I made a video a few weeks ago which attracted some dog shit comments. Not just personal attacks, but also awful, awful opinions which I don’t want anything to do with. So the question is: when is it OK to nuke the comments?

Bad comments are more than insult

I’m probably in the minority here, but I like insults. A good insult can be funny. Someone on reddit once said something to me like, “You look like Moby with stage four cancer,” and I laughed at that. Yeah, I reported the comment, but that shitty comment is absurd enough that I just had to laugh. I didn’t feel bad about the insult.

The shitty comments I’ve gotten on this video aren’t good insults, but attacks. People are attacking me or the subjects of this video by saying, “That guy’s a creep,” or “You’re a snowflake idiot.” (Neither of which are direct quotes.)

Even without attacks or insults, some opinions are just not great and I don’t want to platform them. When people are uncharitable to a position or take some edgy approach to the argument, it’s distracting to whatever I’m trying to convey. In this instance, when people try to downplay the GM’s mistake or shift blame to the players — I’m just not interested in that conversation.

Am I right to delete comments?

The only value to these kinds of comments is they can encourage even more comments as people clap back, pile on, or defend each other, and more comments benefit my analytics. Being controversial is incentivised by the YouTube algorithm, which is maybe why there are so many people peddling shitty takes on sensitive subjects.

So what’s the value to deleting these comments? Maybe some editorial victory if it helps sway comments to a more productive space or in a direction that enforces whatever message I’m spouting. Maybe some moral victory because I’m suppressing some immoral takes (immoral from my perspective, at least).

But it feels super wrong. I’m not always in the right — can I always trust my judgment when I’m pushing a narrative on the comments section? Is this just weaponised narcissism? I don’t know.

It must depend on what my goals are. If I’m taking a stance on a subject, my goal isn’t to inspire some robust public debate were every opinion is given equal headroom, my goal is to push my opinion, my values, my ideas. I want to be convincing, but some people don’t want to be convinced — which is OK! — but if I can’t convince someone to be sympathetic to my message, do I really want their support for my channel?

There’s a sliding scale. Some comments I just removed, small transgressions, some bad takes. But for others who were so wilfully uncharitable and aggressive, I just outright banned from the channel, so their comments never appear on my videos again.

It’s awfully difficult to judge though. It’s awfully fatiguing to read every comment. It’s awfully easy to let the comments sink into bullshit takes and insults, because that’s the natural incline of a YouTube comment section.

But yeah, I’ll probably keep deleting comments.