It seems that in today's modern internet culture of anonymity, we A. forget the person we are writing to is a real person and that B. our thoughts and comments still make a difference.
I have learned this so much after becoming a part of the ever-growing YouTube community. But, I feel nothing better exhibits this than a comment I received today. Now, after feeling pretty hurt, I sat back and reviewed my videos in my head. "Yeah, that one was funny... The next three were informative... That one shouldn't be funny, it was a memorial video for Steve Jobs... and that one was actually funny, people said it was."
So what's the big problem...? Nothing, really, this is just the sketchy part of YouTube. Big jerks who believe that their job is to hurt others. That's why many people are called derogatory terms for everything. I've been called "homo" "f****t" "retarded" and more things I don't really want to say. And it hurts. Luckily, I can take it. After years of being bullied, I eventually trained myself to deal with it. You could say anything you want about me. It doesn't affect me.
But what about others? There are so many people on YouTube getting harassed that I believe it is the forefront of CyberBullying. And these "trolls" as they are called on YouTube have very distinct characteristics; A. They either don't upload videos or, all their videos are short little stupid videos without an artistic work put into them or vlogs in which they continue to troll. B. They often are racist, sexist, homophobic, and pretty much anything you can think of that is ruining the world. I was trolled by a communist once! C. the worst, and only occasionally seen trait is the horrible grammar. This is normally improper use of homophonic words, improper spelling and double negatives, often making need of a translator just to be told that you're "a stewpid gey reatrd."
And some of this people continue their hatred to other media forms. My personal favorite troll is exemplified in his video (from TheArchfiend.) He has often talked about iJustine, one of my favorite YouTubers, and one of the most famous, by calling her iWh**e. When I first saw one of his videos, I was shocked at how rude he could be to her. She never did anything to him! But that's a common characteristic of troll. Wonderful video makers work hard to do nothing but entertain, do nothing to anyone, and yet receive abuse despite how friendly they actually are, and despite how little interaction they've had with the troll.
As you watch the video, note the tone of voice he has, and how he calls iJustine's viewers (ME) iWh**e minions. Essentially, he trolls iJustine about how she hates haters, and essentially, the three YouTube users who are involved (the troll, iJustine and the little girl) become a contradictory minefield because of him. Well, this man, sans talent, just can't really seem to find anything better to do than disrespect YouTube users. Perfect. Just what we need, more disrespect in the world. Thanks, Archiend for making it seems as if we can say anything we want, because obviously, saying hurtful things can't hurt if it's online. (Sarcasm)
You know what, though, defense has become a problem too. And in defending people through comments on YouTube comes more disrespect. So rather than there being two teams, there are millions of people who hate each other for pointless reason. Meanwhile, people like iJustine and I just want to be friends. Why can't we have that? What did we do wrong that caused people to disrespect us? Nothing.
Welcome to the future. Population: 10 billion. Number of cities: 5 billion. Not a single [flame] war since two minutes ago.
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