Speaker 1: I love making YouTube videos. I love making content that makes you laugh or think or see the world differently. But I hate that my job comes with a daily dose of harassment.
Speaker 2: YouTube comments are very sexist. YouTube comments are very entitled.
Speaker 3: They’re always nasty and disgusting.
Speaker 4: It feels like being back in grade school, but you’re only in grade school with the bullies.
Speaker 5: You may be talking about one thing, and then people just start talking about your boobs.
Speaker 2: I wish men who commented on videos that women are in or make wouldn’t comment on the women themselves, but would comment on the content.
Speaker 6: Content.
Speaker 7: Content.
Speaker 1: Content on the video.
Speaker 2: This is a guy named Andy who’s responding to a video I made about comic books: “If you get raped, you should lay back and enjoy it.” Again, the video was about comic books.
Speaker 4: [Reading a comment she’s received] “I just fapped to this girl, smiley face.” I’m not making pornography; I’m making science videos.
Speaker 5: [Reading a comment] “You remind me of my slut of an ex-girlfriend.” Well, then she must be pretty fucking awesome.
Speaker 1: Wilford wrote to me, “Wow! Bitch ugly AF.” “As fuck.” We’re not making these videos so that you’d say, “Oh she’s so beautiful; I’d like to fuck her” or “She’s so ugly; I hate her.”
Speaker 8: The comment is “I want to brutally murder that disgraceful Asian bitch who’s obviously trying to fit in with the norm, aka Caucasians. It’s blatantly apparent, and I hope her parents feel ashamed to have given birth to such filth.”
I’ve never experienced the racism in real life that I have in YouTube comments.
Speaker 6: To everyone who posts one of those comments, I just want to say, “Hey! What’s going on over there? Who hurt you?”
Speaker 9: These people and what they say has to mean nothing to me. Otherwise, I’m going to be a wreck.
Speaker 3: I feel like I have very thick skin, but there’s something about reading it and seeing 20 people like it or 200 people like it. That really just kind of eats away at your self-esteem.
Speaker 1: Just because I’m a person who works on the Internet doesn’t mean that I’m not a person in real life.
Speaker 3: It can hurt.
Speaker 2: I used to cry all the time whenever I would read a negative comment.
Speaker 4: And then eventually, I feel like you actually get really used to it.
Speaker 5: It’s so annoying because I shouldn’t have to. I shouldn’t have to be used to this, but I am.
Speaker 6: There needs to be lessons on how to treat other people in social media.
Speaker 4: If you have like a sister or a mom or… Like, think about how it would feel to say it to those people.
Speaker 1: Don’t tell us about our bodies. Don’t tell us about the way that we sound or our ethnicities; we know all of that.
Speaker 8: We don’t need to hear it.
Speaker 9: If you’re going to write a YouTube comment just to objectify someone or to try to make them feel uncomfortable, don’t.
