YouTube’s comment section isn’t often a friendly place, especially when it comes to Shorts. But, why? It seems people find a way to comment negative things on others short form videos, but with TikTok, there’s far more positivity.
Before we get into this, let’s start by saying, there’s good and bad everywhere. On every platform you’ll find positive and negative people and comments. However, we’re highlighting how overall for the majority of people, YouTube Shorts is a far more toxic place to be than TikTok. It won’t be the case for everyone.
Considering YouTube has been around for such a long time, you’d imagine it has a community feel. But, this isn’t always true. In fact, TikTok hosts more of a community vibe than YouTube. Is it because everyone is in competition on YouTube? Or, at least, they feel they should be? Those on TikTok often work with each other rather than against.
On TikTok, it’s quite easy to work with other creators. You can share their content, adding your own spin on the video if you wish. Also, you can easily drop them a message asking to connect. It’s a very forward-thinking app. With emphasis on coming together to create something even better. Live videos are one of the most popular TikTok tools.
It’s so easy to achieve that creators go live almost daily. Within a few clicks, they’ve brought in other creators. Bringing together audiences and viewers too. YouTube doesn’t promote this style of content. It seems to be a platform where everyone focuses on their own work and creators don’t cross over as often. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just different.
That’s the point. TikTok and YouTube shouldn’t be identical. They should be different platforms, after all, they are in competition with each other. But, that doesn’t mean one set of viewers should be nice while the others aren’t. This mentality seems a little backwards. Of course, the platforms aren’t to blame, but, who is?
YouTube Shorts comments
Looking into how creators on YouTube’s platform feel, it seems there’s an overall sense that comments on YouTube Shorts are overly negative. Some suggest the short-form videos are to blame. That people only have a short attention span and therefore, by uploading short videos you’re asking for people to throw a comment and go.
But, this doesn’t explain the need to be unkind. Surely, these individuals are wasting more time by commenting hateful things. Instead, they could scroll past the video and pretend they hadn’t seen it. With TikTok there’s a sense of understanding that videos you don’t enjoy, you keep scrolling. That’s how your FYP becomes tailored to your wants.
Comments seem to be made on videos that just aren’t relevant to the content itself. Often, people come across as though they’re commenting for the sake of it. Perhaps they go through commenting on video after video. While there are many communities on YouTube that are likely kind and have a lot of love to offer in the comments, Shorts seems to miss out.
TikTok comments
TikTok on the other hand has a lot of positivity. Of course, there will still be accounts that receive a lot of hateful comments, but it seems TikTok are a lot better at hiding them, or removing comments. Perhaps this is the point. Maybe both platforms receive their equal share, but one is better at removing them than the other.
Or, maybe viewers have got used to TikTok’s hot on it ways, and they no longer try to comment hurtful things because they know their comment and possibly even account will be blocked. From exploring both platforms, it seems on TikTok where unkind comments come in, they’re always related to some sort of drama the creator has been involved with.
The comments also seem to be related to the video content. If someone takes offence, or doesn’t like what they see, they might comment disagreeing. But, with YouTube Shorts, people are commenting anything hurtful they can think of, despite the video context. Maybe it does come down to the platforms, but overall TikTok seems a nicer place to be.
Let us point out that we are by no means TikTok or YouTube famous. We have a few followers on both, so by commenting unkind things on our account, it doesn’t get the person anywhere. They aren’t receiving views for the things they say. But, while we have only ever had nice things said on our TikToks, we can’t say the same for Shorts, and it seems many agree.
