But comments are engagement, and engagement drives the algorithm, doesn’t it? I thonk encouraging comments is important, and 100 people arguing about plastic is good for the channel.
I wonder if there is a market out there for “comment curating”, where a person reads them foe the creator and bans the trolls amd passes on anything interesting.
AI could likely summarize them.
You don’t have to convince yourself of anything. It is possible you could find a way, in time, to see some small value in them, as content in some way. For some, as yet, unforeseen purpose.
When you sort them, you ARE dealing with them, which is a lot easier than mustering the grit to block them out of your mind entirely, or to completely ignore them.
Might make this bit easier for you, maybe consider trying it!
There are functions to appoint moderators with various levels of privilege, so I guess it might be a thing - except that a lot of channels big enough that comment moderation would be an actual job, just ignore the comments entirely (which, if you do that, tends to make them a hotbed of scams)
You are describing changing a mental habit though, which I agree is what I need to do.
Why are you going through all of these comments personally? You need to do what other public personas do: have someone else go through all contacts from the public. They filter out the dreck so you never see it. They highlight the best stuff so you don’t miss it. And everything in between is available for you to look through as you feel like it.
Your job is to create content. You are not a public relations or community manager. Don’t let your success push you away from what you’re good at.
I just subscribed to your channel and left a comment on your jam and honey taste test video.
There’s a certain number of blowhards and jackasses out there. If you want to read the good comments, you’ll have to read some of the bad ones, too. YouTube does not provide a jackass filter. A few things you can do:
Good luck!
I’m not sure how relevant or helpful this is, but the OP’s list of concerns reminded me of the Aesop’s (?) Fable about the man, his son, and the donkey.
In order to have employees, I would need to monetize the channel more than I currently do, and at that point, I would prefer to just give up and go work for someone else. Part of the reason I love doing what I do is that I just get to do what I want - I don’t accept sponsors so I don’t have to please them; I don’t have to saturate my videos with midroll ads in order to bring in revenue to pay a production team. I am not going to turn what is currently a highly enjoyable and fulfilling activity into just another job that I probably end up hating.
Yeah, I think the ‘nip it in the bud’ approach is something to work on. Make the decision as early as possible to skip over the stuff that isn’t good for me
I would imagine that being a social media “celebrity,” as it were – and by that I mean a person whose livelihood/vocation by necessity involves invoking commentary from viewers – is a new area that comes with its own slate of mental illness concerns. I say this with zero hint of snark or facetiousness: I wonder if talking things over with a therapist or counselor might be beneficial for you. A professional who can help you address your feelings, perhaps give you some coping strategies?
Side note: in the UK, does the NHS pay for counseling? And if the answer is “yes,” and I ask strictly out of curiosity, does it pay for, like, marriage counseling or family counseling?
Personally, I wouldn’t be worried by such questions because I’m confident in my answer. However, I’m not sure if that’s true for you. Maybe it bothers you because you don’t know the answer, or you’re afraid to know the answer. Are you eating too much salt? Should you avoid canned foods?
If I was in the situation, I’d do the research and give the answer. If the answer said that I should change then I’d change. If it said that I should keep doing what I’m doing, then I wouldn’t worry so much about people’s comments about it.
Realistically, it’s just free content ideas. Your research would be interesting to hear.
Hi Mange, sorry you’ve got this weighing on you. The channel I visit most features music performed by ‘Gene’, and when I read the comments my main reaction is “Gene, jeez I hope you can ignore these comments. You’re very good but you’re not the world’s best. And no, you shouldn’t perform the Neil Diamond songbook.”
Fortunately, Gene seems grounded, fairly headstrong, and has a good circle of friends. He responds to maybe one comment every ten videos. You probably want to interact more than that, but you’re not going to lose many followers if you cut back your interaction.
You might restrict yourself to reading 25 responses for each video. Or ask a friend or your significant other to read 100 responses and mark 10 for you to read. There are people who enjoy helping their friends with small tasks, especially if it makes them feel involved with a cool enterprise. Be willing to ask.
Your fans will suffer if you’re suffering. Don’t make yourself needlessly unhappy.
PS: you’re not obliged to respond to this post. 
I think you’re misunderstanding the problem. It’s the sheer volume of these things that’s the problem.
As a human, I’m sure you must occasionally have little worrying thoughts that pop into your mind once in a while, and you just deal with them or dismiss them. That’s normal - and unless it ramps up to a situation where you are obsessively worrying about every little detail of everything you do, the occasional nagging thought, doubt, worry, concern, etc is just background noise.
But what if it wasn’t just your own little inner monologue occasionally throwing these things at your brain. What if it was the collective concerns of thousands of other people? Just dismissing any one of those thoughts is no different from just dismissing one of your own. But it isn’t one, it’s thousands.
Like there’s a bee in the room - ‘it’s just a bee - ignore it’ makes perfect sense; you’re not afraid of bees, are you?
Until there are ten thousand bees in the room, then you’re dealing with a different phenomenon - your answer for how you would deal with one bee is not fitting to the current situation.
You wouldn’t, because you only have 24 hours in your day. Also, you’d find that after doing the research and finding that the answer was the one you had all along, the question doesn’t go away - someone else comes along and asks it again, then someone else, and again; dozens of them - the question, whatever it is, is never laid to rest.
Also this is kind of victim-blamey, just a little bit.
Mostly I would just ignore them. We continually ran into the same problems at work with feedback about software products. We would design a dashboard and foolishly send it out for comment. Some people would say it was too busy, others that it was too simple. Some thought the color scheme was too bright, others insisted that it was not bright enough. Perhaps the red wasn’t red enough or else it was too red. Now we assiduously avoid any kind of external review and just ship the product. We hardly ever get requests to amend a finished product.
I guess the issue is that the choice to ignore them (without just ignoring everything), involves first noticing them and recognising that they are something to ignore. It’s not really about what they are, or would be if they were entertained, it’s just that they all intrude (only individually very slightly, but en masse)
Employees are one way, but consider volunteers as well. I mean, didn’t you start out content creation without pay? That’s an actual job! There may be someone who will help out because they enjoy community management.
The problem is that this activity is already turning into something you hate. You’re not there yet, but you’ve crossed the threshold when some aspects are causing real harm to you.
In the short term, you can gird yourself against this. But you’ll resent that at some point. You need help from someone else; that’s why you’re asking for advice here. The only long-term solution is somehow separating the negative aspects from the stuff you love.
I don’t envy your problem, I can see why you’re stressed.
My 2c. This wouldn’t be bothering you if you weren’t thinking some kind of way about it. I’m not sure what thoughts you’re having that are getting you to this state of distress, but I would try to figure it out. Maybe it’s, “I can’t please everyone, it’s unfair of them to expect that.” Maybe it’s, “If I can’t keep up with all this I’ll let someone down.” I don’t know what it is, but chances are it’s something that pops up over and over again whenever you are confronted with these messages. Whatever it is, that’s the thing that’s actually causing the suffering.
Sometimes it’s enough just to recognize that thought without attaching to it too much. Sometimes you might want to hash it out CBT style. I don’t think trying to ignore the comments is going to help you. But you can get yourself to a state where they are just a passing phenomenon that have nothing to do with you. Meditation helps you stay in that mind state. But you can practice with the comments, maybe desensitize yourself to them. Spend dedicated time reading them each day until they are boring to you, until they seem absurd to you, the same way saying the same word over and over makes you realize how ridiculous words are. These comments are a river and you’re just passing through it.
I don’t suggest trying to suppress anything that comes up. It’s more about learning to be a nonjudgmental observer of whatever is going on. I would also recommend spending less time thinking about this when you’re not actually reading the comments. When I do this exercise, if I find myself thinking about something upsetting, I think, “There I go again” and then turn myself toward some I value. It gets easier the more times you do it.
Just some suggestions based on things that have helped me.
You’re making a fair point, but I don’t want to dismiss the possibility that there is a navigation choice that will simply solve this problem, or rather, render it a non-problem.
I’ve done that already pretty successfully with overt haters - I used to let that affect me a lot and get into arguments and try to demonstrate they were wrong about me. The solution (obvious though it seems when I state it here, now) was block, delete, forget. If my first impression of someone is ‘wow, I don’t even want a second impression’, I don’t need to indulge them. I just excise them from future interaction with me.
The thing that is the topic of this thread is a bit more subtle though - these aren’t haters, these are just people who have random assorted everyday concerns and don’t even realise that they are contributing to (what could turn out to be) a psychological burden for me. These people don’t deserve the same approach as the haters.
On the staff/volunteers thing… Maybe. My discord server is administered by volunteers, but thats largely because it already existed in ‘unofficial’ form at the point I stumbled in there and said ‘hey, wanna make this official?’
I’m reluctant to recruit volunteers to do comment curation. It just doesn’t feel right. I might be wrong or irrational in that regard.
Lots of good stuff here. Thank you