By: Gene Cole
It’s a normal night. You’ve gotten home from a long day of dull lectures and uncomfortably silent tutorials, and haven’t spoken to anyone all day. Most nights you may be too tired to do more than chuckle at your YouTube videos deep into the night, but sometimes you need more in your night to feel fulfilled. Thankfully, for those who like to multitask, there’s a social warzone known as the “Comments Section” below most of your favorite videos where nearly anything goes. But if you dare to enter this text-based hellscape (be it from boredom or an intense passion for your favourite content creator) it’s important to be efficient and effective, and hopefully this guide can be a perfect framework for your poorly-worded ramblings.
TIP #1: Bring up an old meme
There’s nothing people love more than dated Internet references which are barely related to the content they’re watching. Between reaction images, your addiction to your Twitter timeline, and the comfort you get from RIP Vine compilations, you just can’t help it. The people NEED to know what is in your head, making you laugh for personal (and hard-to-relate-to) reasons. Or you might be thinking of an old meme from a YouTuber, and need to share how good your memory is of their semi-viral funny scream during an unboxing video from two years back. This also lets all newcomers know that they aren’t welcome to share thoughts or ask questions because they’ll immediately feel alienated. This will leave you and your like-minded commenters safe and distant from all the casual trash that came here from the Trending page.
TIP #2: Offer up some unsolicited advice
Are you ever watching a Let’s Play and suddenly feel the need to yell at the screen about how it took them two hours to do something you did in five minutes while you were a toddler? Or maybe they’re mixing the batter in a cooking tutorial in a way that would ruin the texture. Either way, these people should be perfect professionals at everything they do, and even when they don’t seem to want it, it’s important to force every suggestion towards them. While they may not ever read your advice or improve, this kind of comment will allow you to feel like you have some degree of control over these pre-recorded videos. Your stupid and annoying voice must be heard, and it is sure to help the YouTuber’s self-esteem to know that they’re so incompetent in making the content that you’re already watching and being entertained by.
TIP #3: Ask about different, unrelated content
If you find that the video auto-playing at 2 a.m. just isn’t your favourite YouTuber’s best work, you should feel free to show your raw desire for what you’d rather be watching. Maybe it was a cancelled recurring segment, or maybe you miss an old partner that left the channel due to legal drama. The context doesn’t matter, and the place that will definitely make your favourite segment come back is the mass of generic statements below an unrelated video. The YouTuber may never read it, or possibly gets their viewer data from much more reliable and tolerable sources . . . but who has time to fill out surveys or send a polite email.
TIP #4: Never read the other comments
The biggest challenge in making use of a comment section is that there are many functions that may seem important. These can include the “like” button that lets you boost a post you agree with, “dislike” buttons that let you express disapproval of posts, and reply buttons for each individual comment. It’s important to ignore all of these and just put down your own thoughts in a vacuous statement, as the other functions and the other people in that section simply don’t matter. You must make your version of a previously stated point heard, as a statement from these like-minded commenters is definitely somehow not as correct or helpful as you are.
