the first time something like this has occurred, as three months beforehand Zoe had uploaded a video with the exact same audio glitch.<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok4KRV6tuF0 Kenya’s Starvation Cult]</ref>

==External links==
*[https://youtube.fandom.com/wiki/Iilluminaughtii iilluminaughtii] ''Wikitubia''

==Notes==
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==References==
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[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Plagiarists]]
[[Category:YouTube]]

Categories: Living people, Plagiarists, YouTube