Quote:
Originally Posted by boo boo
I disagree, I think a lot of people have the desire to be as hurtful as humanly possible and the YouTube community is made up primarily of trolls. Sexism and racism is very common too.
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Great cartoon.
I do agree that there are a lot of trolls just posting crap comments on YouTube, and the racist ones particularly bother me. An audience, and sometimes the security that they hold a majority opinion, does indeed encourage people to show off, and the anonymity does weaken our normal inhibitions. In some ways, I'd even say there's a mob mentality at work in some of these posts.
Some of it is clearly meant to hurt or to stir up trouble. But I do think the people who post some of the most frustrating comments are those who really do think they're making a fair comment. They might be reacting out of fear of something that challenges what they consider normal, or they might genuinely think they're being helpful by offering their criticism, or since the shaving is all in fun and these people can't possibly like it, that teasing is OK. The worst are the ones who sincerely think they're being nice with the "you were so pretty before, why would you do that?" comments. My mother is an old pro at that.
People today have gotten the idea that being entitled to your opinion means you're never wrong, and that there aren't times when maybe it's better to just be nice or even shut up altogether. The internet definitely makes that tendency far worse, with the anonymity and the audience, and with opportunities everywhere to comment on everything. People are invited to comment, they think their opinion always matters, and they really don't think too much about it. They're used to going around giving their opinion on everything. If you challenged some of these people directly, they wouldn't have any idea why you should be upset, and might very well consider you the bad guy and tell you to leave them alone. I've taken on people like this before, and I was the one causing trouble and trying to stifle free speech, even among some of the people who had been posting positive things.
Some are are more rude than others, but I think most of those comments reflect ignorance in their content, and I think most are posted out of ignorance. They just don't get it.