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Week 2 and already my poor blogging body is beginning to grow weary of feuding. For those of you that are just coming into this feud, a challenge was thrown-down a few weeks ago to Friend-Of-The-Blog j.Bowman.

Not a cake-eating challenge. He would destroy me at that.

I got really excited when I realised that today was Rant Day. That’s right, for Round 2 in Blog Feud IV/Blog World Series of Blogging, my esteemed opponent j.Bowman and I get to launch into fitful tirades against trivial things.

I had already lined up what I wanted to rant about, and I was going through some preparatory things, including checking out my opponent’s website, when I came across the most vile and terrible thing I could think of.

Some “person” (being generous), commented on j.Bowman’s How-To post. You can find that post directly here. I don’t mean to be so obvious in drawing attention to the post, but here is the comment in full:

Anonymous said…
Your opponent must be very intimidated by your blog. So intimidated in fact that he failed to provide a direct link to this post.Bad mark for Mr. Smith.

August 31, 2011 6:48 AM

Listen here “Anonymous” (as if that’s your real name), I am intimidated by j.Bowman. He is tall and gangly and his pale skin gives me the jitters. He could very well be a vampire, for all I know. That is intimidating. I wasn’t intimidated by his blog post and failed to provide a direct link when I posted my How-To because of it. That’s not what happened at all.

The fact is, I had my blog done long before j.Bowman had crawled out of his Batman-shaped bed and started looking for Dora the Explorer images on Google.

How long did it take you to find this one, j.Bow?

Fact: my post was written the night before and was automatically scheduled to be posted on WordPress at 18:00, Eastern time (I live in Ottawa).

Fact: j.Bowman’s post is listed as being put up at 19:21 (based on my local time).

Fact: “Anonymous” commented a day and a half later.

I did what any person without possession of a time machine would do: I went ahead without providing a “direct” link to j.Bowman’s post (this one, right here – go ahead and read it, I am not intimidated). I did however provide two links to j.Bowman. The first was a link to his site’s home page and the second was a link to his introductory post about our blog. If a casual reader over here clicked on the first link at the appropriate time (say once my opponent had actually posted), the first thing they would see on his home page would be his How-To post.

This is how the internet works, "Anonymous".

I was not intimidated! I just had to work within the laws of science.

Anyways, I am sure because this “Anonymous” is a reader of j.Bowman that they are actually in all fairness a decent person (yes, a real person, most likely with a real name) and don’t deserve to have a strip torn off of them. I won’t waste anymore time on that. I just wanted to prove that I am paying attention.

However, it does serve as a nice lead in to Round 2, as my rant targets a fairly similar scourge of the world wide web:

The Worst “People” On The Planet Are YouTube Haterz

The difference between “Anonymous” and the anonymous trolls on YouTube is pretty significant. “Anonymous” was, in all likelihood, trying to be funny and throwing a bit of gamesmanship into this friendly rivalry between j.Bowman and I. For all I know, it could have even been j.Bowman himself.

Well played, sir.

There was also nothing particularly offensive being said. “Anonymous” even called me Mr. Smith, which is a formality not to be expected in the unruly Wild West of the intertubes. But all you need to do is go on YouTube and watch almost ANY video and you will find the most vile and disgusting comments posted (comments I refuse to sully this stately blog with).

The creatures (“troll” really is a great description of the level of humanity they possess) that do this are the most worthless excuse for flesh possible.

Lady Gaga's dress excepted.

The amazing thing is that by spending hours on end hating on other people’s creative endeavours is actually the saddest thing possible that they could choose. That’s right, they are both the most worthless excuse for flesh possible and the way they choose to spend their time is the saddest choice possible. It’s official: they are both worthless and sad.

Stop the presses!

It’s not that YouTube haterz (I misspell it because they misspell everything. I mean everything.) aren’t sometimes correct. They might find a really shitty video online. YouTube is filled with millions of them. It’s bound to happen. But, rather than just let that shitty video disappear into the abyss of nothingness, they prefer to tear it to shreds by throwing derogatory epithets at the creators of the video.

Pictured: not an epithet.

And that is the true awfulness about what makes the YouTube haterz the worst “people” possible. They do not create, they only hate. It’s not even possible to call what they do criticism, because criticism holds value. It can be negative. There is nothing wrong with negative criticism. Find faults, dig away, if you must. It would be a perfectly acceptable criticism for me to say that The Expendables was a waste of my time.

I think Jet Li and Jason Statham would agree.

The difference is that I am criticising the piece of art (stretching the definition a bit) and not the artists (really stretching). I don’t particularly care for Sylvester Stallone. It makes me a an awful excuse for a dude, probably. I don’t care. But I will never suggest that he isn’t worthy of walking this planet. YouTube haterz say that sort of awful thing about ten year old girls who just made a video of them learning to play the piano because they wanted to share it with their grandma who lives far away.

"That was very good, Mary, but we agree with PhillyDbagg79 that maybe you should consider a woodwind instrument instead"

And it is getting worse. I attended a conference about a year ago and one of the keynote speakers was a technology futurist.

Admit it, you had pictured something like Robocop in your head, didn't you?

The futurist (who didn’t look like Peter Weller) said that humanity is actually producing digital content at an exponential rate. For those of us who sucked at math, Robocop explained that everything that had ever been created, all content (books, music, video, etc.), since the beginning of human civilization was being doubled every month. Think about that. If people still used libraries, it would mean that the library would have to be doing some crazy renovations to double its capacity – EVERY MONTH. Really think about that. Open up iTunes and see how many gigabytes your Justin Bieber takes up and then double that number next month, and then double next months number, and so on.

September 2011: only 45GB on my harddrive.

YouTube is growing at that rate. The number of videos on YouTube this month will be doubled next month. That is an astonishing feat. It means that we are in the midst of a creative explosion. There are literally millions of people out there who are trying to create something of value.

Also cats, lots of cats.

But, despite this impossible rate of creative growth, there are still tons of people who would prefer to hate, not create. It’s not like you need to be an expert or a professional to do that anymore. The freedom of the internet has meant that idiots like j.Bowman and I can write blog posts, for God’s sake.

Who knows, maybe if they turned all their expletive-laced anger into positive energy they might actually create something that a few of us might enjoy for a couple of minutes, that one time. Is that too crazy to think of?

Until then, YouTube haterz are without a doubt, the worst “people” on the planet. I won’t tell them what to do with their sorry excuses for lives, but I am sure they might have a few choice words ready to dispense at themselves.

I want to end this on a positive note, though. Here is (aside from adorable videos of cats who just want to keep a lid closed) the reason that YouTube exists. Be inspired, trolls. Be inspired. This is what to aim for.