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Sad YouTube: Tears For Trolls

Sad YouTube is where the star is not the main player in the music video but the readers’ comments below.

Set ‘em up, Joe. I got a little story you oughta know.

Like all of us, Mark Slutsky surfs the net in a frustrated, futile attempt to find meaning, feed boredom and fill gaping emotional holes. Of course, all we get from the effort is a reduced attention span, carpal tunnel syndrome, and an occasional sense of schadenfreude.

Mark, however, has triumphed over the Age. The Montreal native has found and founded Sad YouTube, where the star is not the main player in the music video but the readers’ comments below. And the more pathetic, the better (for us).

Here, ironically, we the readers become the trolls, exercising high-minded judgment on those whose aim is true and whose memories are pure. So that we don’t have to, Mark sifts through readers’ comments from those who have not yet accepted that life is a cabaret.

hqdefaultA typical example comes from a YouTube offering of Johnny Burnette’s “Dreamin’.” A passerby offers up this comment, which carries enough pathos to score a blog post on Sad YouTube. Get out your hankies:

“Oh my gosh, my first hubby used to sing this to me when I was 17. I found out last year that he died in 2004. He was a physically abusive man. Strange, I remember the good times. We were only married a year and a half. I suppose he had his own demons inside. At 17 I was going to live forever and maybe he was just “Dreamin’.”

Can you take it? Or more importantly, can you dig it? Mark has found some awesome media love as a result of this creation, from the likes of NPR’s On The Media and BuzzFeed (Sad YouTube: The Lost Treasures of the Internet’s Greatest Cesspool).

Perhaps Mark describes it best in his personal blog description (who better to know what he’s getting at than he?):  Moments of melancholy, sadness and saudade from the lives of strangers, gleaned from the unfairly maligned ocean of YouTube comments.

Here, we talk to Mark about how Sad YouTube’s earnest sentimentality is earning its mark in the annals of Internet history. And why we can’t turn away.

 

Is it chicken or the egg?  Do you find the comments first, or the music videos first?

It’s usually a combination. I just sort of follow my nose, and I jump from video to video. I also get inspired by certain things, but I usually just go to YouTube and start cruising around.

Is it generally understood that the worst place on the Internet for comments is, in fact, YouTube?

I wouldn’t say it’s the worst place. I would say it’s considered the worst place, and for many good reasons. However, there is much to be said for these comments sections. I don’t think it’s the worst place on the Internet.

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Is it easy for you to sift out the proper YouTube comments that are worthy of your project?

It does take a lot of time. But I developed this weird ability to scroll pretty fast. My eye just stops on the ones that may be good. My subconscious seems to have developed a skill that identifies what might be a good comment.

What are some of the qualities of a good sad YouTube comment?

It’s never just one specific type of comment. I look for ones with interesting details that evoke a very specific memory, a very specific moment in time. At least one or two details that really make it seem singular that evoke a major story or a scene.

Does a Sad YouTube post always have to be sad?

It doesn’t always have to be sad, but there has to be a bit of nostalgia, or what I call saudade, which is an ineffable yearning for something lost.

Can you name a few examples that you seem to can’t forget yourself?

There are so many that I think about all the time. All of my favorites are in the BuzzFeed piece. But there is this one that starts with the line, “I would like to send you a memory.” That’s the greatest sentence ever.

It’s about this guy who, when he was a kid in the projects in Manhattan, heard a disco song playing out a window. He started dancing The Hustle with some girl who was crossing the street as well. I really liked that. That’s a specific time in somebody’s life that will never be written down anywhere, but it’s preserved here.

Do these comments influence the way you hear these songs going forward?

One criteria that I do have is that I usually chose songs that I like or at least can bear listening to. So it’s the other way around: my musical tastes influence the comments that I’ve mined. I have a wide-ranging range of musical tastes. I like music a lot so I don’t think I exclude a lot. When you attach a memory to an ‘80s dance hit, it becomes much more complex and interesting.

I find that old-style disco songs or freestyle songs from the ‘80s get really great comments. There seems to be something about older club music that has this melancholy attached to it.

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Have you ever heard from anybody you’ve posted?

I do find some people, like in the article I wrote for BuzzFeed, but I actually sought them out. No one has ever come to me and said, “Hey, you used my comment.” I await that day!

This site reminds me of the Nathaniel West novel, Miss Lonelyhearts. I wonder if, just like in the book, these comments begin to affect you emotionally?

In the novel, people’s fears and problems begin to overwhelm Miss Lonelyhearts and destroy him, but these comments make me feel good. They make me feel more connected to the rest of humanity. I feel like I’m living through these little moments. It feels more like Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap, when he jumps into people’s lives. I feel like I understand people a little more. I feel privileged to peek into their lives.

 

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That’s the way to play it, Everlys!  Smile though your heart is breaking. Bro’s before ho’s!

 

Check out Sad YouTube here. And you have a good day too.

 

 

 

 

 

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