gsauce:

I just wasted the better half of the night reading this guy’s comments on CollegeHumor. You wouldn’t be alone if your first instinct was to comment back to this guy (yes, I am making the assumption he is a guy) and say “what’s your problem?” But here’s the kicker— I really *do* want to know what his problem is. I want to know why he keeps coming back to CollegeHumor. I don’t mean that in an accusatory way, I really am curious. Why would he continually subject himself to such abuse if he hated the site and the associated style of comedy to such an absurd degree?

I’ve come up with a few guesses myself. At first I entertained the conspiracy theory that ‘MH’ is really the product of the CollegeHumor staff. ‘He’ is just a clever ruse to slyly poke fun at themselves and their audience. After all, much of CH’s humor is tongue-in-cheek, almost a satire of their own style.

On the other hand, maybe this guy really is a masochist. Maybe he enjoys feeling the burning anger that I usually reserve for something like Fox News or Nazis. Maybe he gets off on being able to loathe a group of people without having that pesky pang of guilt usually associated with such feelings.

Maybe he feels like something really needs to be said. After all, let’s be honest here. CollegeHumor is a hotbed of smut and lowbrow humor. Even their best pieces are often sophomoric at best. Not that I’m complaining (for god’s sake I wrote a song the other day called College Girls are Easy). Maybe he has a point— maybe we (I include myself here) are encouraging the degradation of America’s higher culture (if that even exists). Maybe we are enabling our young men to view women as inferior, as nothing more than sex symbols. Maybe if CollegeHumor didn’t exist, the world would be a better place.

But, even if that were true, why bother attacking the site through its commentary section? That’s like yelling at a movie while sitting in the cinema’s seats. What good does he really think he can do?

Perhaps, and this is the most likely case I believe, he is just fed up with the fanboyish glee of CollegeHumor visitors. I admit I’m a bit of a fan(girl) myself and have, at times, been stupidly obsessed with various parts of the CollegeHumor franchise. Maybe MH was a devout follower of CH long ago, back when it was in its ‘golden days’, which, like many days of this description, never really existed quite how we believe they did. I’ve heard older friends speak of these days— when CH was fresh and young. When the actors were more accessible. When there were less n00b fans on the sites, less highschoolers, less Jake and Amir. Maybe MH feels spurned by CollegeHumor. Maybe, like the the tragic hipsters of the Indie scene, MH fell in love with CH before it was cool. Now they represent a comedic massacre, mercilessly pumped out like the hamburger meat at McDonalds. He thought that Streeter, Amir, Jeff and Sarah were his *real* friends. He *cared* about them. He wanted them to succeed! And what did they do? They became the cool kids. They turned their backs on him and his kind. Instead of the lengthy, thoughtful articles they once wrote (yes, even I look sadly on this part), they now churn out chopped-up bite-sized pieces of pop culture for adderall-ridden 18-year-olds who can’t sit still long enough to finish a 100-word article.

So, yeah, MH is a bit of a pretentious dick. Maybe we’re best off just ignoring him and moving along out merry way. But maybe, just maybe, he’s a reminder that anyone producing new media should strive just a little harder— really push yourself to produce something you are truly proud of. Maybe he’s that bit of ourselves reminding us not to settle for mediocrity, to hold out for greatness.

And then again, maybe he’s just another lonely internet asshole, shouting insults into the darkness.

The funny part? He’s complaining about them making an article that simply covers the best stuff that happened in October. So, if he was a rabid fanboy who followed everything on the site, he’d have seen it already, making it an easily skippable piece. If he wasn’t a frequent reader, the column is actually a nice feature, because it packages the best 5 things that went up on the site in October (without tooting their own horn too badly by adding nothing but CH originals). The points you raise are valid, but MH is way out of line.