We have all been here before. You have just commenced watching a delightful video of Taylor Swift dancing nimbly across a stage repetitively encouraging us to shake it off. At this point you have thoroughly enjoyed this piece of art and you decide to scroll down to the comment section to find like-minded individuals expressing their delight. You will of course find some comments like this, they may even be the majority , however you will inevitably find comments like this
what riveting dialogue
disturbing
Nothing puts a damper on your day more than unwarranted, violent, sexist threats. This crude comments are the perfect example of a phenomenon known as trolling. This process involves an individual making controversial and offensive comments on the internet with the exact purpose of eliciting a negative response from strangers. As clear as their motivations are it can be difficult to not get sucked into their drama. In fact a recent study was published in Personality and Individual Difference that this behaviour correlates with sadistic and psychopathic personality types. Which is a reasonable estimation in my opinion as these people clearly gain pleasure from others discomfort.
Common YouTube frequenters also include the scathing music journalist who passionately shares their unsolicited literary take on the newest mainstream music they cant stand, but wont stop watching
The reason that this commenter is so ridiculous is because their emotional reaction is irrational. This person has likely never actually interacted with Taylor Swift, and therefore should have less motivation to hate her and ALL her fans. It leaves us wondering why they clicked on a Taylor swift music video in the first place, and why they don’t just stop watching it. there seems to be a pleasure produced from hating things others like. One I assume is very similar to that of the psychopathic you tube commenter
Now the last YouTube commenter archetype I will mention is the conspiracy theorist.
It’s hard to tell if this commenter actually believes the things they are posting or if they are actually just a psychopathic commenter like the others mentioned above. Theres not much ways to tell, but their anxiety ridden posts are entertaining none the less.
All in all the YouTube comment section is a myriad of sexual, and aggressive outbursts Freud would be titillated to analyze. Now I don’t believe that there is anything inherently wrong with the comment format of the website itself. In fact I think it’s a great idea. YouTuber’s have the unique ability of interacting with the views that watch their subject matter, and viewers get to personally engage with the content they consume. However the creators didn’t anticipate the way the service would be actually used. There is a function to flag inappropriate comments, but negative things still have a way of leaking through. The anonymity of the internet creates deindividuation where individuals lose self-awareness, and accountability when in a group. People can lose themselves on the internet because they feel as though their comments are not distinguishable amongst thousands of others and therefore feel less responsibility to make sure the content is reflective of their internal values. And in part this is true. The likelihood Taylor Swift has seen every YouTube comment saying she, “sucks and can’t sing” is not very high. However there is something to be said about the way we treat people even if we believe their celebrity reduces the impact we can have on them. PewDiePie is one very popular YouTuber who has received enormous amounts of hate in the comment section of his YouTube videos. He comically addresses the hate he receives in this video.
*WARNING CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE, AND OFFENSIVE CONTENT*
Although the video was created humourously the nature of the comments are still disturbing. Although we feel that our comments are anonymous they are not, and they have the power to hurt people. he doesn’t mention it in this video but he has recently become so perturbed by these comments that he has disabled the comment section on all his video’s. Ror him the positive interaction he got from his viewers didn’t outweigh the constant harassment, and I cant say I blame him. Even with 34 million subscribers he is still a person who can be hurt by cruel comments. It is my opinion that human interaction over the internet would greatly improve if we remember to be human.
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