# Why the nasty ethnic bickering in the comments on YouTube videos of Central Asian music? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 29, 2010, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-nasty-ethnic-bickering-in-the-comments-on-youtube-videos-of-central-asian-music/534261 "2010-03-29T22:14:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![History\_Monk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/67e7ee/32.png) [@History\_Monk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/History_Monk)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2010, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-nasty-ethnic-bickering-in-the-comments-on-youtube-videos-of-central-asian-music/534261/1 "2010-03-29T22:14:14Z")
Or far-fetched nationalist boasting, one of the two. Seems like every one has something along the lines of: “There are Kazakhs in Kazakhstan, not Mongolians, Kazakhs are different from them! Researches found that Kazakh warriors were the strongest one comparing to other Turk tribes! Historian from California!” [This video (with sound, natch) is pretty standard.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpT6S9TGjpc&feature=fvw) So what’s up with this? ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-nasty-ethnic-bickering-in-the-comments-on-youtube-videos-of-central-asian-music/534261/2 "2010-03-30T00:03:14Z")
Not entirely certain, though I have been noticing it all of a sudden … I went to a website for a Tuvan fort [Por Bajin] and an amazing amount of garbage commentary was the result, I _think_ the first of the comments was something about it having been built by Ukrainians of all things [after the various comments of photoshop that any photo gets. I could post a picture of my cat and someone would claim it was photoshoped:rolleyes:] I am thinking it is the availability of computers and internet access to anybody who can pretty much scrounge the money for both, and the desire to leave a comment to show how smart they are and they know _everything_ even if they are just blowing smoke up someones ass. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-nasty-ethnic-bickering-in-the-comments-on-youtube-videos-of-central-asian-music/534261/3 "2010-03-30T01:10:51Z")
That’s not that surprising, nor is it limited to Central Asians. Eastern Europeans get up to the same shit on YouTube comments (home of the stupidest people on the internet anyway). I typed “macedonian music\*” into YouTube. [This was the first result](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KgLRTLZqa4). Check out the comments. The second result comes with the comment “Please no Fighting about Macedonia, Greece, Albania, Serbia, or Bulgaria. Or any other balkan country. Enjoy the music ;)”. A lot of these countries, in both Eastern Europe and Central Asia, have rather arbitrarily born borders, with multiple ethnics groups. In some cases, the existence of some of these ethnic groups is or was denied. A lot of the lines between the different groups are fluid. The result is that nationalism and ethnicity are extremely touchy subjects. \*I chose Macedonia because both Bulgaria and Greece have regular shit fits over this country’s existence, so any mention of Macedonian national pride is guaranteed to piss off people from both of these countries. [Like this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeFBsaJ7afw). ---
**Author:** ![thirdname](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d07c76/32.png) [@thirdname](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdname)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-nasty-ethnic-bickering-in-the-comments-on-youtube-videos-of-central-asian-music/534261/4 "2010-03-30T02:46:58Z")
Are you new to Youtube? ---
**Author:** ![History\_Monk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/67e7ee/32.png) [@History\_Monk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/History_Monk)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2010, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-nasty-ethnic-bickering-in-the-comments-on-youtube-videos-of-central-asian-music/534261/5 "2010-03-30T04:09:28Z")
Oh, it’s not the inarticulate pointless nastiness. [That’s just Youtube.](http://xkcd.com/202/) It was just a kind of different _variety_ of inarticulate pointless nastiness. Yeah, the Macedonian video is pretty much the same kind. Still, it’s interesting, even if it’s not really surprising.