My Issue with Negativity

Ryan    Uncategorized     Negativity, reddit.com, YouTube Comments

After some testing I’ve been doing with some bookmarking and tagging platforms, I’ve come across a comment that kind of led me astray.

On reddit.com, iesvs writes:

Dumbass spammer. Don’t you think if people wanted to visit soundcloud.com they would just type that instead of your shitty blog?

Although I kind of understand where this person is coming from, I don’t really understand the whole negativity aspect. My blog might be shitty sure, but I think that if he went about and read my actual blog post on SoundCloud.com, then he would understand that I’m not really trying to spam people to come to the site, but giving my own personal insight of it. It’s a blog.

No matter. I will let people feel the way they want to feel because they know deep down inside that they are correct and that I’ve done them some kind of disservice. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.. I just won’t let it affect me personally. Which I’m getting kind of good at.

A year or two ago though, I wrote another blog post on YouTube Comments. Although there are a few more outlets where people can rant or rave about something these days, my general consensus is that comments are open to 3 types of people.

1. Sincere Commentators – These people either have something good to say about something, disagree and want to shed light on their opinion, or wish to offer a resource to help you understand something better.
2. Spammers – These people are link building. Plain and simple, these people work for companies where their job is to flood boards or blogs with spammy comments so that they can increase their link volume by 1.
3. The Negative Nancys – These people really have nothing else to do, but try to get a rise out of someone else. They often add profanity in their comments, will let you know that you’re dumb and do not know what you’re doing, and they will also sometimes try to explain why they are better educated in whatever it was you were trying to write about.

At first, I thought that iesvs was a whole-hearted negative douche-bag. But then I realized, he’s actually just a Sincere Commentator. Without knowing it, I probably made my link on reddit.com look completely spammy! Although my blog title is right there in the name of the link, it maybe that he thought that I was trying to spam people into coming to my ‘shitty blog.’ In a way, he’s right, but I really just wanted to test out some traffic generation resources to see what kinds of things worked! Because the tone was negative, however, I was just thinking to myself that he was a completely negative douche-bag. Which again he is not.

What I am taking away from this experience: If I was to learn anything from this experience, it’d be that I should name my blog entries on reddit.com something different than what they actually are. If they are opinionated pieces..you better believe I’ll figure out way to get that across. That being said, I want to thank my non-douche-bag friend,  iesvs at reddit.com for letting me know how to do things correctly over there. As far as the negativity is concerned however, try and figure out a better way to get your point across, cause the way you do it now.. kind of sucks!

I Find Most YouTube Comments…

Ryan    Uncategorized     YouTube, YouTube Comments

to be written by the dummys in the world.

(Update: Images have been removed after hosting swap)

I’ve long held the belief that people who post comments on videos on YouTube are slightly dumber then the average person. Or maybe a lot dumber, I think it depends on the video. Yeah, I’ve commented a few times on videos, and I can sometimes see the urge to really express my soulfelt opinion, but then I realize, “whats the benefit?” Usually, if I say something, it is because I want to correct another comment where the person may not have known 100% of their facts. I’ll never say something like, “Wow!”, or “Haha” or “LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.” I’ll save those for you know who.

YouTube loves YouTube comments though. Maybe not, I’m merely guessing, but giving people the option to hate or love something, allows everyone and their dog to see the full benefit of putting something up on YouTube. It is a traffic generator! Remember when Google admitted to not knowing how to monetize YouTube?… Have you seen it lately? I think they may have figured something out, or at least are close. And how do we promote repeat visitors. Hell, never mind, that is already in the bag.

So traffic generation… wait a minute, lets go back to our stupid commentators. Take a look at some cool and interesting videos on YouTube. Chances are, those videos you thought were cool and interesting, are not cool and interesting to me. That being said, you’ve now uncovered the true greatness that is a YouTube search. Let me tell you the reasons why a YouTube search is better then a Google search.

1. Results are in picture format

Yeah, that’s pretty much it. If you are looking for something in YouTube, you probably already know what it is, and what it will look like. Its a damn video! (Now I realize there are Rick Roll’d videos out there, and spam crap, but lets just forget about that stuff for the time being) Search in YouTube is pretty efficient, so I personally have to venture a guess and say that the people who click on videos and realize that the video they clicked on is not what they were looking for… are slightly more stupid then the average user. Even more so, people who click on videos because they know they’re going to hate it, but want to watch it anyway… don’t you have something better to do?

Which brings me to the point in why we have idiotic YouTube comments. If there is something you like and you watch it, and you’ve seen someone else write a comment about why they don’t like it, you naturally are going to have the urge to explain why they are wrong. Most of the time, these conflict comments are sparse (remember YouTube search… we’ve weeded out the non-dummys). But the ones who want to hate, have made it in. Deng it!

Language below.. sorry.

Do you see sorta what I mean. This video by so and so, has these kind of comments, however, the video still has a rating of 4 stars. There are WAY more people who love this chick then people who just want to come on and say they hate her. Still, they’re willing to go on a board and tell everyone. Maybe they just want the attention. I dunno.

So, to make a long story short, if you find the need to make a comment on YouTube because you don’t like a particular video, ask yourself this..”Why am I here in the first place? Am I just being a hater for no reason?” And maybe you can get a few other people to calm their jets as well. Unless you’re just looking for attention, in that case, get a life.

Do you want to test out YouTube’s naturally excellent search? Do any YouTube search, and compare the number of videos with 4 or more stars to those with 2 or less, heck 3 or less! People know what they are looking for and like what they are looking for. No guesswork.. usually.

Peace