My Two Cents

Entry #5- Youtube Commenters

Welcome to Youtube. The mythical land of talking ponies, people dressing up as their mothers, parody videos featuring Pharrel wearing large hats, and more parody videos of guys dressing up as Miley Cyrus and riding wrecking balls. It's a land where you can escape for hours, going from one video that features a guy throwing eggs at a TV set, to another video of a giraffe giving birth.

Yes, Youtube is wonderful. Full of laughter, joy, misery, and sometimes, just plain strangeness. A lot of videos are pure excellence...until you scroll down and see the comments.

I don't know what it is about Youtube or websites like it. Maybe it's the anonymity. A forty year old man can easily create a profile on Yahoo Answers or Youtube portraying him as a fourteen year old girl. A kid can be a sixty year old. Drug dealers can be doctors. Chemistry teachers can be drug dealers. There are endless possibilities!

Yes, this must be why the comments on Youtube make me want to peel my skin off.

Let me explain. Let's say you're watching a video about two cats playing. Nothing wrong happening. They're perfectly happy. Cute and funny, huh? And then you scroll down to the comment section to see if anyone else thought these cats were as funny as you did, and you see this:

XxMyAntiqueHairXx: THIS VIDEO SUCKS IT IS SL BAD. AL OF YOU PPL SHOULD UNDERSTAND THAT ANIMAL ABUSE IS A BIG DEAL IN THE US A ND THE PERSON BEHIND THIS HAS NO TALENT HES AN IDIOT AND EVERYONE WHO ENJOYED THIS SHOULD JUST DIE IN A WELL ON SAINT PATRICK'S DAY. PEACE OUT, NOOBS.

Holy hell. WHERE did that come from?

I swear, I will never understand the sense and logic that some of these people apply when they comment on videos. They can take a clip about peanuts growing in the wild and turn it into an argument on religious fundamentalism. If you want your faith in the human race to take a dive, then just go on Youtube and look at the comments of a video.

Especially a controversial one. Because if you thought that cats playing were bad, look at the comments on any given video presenting a controversial issue. It's like these people cannot function like normal human beings.

Don't get me wrong. I like controversy. I like differing opinions. But when it gets to the point that you're inserting yo mama jokes into every argument, you should just stop. It's like people take every opinion that diverges from their own personally.

Look, just because someone doesn't a video of Miley Cyrus twerking does not mean that they hate you as a person.

And nothing makes me faith in humans want to take a swan dive more than seeing a perfectly nice person trying to talk to someone that is clearly on drugs. There are several examples of this. For instance, suppose you see a video or song that you really like. And you make a comment about it:

XxCoolDudeWithTooManyFriendsOnFacebookXx: This song is awesome!

XxCompletelyRandomPersonXx: @XxCoolDudeWithTooManyFriendsOnFacebookXx WHY? WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS, HUH? DO YOU THINK IT MAKES YOU 'COOL' WITH THE LADIES? YOU'RE BLOODY USELESS, OKAY? I HATE YOU AND SO DOES MY PET DOG SO THIS SONG SUCKS. YOU'RE COMPLETELY TRANSPARENT, YOU STUPID BOY.

XxCoolDudeWithTooManyFriendsOnFacebookXx: @XxCompletelyRandomPersonXx I'm sorry...I wasn't aware that you didn't like this song. :( But I'm a girl.

XxCompletelyRandomPersonXx: @CoolDudeWithTooManyFriendsOnFacebookXx DID YOU JUST CALL ME UGLY?

So I've come to a conclusion about people like XxCompletelyRandomPersonXx. They are on crack, cocaine, meth, and drinking alcohol at the same time while attempting to ride a unicorn into a hurricane.

But in all seriousness, why? I mean, maybe I can understand. Maybe you had a bad day. Maybe you want to make someone else feel bad, doesn't matter who it is. But that's what your punching bag is for! Or your brother/sister! (Just kidding. Maybe)

And you know what? What I'm saying applies to all websites on the internet. Not just Youtube. Although websites like Youtube will tend to breed the most obnoxious users.

I will also never understand this. Put yourself in a hypothetical situation where maybe there's a video about someone being bullied. And you say this:

CoolKid: This message really speaks to me. I used to get bullied too.

RandomYouKnowWhatHole: @CoolKid NO ONE CARES. HAHAHAHAHAHA! U:<

There is absolutely no explanation for people like this. If the internet were a banana, these people would be like those stringy things that everybody peels off. No one wants to deal with them.

Youtube, or any other form of social media, can be fun, exciting, and a place to just chill out and procrastinate on a thousand word essay due the next day. But it's the people that shape the website and if the people suck, so will the site.