Sunday, 13 August 2017

Being a YouTube Angel.

I replied to somebody’s comment on YouTube a few weeks ago. I complimented her on sensing something significant in a seemingly innocuous lyric. Today she came back to me with:

Thanks nobody's said something like that to me before.

The structure is imperfect and the syntax suggestive of regional vernacular, but that isn’t the point. The point is that some tiny thing I said touched somebody’s heart and made her happy, even if only for a few seconds. Isn’t that splendid? Doesn’t it make you think that your life hasn’t been a pointless exercise after all?

And something else I’ve learned on YouTube: The fact that a comment has received 276 likes is no guarantee that the statement was worth making or even that it made any sense. The majority of the most insightful and cogently argued comments get few likes or none at all. That’s when you learn why wars are fought, institutionalised stupidity is rampant, and Donald Trump lives in the White House.

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