On small blogs such as this, comments generally remain related to the blog post. A humorous video by Barely Political strengthened my view, though, that on social networking sites like YouTube, they often end up being completed unrelated to the topic of the video.

I hate YouTube comments. Find me one decent one. They are generally a series of curse words in an incoherent sentence, resembling ‘you suck’. If not that, they’ll just be about the number of views (‘how does a laughing baby get 79 mill views?’). On a blog, people would not go to the hassle of writing comments which have no meaning.

Otherwise, comments erupt into an irrelevant political debate, as they often did in the run-up to the 2008 American presidential elections. If not that, they will become racist. I admit on occasion I respond to ones I strongly disagree with, but only if my political views are antithetical to someone elses and only if the video is about the issue.

It’s too easy to write a meaningless sentence and then to submit it. The result is people post things without thinking their argument through or even proof-reading what they’ve written. If voting held a more important role on the site, completely useless and idiotic comments would never be have to be seen again. There’s another explanation, which is quite cynical but quite likely to be true: I suspect that many people leave pointless YouTube comments in a pathetic attempt to drive people to their profiles.