Sunday, December 6, 2015

Youtube Comments - A Ridiculous Adventure

An in-depth analysis of Youtube comments isn't something I'd usually call for. Unfortunately, while I never thought it would happen, one of my own videos was the victim of a nonsensical Youtube comment. My videos were usually only viewed by people I linked them to, but I guess it's my fault for posting the thing to a public place. The content of my video was a modest showcase of gameplay, and the offending comment was simply "YOU SUCK!". How could this happen? I don't suck. I also didn't respond, and let the comment stick around on my video. What I couldn't have prepared for was that somebody I didn't even know replied to the comment in my defense, causing the original commenter to lash out on my savior's lack of a life. At this point Youtube let me know that the commenter was a likely spammer, automatically blocking the comment until my approval. So, since I still didn't know what to make of the whole thing, I approved the chain and scratched my head.

What's up with these guys? It takes some base amount of effort to make a comment, so there had to be some kind of gain in mind. I don't think the guy was looking for an argument, because his strike back against my defender was a little too angry to bait anyone into continuing the chain. Is it the guise of anonymity, masking the identity of these Youtube villains? Well, not at all in this case. The comment was, like everything on Youtube, connected to an account. From there the "about" page generally provided a short blurb by the person about themselves and possibly some other related links. Motivated by the prospect of finding some kind of avenue to strike back against this fiend, I delved deeper. A Google+ profile was all that could be found, so I went in. I discovered that this guy had made several negative and generally useless comments on various videos. It wasn't an isolated incident, this was a dangerous criminal at large. But that was the only thing I could find, with searches of the person's username only linking back to Youtube. I'd like to think that I'd call the whole thing off if I actually found real life information, but he did say that I sucked, so who knows.

Well, there was actually more than comments on the profile. He had several videos, all of Minecraft, featuring a very young voice. Knowing that it was just a kid basically ties all the loose ends together. Random silly comments is just another way to waste time, and a disproportionate response to anyone calling those comments out sounds like a kid thing to me. However, I've realized that the ability to connect dots on the Internet is rather insane. If the subject of this post had slipped up and included a real name on the Google+ page, that might have linked to a Facebook. Alternatively, my search for his username could've turned up various accounts, and I'd have been able to view every post he's made on those accounts. I feel like these could be the case for me, so I'd better not leave any silly comments. Things could go badly if the wrong people do the right searches.

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