YouTube Comments: The Ultimate Proof of Human Idiocy
August 11, 2008 | Social
Reading YouTube comments is like reading the text messages between a 13-year-old girl and a klansman.
Nowhere is it more evident the average citizen cannot handle the responsibility of an open forum.
YouTube’s core offering is great. It enables anybody to post and share videos ranging from humorous to inspiring. You can literally spend a lifetime sifting through entertaining videos.
With roughly 80 million videos and 3 billion video views, YouTube currently eats up more bandwidth than the entire internet in 2000.
With the masses comes idiocy, and intellects such as myself are subjected to the immaterial ramblings of teenyboppers and the offensive condemnations of racists.
The typical comment thread for a YouTube video starts innocently enough. Say we’re checking out something as harmless as a sneezing panda (20 million people have).
The comments start like this…
surferchick12: LMAO! the mom is like WTF!!!!!!!!111
xXxPokemonxXx: awww look at the baby panda ROFL ;) hahaha LOL
TonyBDaMan: 8===D
It then turns political…
GreenGi2l02: whats so funny about animals in captivity??
Dave-O: Stupid liberals always trying to free lame animals. Eat pandas.
Then a couple off-topic notes…
dancefreak66: The Peruvian government cuts down 1,300 acres of forest every day. Click here to stop them.
lovematenow: You have a secret crush! Paste this message into 8 other comment sections to learn who loves you!
And then it turns ugly…
the_answer3: 9/11 was great day ever. Americans burn with Bush’s actions. Your imperialism will be your end.
Eagleface: shut up you brit. you all have small pen1s and you know it!
ShaFeLeR00: Hang minorities.
YouTube tried fixing this by adding a voting system similar to Digg’s, but this only put a band aid on the problem. Google, who now owns YouTube, does a decent job filtering spam on its other platforms but not with YouTube.
You know its bad when programmers have to create scripts to hide the comments. We’re dealing with a larger issue of global idiocy and censoring some comments is only a start.
Only a masochist gets pleasure out of reading these things. But in a way, it’s like watching two morbidly obese women wrestle in a pool of baby oil—a horrendous sight, yet you just can’t look away.
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8===D
Yes, some times people act weired! Just have a look at this example from Yahoo! Answers:
http://i-blog-ul.blogspot.com/2008/07/i-have-no-words.html
Panda’s do taste good though…. The Puruvian government supplies them to George Bush’s secret crush. Before 9/11they came from small peckered brits. haahahhaa…
N1 yo.
NIFOC-
geekgyrl
WTF! PPLS CMNTS ON YOUTUBE ARE AWESOM U JUST DUN NO WHT YUR TALKIN BOUT!
Nah I’m just kidding… I agree >.< People do tend to get a little out of hand when commenting. I’ve seen so many comments that are worse than what I posted… well spelling wise anyways. Yay for ignorant teenies.
The tyranny of the idiocy of the majority. Did I get that about right?
Fuck YouTube comments.
The code is crap - i mean in a technical sense. The comments don’t display in “thread view” like Reddit.
sad… need I say more?
It is a little sad to watch youtube comments unfold. But it’s a very good metaphor with the fat ladies wrestling. Sometimes it’s just too fascinating to not keep reading.
I feel sad that so many people are idiots, though. I wish that would change somehow. Even if people just started writing words out again, I’d be happy. :(
I must admit I find the stupidity of Youtube comments absolutely hilarious. I am also guilty of going onto Youtube and deliberately being a jerk to everyone and starting fights. It’s a good way to kill time, and makes me laugh to think I made someone angry through the Internet.
^Dwayne,
I absolutely agree. I saw a Richard Pryor vid on YouTube once that had me crying with laughter, then just for shits and giggles I posted a comment saying he was rubbish and had stolen his style from Chris Rock (all in txt speak, of course).
People actually threatened to kill me. It was brilliant!
I agree that the comments do get a little outlandish. My comment for this post: Considering yourself an intellect….um, no.
To be fair, it’s not just Youtube, pretty much any site that allows comments can ruin the most interesting post. I’ve tried to force myself not to read the comments, but like you say; fat oily wrestling…can’t….stop….reading…..
^ Sam,
Yep, that’s Youtube alright. I think it’s pretty hilarious people get so offended when you quite clearly aren’t being serious.
You insult something and people are like “WTF N00B!” and when you really hurt them it’s more like “OwWwW! My MeGaHurtsz”.
Btw, I’m Dwayne Charrington, just changing up my name style.
George Bush doesn’t care about black people.
Fuck ur mother!
And you made a horrid remark about fat women.
You know what would be more disgusting? Watching two skeleton women who just got done puking up food they ate, wrestle in jello.
There are two sides to every story.
And, the people that come on to comments just to stay some stupid crap, are lonely and hated by their parents. This is their escape.
comments are my favorite part of webpages. don’t be dissin on them.
I don’t even look at the comments anymore for these exact reasons.
Yep. I am often entertained by youtube comments and often disgusted. It’s a mixed bag of good-natured idiots and bad-natured idiots. I love your Panda examples. Pefect.
I’m a Brit and if my pecker was big enough I would cram it into that foul mouthed blasphemer.
You have a very good choice of comments here. Thanks for your post, I enjoyed it immensely.
Cheers The Baldchemist.