Comments = Compliments + Complaints
The compliment above, from a super-sweet subscriber to our YouTube channel, not only made my day, but it might have made my week.
The compliments and other words of encouragement from strangers on the internet continue to warm my heart.
The kind comments also balance out the unkind comments and complaints. While I had been removing comments and blocking folks several times a day, I recently realized something interesting:
Most of the truly hateful comments were being made on YouTube Shorts.
Those with Shorts-only attention spans seem determined to erase me and my “kind” from history. Or at least from YouTube Shorts.
Currently, our channel’s “Likes (vs. dislikes)” average is 96.3%. But I’ve seen a few of our Shorts dip much, much lower. Into the 60s in some cases. On the same videos that seem to get the most hateful comments.
For anyone who doubts those on the right are not doing anything and everything to erase “other” POVs and stories, I’ve heard about and now seen firsthand the rampant abuse of likes, dislikes, and various reporting tools on social media platforms, big and small.
These folks are not just targeting LGBTQ+ accounts. They’re targeting anyone not white, cisgender, heterosexual, AND male. I’m three of those four and am reminded if I only would stop “acting gay” and “posting gay xit” I would be a-ok. And it would be GREAT if I would accept Jesus as my personal savior too.
Sorry, Clutch-The-Pearl Earls, this Homo don’t play that.
The closet is for clothes and Sundays are my Fun Days.
So what’s the answer? As I’ve written about previously, some strangers on the internet just love to hate and spread their negativity.
FIGHTING HATE
When I’m not blocking these asshats (or giving them a dose of their own medicine), I’m noodling about simple ways to shield myself and our channel from them. Here’s what’s working best so far:
“Blocked Words” filtering is a godsend on YouTube. Whoever thought of and implemented this deserves a round of applause. Sure, it catches a lot of false positives, but that makes checking the “Held For Review” comments a lot less daunting. Most of those are from followers who also like to use “bad” words.
Since the most hateful comments (and almost no kind comments) come via Shorts, I’ve disabled comments on all our published ones to date and plan to disable them on any we post going forward.
Fighting the keyboard crusaders is pointless. It’s not worth my mental health moderating their bullxit. Sure, they can dislike the videos still, but we do our best, right?
WEARING PRIDE
Not only do a lot of people struggle to any part of themselves or work online for fear of becoming the target of online trolls, a lot of LGBTQ+ folks don’t feel safe carrying or wearing rainbows these days. Because of real-life bullies and real-world violence.
For those who still want to show their colors, but rather be a little less obvious than the Rainbow Pride Flag, we created a selection of all-over prints based on simple variations of other major LGBTQ+ Pride flags:
Still Bold. Still Proud. Less Loud.
Now available on our Main Shop + Site.
Thanks for reading!
Clint
P.S. We’re happy to adapt other LGBTQ+ flags too, if anyone's interested.
MORE FROM COLLIDE PRESS
Bluesky + Ko-Fi + Linktree + Shop
+ Storefront + Threadless + YouTube
Stay bold, my friend. Haters gonna hate. Let em be. I love how you're choosing to moderate your work, but I love way more that you are not backing down on being who you are and representing our vivid, gorgeous queer community.