YouTube annoyances
February 28th, 2007I just signed up for a free YouTube account in order to be able to add a comment to a video. Of course, YouTube is great in that it provides people with the opportunity to share videos on-line. Despite its glory however, I think YouTube largely fosters an on-line community of idiocy. Below the display of a video, users will notice a listing of comments which are added by users who have presumably seen the video. The quality of these comments is generally very poor. Many of them are incoherent and a lot of them consist of almost-sentences sprayed with senseless slang and swearing. As I pressed the submit button to post my comment, I was greeted with a notification which just added to my disdain. My post was over 500 characters (yes characters, not words) long, and to be able to post a comment, it had to be 500 characters or under, including spaces! So it seems that the opportunity to provide and engage in intelligent conversation with regard to a posted video is partly thwarted by restrictions imposed by YouTube themselves. But then I suppose that YouTube, unlike say an on-line bulletin board, has less reason to foster intelligent conversation.
