Dunno why it took me so many months to come across this but Nick Coffin at Cracked wrote a tremendous article in September about the mess and what the truth is when the situation is examined a little closer. Some of it was obvious it the time, but it makes the pro-Epic Beard Man contingent look even worse than before.

Youtube comments are the lowest common denominator of humanity and it is shameful that Google refuses to let them be blocked (other than through browser plug-ins).

They should allow you to block comments on a sliding scale. Surely they can develop an algorithm to use the title and comments to detect the video content. If it's about politics or features a celebrity who is an ethnic minority and/or gay, I'll block the comments. If the video is a kitten playing a jaunty tune on a keyboard, bring on the comments!

I don't care what video it is, the odds are one of the top comments will have profanity. I just want to show my dad basketball highlights and my mom cute stuff without them being accidentally exposed to the toxic nethers of the internet.

It's not just Youtube it's every comment section everywhere. I check out TSN for sports news and the HighStakesDB for high stakes online poker news daily and the comment sections there boggle all belief too (especially HSDB, TSN is comparatively civil and not quite as high on the absurdity scale although it isn't great either).

 

People have opinions on the internets. That is what I've learned in about 12 years.

All comment sections are bad.

 

YouTube is worse than most as far as neutral general purpose content sites go.

If the video is a kitten playing a jaunty tune on a keyboard, bring on the comments!

It would still somehow turn into a racial issue.

I don't know...alll youtube threads will have racist comments...and I assumed the villain of the epic beard fight was the woman on the front of the bus who tells the Black man not to avoid confrontation and to go back.