As a unrecovering screen addict, I find myself quite often on both YouTube.com and Flickr.com. Both of these sites share a fundamental purpose: they display a small rectangle with an image in it posted by a certain user and below the image other users comment on it. YouTube does moving images and Flickr does stills (I know they do video too, but nevermind that for now…personally I never watched any video on Flickr). However, there are dramatic fundamental differences in the commentary:
YouTube comments are generally crude, nasty, mean-spirited, stupid, childish, horribly written and filled with senseless arguments between commenters often about issues outside of the subject of the video itself. No matter WHAT the video is about, if it has comments at all odds are good that they will be crude and moronic. The overriding impression I get from reading YouTube comments is that humanity is a vulgar assembly of idiots and the sooner the human race is wiped out the better.
Flickr comments are almost entirely positive, filled with gushing praise about the photograph, slightly better spelling\grammar and users are constantly heaping praise, respect and admiration and "awards" upon one another. On Flickr one even feels uncomfortable about offering any kind of criticism whatsoever of a photo, even if it is not negative. The overall impression is one of good cheer and mutual respect.
Nothing on YouTube is safe from an outright ad hominem attack for no good reason. People feel entirely comfortable telling you your video sucks, that you're a stupid faggot or use whatever manner of nasty insults they feel like posting. Nobody bothers to capitalize their sentences, use punctuation of any kind and most of the words are loaded with annoying text message acronyms.
What could possibly account for this discrepancy? Why is YouTube such a magnet for the worst in human behavior and Flickr is the opposite? My theory has been that people will behave more graciously towards one another when the communication is not solely text-based. Text-only allows people to hide behind a mask of anonimity so there is less pressure to not act like a jackass. I thought that if you knew what a person looked like from a still photo you would be nicer, and then I thought for sure if you posted a VIDEO of yourself then for sure people would be nicer since that's even closer of a representation of a real person. But apparently this theory doesn't hold on YouTube.
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