YouTube (world) of pain and anger

David Sherman

As friend and colleague, Earl Fowler, says, “there’s a lot of pain out there.” And he’s not talking about the click bait doom we thumb through on our gadgets. Or the all-news, all-the-time news networks of misery, bracketed in five-minute segments by ads for weight-loss and sanitary products for the agèd and trucks for those who believe youth comes on four-wheels anchored by five-litre engines and dreams of crashing through rivers and climbing mountains.

Coupled with the pain is the anger, just a hot button away. Pain and anger found in what used to be benign or even joyful spaces where people now anonymously cry out to be heard. Are they all lonely and need an ear? Are they all frustrated, desperate for any and all to hear the desperation, the loneliness, the pain?

Most nights, I listen to a bit of music. Hook up the computer and YouTube to a Bluetooth speaker so I can hear what’s left of the music — drums, bass, harmonies. Inevitably, I’m drawn to the comments below the video or stills of the artists. My tastes run from jazz to blues to Dylan and the Stones and each song is inevitably accompanied by listeners’ confessions of how much this song meant to them, inevitably tied to a dark moment or two of life. Or death.

There are those who wish only to say something like, “I’ve been listening to the song for X years and I still love it.” But there are more who want the world to know this song was a bit of gauze over pain that won’t heal.

“My father, mother, daughter, son, wife, husband loved this song and listened to it every day as he/she lay dying of cancer and I listen now for him or her every day and weep.” Or, “I’ve listened to this song since it came out 50 years ago. I’m 75 now and have terminal cancer and every day I listen to this song and remember my youth.”

There are multiple variations on a theme of how the song offers whatever succour a piece of music can offer, but it makes one wonder how many out there in the YouTube universe need to share their sorrow with a world of strangers. And why.

Perhaps, as the scroll of doom oft repeats, people are lonely out there. People are avoiding sex and friends and lovers to huddle around their gadgets and the dopamine hits they conjure. A legal, free drug. But the brain’s response to the glow of the screen is not enough to soothe the soul, ravaged, in part, by the same screen that imparts endless horrors. Only the lonely, perhaps, need to inscribe their suffering to strangers who slide through the comments attached to songs.

There’s a flip side, luckily, where people just announce their affection for a tune they’ve been listening to for decades but more often than not it’s something like, “My husband and I played this song at our wedding 45 years ago. He died after a prolonged bout of cancer and I miss him every minute but I play this song and cry every time.”

We need to share our sorrow. It is normal and human. There used to be memorials and remembrances and friends and family to mourn with. Now, it seems, there are multitudes that need to cry into the wilderness where no response is possible. They need to be heard.

The anger is there, too, in a most unlikely place. The online sports pages. Here comments are left by first names or initials, basically anonymously, inevitably by fans who wish to implore the coach of whatever team to coach as they dictate. Or a player to play as the commentator elicits. And more often to tell a player or coach or management that they don’t know what they’re doing. The anonymous critic, of which there are thousands, has probably learned expertise via TV and a case of beer and needs to impart his hard-earned wisdom. Maybe he played sports in school. But he knows more than those paid tens of millions for their skills.

This inflames other readers who take exception to the anonymous opinion and can’t help but savage the miscreant with attacks on his lack of expertise and minimal IQ. The old hot-stove league has now become the cold glass league of anonymity. You can insult freely, hidden behind your screen, encouraged by whoever publishes the story. Rancour means clicks, means ads, means revenues. Civility does not pay.

But from where comes the anger, the need to insult, ridicule, debase a stranger over whether So and So can play left wing or do what needs to be done on the power play? Maybe when rent is due, fridge down to tired leftovers, paycheque can’t cover what needs to be covered, and no one cares, you have to scream at someone. Why not insult a stranger over his opinion on who should be playing tight end for the Packers? “Mahomes is nowhere as good as Brady.” “What idiotic planet did you come from, you aXXhole. Mahomes is …” You get the idea.

Maybe no one else is listening. Maybe there is no one else. Maybe all that’s left in the multitudes of tired, poor, worried and lonely is anger and the only one to aim it at is someone you’ll never know or even see. It’s a trial for some to make friends. Easy to make enemies, especially if they’re anonymous.

And, even better, the verbal fisticuffs make for free content. Belligerence is a profit centre so why not encourage it?

And maybe people need to vent and verbal fisticuffs with strangers over meaningless sports is a hell of a lot better than expressing alienation and despair by loading a semi-automatic.