I don’t understand some people.

I have a YouTube channel where I “loosely” review books. I say “loosely” because they’re really my own reaction to the books based on the themes that make me think and reflect about my own experiences in life. I’ve hid all my previous videos where I worked out loud through my different learning experiences since 2014 and only have focussed on making public, the ones related to books alone.

There’s no rhyme or reason as to WHY I’m doing this. It’s not for building a business nor even a community. I guess for me, it’s like this blog where I “make sense” of the book through a platform. In this case, it’s YouTube. I could even write about the book – which I do sometimes here on this blog. Really, there’s no pressing need for me to use YouTube (or even, this blog) if I really think about it.

Every week or so, I’ll go into the backend of YouTube (called YouTube Studio) to moderate any comments. I have set it up so that every comment must be moderated by me before it gets published. Sometimes, the odd or rude one gets through so I clean it up. On the whole, the comments are well thought out, people share their own reflections and lessons of the book or thank me.

However, I do get the odd one or two in the mix that are nasty.

I’ve had a few from men who comment on the way I look or my grey hair. In all honesty, I’m not fussed with those comments. I can take them or leave them and I don’t go high and mighty about them either. Some, I have even let through because on the whole, they’re not comments that make me think about their intention. I think they were just naive to write these comments down and click Send.

The ones that don’t sit right with me are the ones that are vindictive in some way. They’re the ones who are blatantly insulting – for no purpose really.

If they didn’t like what I said or how I said it, then why watch? Why even bother commenting? Why can’t they just move on?

One person mentioned that because I blog and use YouTube, then I am a hypocrite because this is social media.

You know what? He’s right (to an extent if we delve into the differences of blogs around the use of control of content).

I’ve often thought the same. But that didn’t mean I let that comment go through.

It was the WAY he said it. In three separate comments, it was the manner in which he expressed himself that came across in a nasty manner.

Rather than reframe these comments into a question, or seek out a discussion or even ask WHY I have continued to blog or use YouTube knowing full well that I know that these too, are social, he instead attacked. As a result, I deleted them. It wasn’t worth my while explaining my reasons because HOW he responded showed me that he wasn’t really interested.

It got me thinking about how and why people share online.

For the last couple of years, I’ve been thinking and mulling this over and WHY. Why is it REALLY important to do this? Is it?

The thing is, if we don’t, we miss out on the opportunity to share our knowledge, experiences, ideas, insights and motivations. It’s akin to being muffled, isolated and insular because we fear others who might insult or belittle us. To me, people (especially people who hide behind avatars) who are deliberately nasty and vindictive actually, hurt society. They hinder the opportunity for different voices to be heard and connections to be made. They could have simply overcome this by reframing their response to one of curiosity or even politely comment in a way that isn’t personal.

Sometimes it baffles me that as humans, we can do so much better when it comes to communicating with each other. I wonder why we don’t take a more reflective approach in our own communication styles with people – if my video was SO irritating to them, wouldn’t they want to know WHY and sought out more information before deciding whether to add to the discussion, agree to disagree, or reach a consensus or simply move onto another channel or video?

I really don’t understand people sometimes but rest assured, I will not be losing sleep over their comments or not publishing any more reviews.