Sunday, August 05, 2007

You tube commenters

It's a curious thing that I'm more likely to post frequently when I'm busy. I guess I want to distract myself, while when I have time on my hands I'm happy to spend it killing the undead. Virtually, that is. I don't spend much time in graveyards.

Anyways, as I'm sure you've noticed if you've spent any time at you tube, commenters there are not nice people, putting it rather more politely than they probably deserve. This comes out especially on some videos done by mere teenagers, where they inarticulately express their opinions... only to suffer a wave of abuse few stand up comedians have had to put up with. Yes, the video is bad, and if you feel that strongly, you might give it a poor rating, might even express why you did not like the video, but the wave of insults? It's not like any of these instances involve truly objectionable content- if someone was doing a neo-nazi rally (as I discovered disturbing examples of after the Virginia shootings), the most objectionable content I've seen with these comments attached is a girl talking about checking one's facts, and saying that religion is a lie. It's not a terribly good or funny video, but the level of bile given out makes you think she was advocating putting babies on spikes!

This isn't really confined to you tube- it's a clear trend that people on the web are much nastier than they would be in real life, which makes me think that people need to be schooled in web ettiquette just as they get schooled in real life ettiquette. Not that you'd think you'd need ettiquette classes to realise that addressing hateful and disgusting comments at feminist bloggers, for example, is plain wrong....

3 Comments:

At 6:22 pm, Blogger The Venomous Bee said...

I think that people feel safe to take out their anger anonymously on the web, whereas in person they're limited by the fact that they have to see the other person's reaction. When I was standing in line for the last Harry Potter book, this car full of douchebags drove past and shouted insults at us. I can't help but feel that if they had had to see the expressions on the kids' faces in line they wouldn't have done it. I suppose it's free-floating anger coupled with cowardice. I agree with you that it's unneccessary and would go so far as to say uncivilized, as pretentious as that sounds. :o)

 
At 11:29 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

But then, I suppose the reaction is also diluted if its not right in your face...

I agree totally, tis cowardly and needless! Waste of time!

Don't you love it in films when the 'hero' takes out loads of henchmen then proves how noble he is by making a point of not killing the real nasty mastermind...If you're willing to kill the littlew man why not the big?! But alas, sequels...

 
At 8:11 pm, Blogger Helen said...

It is odd - we have noticed in the libraries that the people who come in to only use the computers are much nastier- ruder, impatient, selfish - than the people who come in to do all the other things you can do in libraries. Why? What makes them so nasty??

 

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