In my TikTok video last year I mentioned a guy named Jake Novak who got harassed off the internet for the high crime of being kinda cringe. Well, on the one year anniversary of the TikTok that caused his life to implode, he's posted a joke TikTok as a sign of life.
And like... good for him. It's not that it's a happy ending, but the fact that he's still around and able to do comedy despite the entire internet going nuts and throwing death threats and vitriol at him for a month and a half over anodyne comedy songs is something, at least. Seeing someone get back up and dust themselves off after that kind thing is impressive, frankly.
didn't see anything about this when it happened, don't know anything about the person, never heard of them or the situation, etc. but i skimmed the video in question and it made me have some thoughts about online and the dogpile problem in general.
all this applies to offline stuff too, it just takes a new character when it happens online. once i actually achieved a small amount of microfame, and had people recognizing me on the street, i was like "fuck this" and stopped doing performances. the way people treat you as A Media Figure With An Audience is weird and it takes a very specific kind of patience i do not possess.
i'm to a certain degree against comment sections as a concept, entirely. even knowing that social media is itself a giant comment section. but at the very least, i wish companies would put "AI" to an actually good use and have it identify and collate categories of comment so that the thousands of "um actually, X isn't true" replies get summarized into one comment and you don't have to see each individual take unless you choose to
[edit] one more thing. absolutely people think you won't read the comments. people have deleted negative comments on my channel, or stopped posting negative comments, after i heart their extremely dogshit bad faith anger-maximalist rant and leave a non-ironically cheery reply like "thanks! here's a video explaining the process for how i make my music." and my comments section is usually empty. they don't think their whinge is getting lost in the flood of comments. they just think i'm not a real person, until i reply. it's fucking Rhythm 0* all day every day online
*content warning for people being fucking batshit
