Digital Essay #1: Analysis of the YouTube Comment System
We've all been there: checking out a new video, something we found by clicking through the recommendations that followed six to ten other videos we just watched, and a “top comment” under the the description catches our eye. It’s a funny pun, or a tired old meme. How did it get to the top of the list? With all the competition, how could any single comment emerge victorious? If we explore further, we begin to understand: almost all of the other comments appear to have been written by twelve-year-old neo-Nazis. Racism, sexism, rampant grammatical and spelling errors… these are the hallmarks of the average YouTube comment.
It is a digital object gone wrong, an example of a case in which the four “affordances” of the digital medium, as laid out by Janet Murray in Inventing the Medium, actually make a form of “legacy media” worse (the form of “legacy media” in question being the profane messages scrawled on the walls of truck stop restrooms). These four affordances and their application in the YouTube comment system’s context- its encyclopedic storage of posts, its spatial presentation, its procedural system of ranking and connecting comments, and its participatory character - are both a blessing and a curse, making the system possible while ensuring that sophisticated discussions are never given a fighting chance.
For evidence of the YouTube comment system’s encyclopedic capabilities, take a look at a piece of popular content like the music video for Lady GaGa’s song “Applause.”
It is a digital object gone wrong, an example of a case in which the four “affordances” of the digital medium, as laid out by Janet Murray in Inventing the Medium, actually make a form of “legacy media” worse (the form of “legacy media” in question being the profane messages scrawled on the walls of truck stop restrooms). These four affordances and their application in the YouTube comment system’s context- its encyclopedic storage of posts, its spatial presentation, its procedural system of ranking and connecting comments, and its participatory character - are both a blessing and a curse, making the system possible while ensuring that sophisticated discussions are never given a fighting chance.
For evidence of the YouTube comment system’s encyclopedic capabilities, take a look at a piece of popular content like the music video for Lady GaGa’s song “Applause.”
This video, with almost 59 million views, boasts a correspondingly huge “comments” section. 445,460 people commented on this video between its appearance on August 19 and today, September 21. The bulk of these comments will never be seen by anyone. Indeed, if you wanted to see the very first comment posted on this video, you would have to click the “show more” button, which displays the next ten comments, 45 thousand times. Assuming that it takes two seconds to scroll down and press the “show more” button each time more comments are displayed, it would take 25 hours of non-stop scrolling and clicking to reach the first comments posted on the video.
There are other statistics I could give to show the pure scale of the YouTube comment system. Take, for instance, the fact that 24 new comments were added to the Lady GaGa video’s page in the time it took me to write that last paragraph. The encyclopedic nature of the system means that virtually infinite comments can be added across all the videos on YouTube, but interestingly, that same scale has the effect of making 99.99% of comments utterly insignificant. Posting a comment on YouTube is the digital equivalent of shouting your opinions out the window of your car on the interstate.
The spatial and procedural nature of the YouTube comment system is reflected in the rules that guide how comments are displayed to the user. Newer comments are displayed above older ones. Through “replies,” you can trace a conversation backwards through time. Each time “show the comment” is clicked, the landscape of the page changes, connecting each comment to the one it references. In this example, taken from beneath a video containing footage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, commenters from all over the world engage in a spirited and thought-provoking debate:
There are other statistics I could give to show the pure scale of the YouTube comment system. Take, for instance, the fact that 24 new comments were added to the Lady GaGa video’s page in the time it took me to write that last paragraph. The encyclopedic nature of the system means that virtually infinite comments can be added across all the videos on YouTube, but interestingly, that same scale has the effect of making 99.99% of comments utterly insignificant. Posting a comment on YouTube is the digital equivalent of shouting your opinions out the window of your car on the interstate.
The spatial and procedural nature of the YouTube comment system is reflected in the rules that guide how comments are displayed to the user. Newer comments are displayed above older ones. Through “replies,” you can trace a conversation backwards through time. Each time “show the comment” is clicked, the landscape of the page changes, connecting each comment to the one it references. In this example, taken from beneath a video containing footage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, commenters from all over the world engage in a spirited and thought-provoking debate:
Here we witness the participatory character of the YouTube comment, which provides a unique opportunity for users of all backgrounds to engage citizens of other countries in discussion on a wide variety of topics. As Murray points out, in addition to providing new channels for one-on-one communication, digital media also "provides new forms of many-to-many communication," a phenomenon that is readily apparent when one examines the complex trees of communication in a YouTube comment section, where new users jump in on the discussion at every possible point. Through this process of transnational dialogue, users make new friends and are introduced to fresh perspectives on ideas they took for granted, fostering mutual appreciation of subtle cultural differences. Sometimes. Other times, they do this:
"Because the computer is a participatory medium," notes Murray, "interactors have an expectation that they will be able to manipulate digital artifacts and make things happen in response to their actions." In keeping with its participatory nature, the YouTube comment system allows users to rate comments the same way they rate videos. Comments that receive enough “thumbs up” rankings are displayed in the “top comments” section, while comments that receive enough “thumbs down” ratings are hidden from view until the user opts to display them. Ostensibly, this improves the quality of comments visible to the average YouTube user. In reality, the most entertaining comments are often the ones that receive the most “thumbs down” votes (although usually not for the reason the commenter intended).
You are probably getting the impression that the YouTube comment section is the internet’s cesspool, a steaming digital reservoir filled with the worst people from every corner of the globe. The truth is, there are plenty of intelligent, funny, friendly people commenting on YouTube. However, the sheer number of comments, and the fact that newer comments push older ones out of sight, mean that long, insightful posts are buried almost instantly beneath a deluge of comments reading “LOL.” In this way, the spatial, participatory and encyclopedic properties of the system discourage sophisticated communication.
You are probably getting the impression that the YouTube comment section is the internet’s cesspool, a steaming digital reservoir filled with the worst people from every corner of the globe. The truth is, there are plenty of intelligent, funny, friendly people commenting on YouTube. However, the sheer number of comments, and the fact that newer comments push older ones out of sight, mean that long, insightful posts are buried almost instantly beneath a deluge of comments reading “LOL.” In this way, the spatial, participatory and encyclopedic properties of the system discourage sophisticated communication.