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RIP to one of my favorite YouTube comment formats:

> "<dislike number> of people <something funny related to the video>"




Unlike with the "k" suffix for thousands that we have today, YouTube used to show the unabbreviated number of likes and dislikes even for larger numbers of votes.

This video was remarkable for the fact that it maintained pretty much a perfectly equal number of likes and dislikes for years (rarely off by more than 1). It was a tacit agreement among viewers: if you saw a mismatched count, it was your duty to vote towards restoring the balance.

The two numbers are probably off by several hundred these days.


>This video was remarkable for the fact that it maintained pretty much a perfectly equal number of likes and dislikes for years (rarely off by more than 1). It was a tacit agreement among viewers: if you saw a mismatched count, it was your duty to vote towards restoring the balance.

While this may seem pretty cool and fun to you and me, in Youtube's view this is an "attack".


Apparently you can hover over the bar under the the like / dislike and get the exact counts. Its off by 10 as of this post.

Edit: And it was corrected immediately. Refreshed and they were back to even.


I don't like this one, as each voter has decisively chosen one side. In aggregate, the voters are ambivalent rather than neutral. Better had it received no votes at all.


For me that's the silver lining of this change.


Yeah, that was hilarious the first 100 times I saw it. It seems now every "funny" comment is a template like the one you describe, and everyone is racing to be the first one to plug in the right values.

Low quality garbage.


People objecting to the idea that someone might have pressed the dislike button for whatever reason, unable to handle the mild cognitive dissonance of divergent opinions always stood in stark contrast to the old mantra that graced the signatures of slashdot and other forum comments:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."


I think you're misinterpreting as psychological turmoil what is actually light anonymous fun being made of people's tastes in service of a punchline.


and this beautiful video will lose its point :( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYS8Av10B00




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