Why does YouTube bring out the worst in us?

I may be a dinosaur, but I've been on the Internet for a very, very long time.  I even had a primitive form of email, before anyone really knew the term;  I actually went to a British Telecom launch event somewhere Up West, as a proper business prospect, in a suit, and took notes.  We used just to call it electronic mail, in the days of Telecom Gold.  Which at times was so slow that I can remember watching individual letters (by which I mean characters of the alphabet, not fully formed missives) adding themselves to messages in real time.

And I've been on eBay for ten years, so can remember when it was a service for ordinary people who wanted to sell stuff to other ordinary people by auction, rather than the wannabee Amazon that it has become.

So I have come across chat rooms in many guises, and signed up for message boards of all kinds. The White Goods Information Line springs to mind for no very good reason - I think I was trying to find spare parts for our gas oven, or something.

But I have never, ever come across the vituperation, insult and sheer gratuitous use of curse words (as George McGovern would say, if he weren't dead) that occurs on YouTube.

Look, on eBay we could get quite worked up about people who imposed extra conditions in their listings, or who abused the (once fully functioning) feedback system.  The debate could become heated, but anyone who trolled or flamed would be quickly sat upon, we would all pile in to nay say and suppress them - and finally The Moderator might step in and remove their posts.  Regulars on eBay boards (and ooooh, we sorted ourselves out into tightly-knit cliques on the various boards!) soon got to know The Moderators .... they were like your secondary school teacher, your nanny, your parent ... maybe your minor deity.  (Secretly, we all got a thrill when Big Daddy/Mommy came in and tried to impose order.  For a moment, we weren't just pathetic losers keying text into the ether ... someone had at least noticed us.)

But I digress.

I suppose in a perverse way it's encouraging.  People feel strongly enough about music (which, let's face it, is one of the things that makes life worth living, over and above Dime bars, kittens, and the first pull on a Balkan Sobranie ..... oh no, sorry, that's denied me, because SMOKING KILLS) to abuse each other, disrespect their taste, and mock their opinions as to the divide between 'drum and bass' or some equally arbitrary way of hitting or plucking things and then treating them electronically in order to produce audible wave forms.  Idiots - it's all music!  (See, even I can't resist the temptation to abuse.)    

[Sir, step away from the keyboard.  Hands by your side, please, sir.]  "But that bastard said that Kate Bush was just a whiney female with parent issues, and that Aerial was a mishmash of half-realised ideas!  I must destroy him, in a comment!"  [Permission to deploy Taser, please, Control. This looks like a bad one.]

*sighs*

I just don't see why they have to swear so much, or be personally abusive.  It isn't big, and it isn't clever.  Use a few more words, and your attack can be more devastating than saying ****, *****, ******* or even **** you.


"Don't forget to register to vote" - Frank Zappa.