Monday, January 01, 2024

Pedants in Booktube comments

I swear, every time I make a slip of the tongue, some version of this guy shows up in my comments section: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxXV0QPXOWmc-v7TBs1Cask_5O2gKMWfLw?si=ALcWxzehNKehsQ12



For saying Toni Morrison was a poet.  (She has published poetry, but she was never a poet by trade.)
bro seriously, get your shit together. she was an editor for 20 years before she was a novelist. she was never a poet by trade, her language just tended toward the poetic in a major way, it's to accentuate her communication with a precision that can only be attained by getting the right word, which is what the poet's entire life's work is geared toward.
For saying "...he uh teaches at a very large university whose name I forget, I think it's South Chapel Hill or something like that...".  (In actuality, it's Chapel Hill, in North Carolina)
"South chapel hill"  why would anyone listen to anything this lazy ignoramus had to say beyond this point?
For saying Naguib Mahfouz got the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1990 (a simple slip of the tongue)
Hidd Msrp--comment
Get your facts straight mate, Mahfouz won the Nobel in 1988.
Nobel Peace Prize for Literature?! How can you get that wrong when it's written right there and you point at it?

Did Jesus Exist? By Bart Ehrman: Book Review
When listing martyr traditions that happened outside the New Testament, I got the deaths of some of them mixed up.  I said that James was killed by an arrow.

Apostle James never died from being shot with arrows. You seem very confused. He was beheaded by King Herod and he was the first apostle to die. This is elementary grade Christianity. It was Thaddeus (also known in Luke and acts as “Judas, son of James”) who was shot by arrows. 

...I actually knew that James son of Zebedee was beheaded by King Herod in Acts--in fact I did a whole post on it over here.  But I was talking in the video about the deaths that are outside of the New Testament, so I was thinking in my head about one of the other Jameses from the New Testament--James, brother of Jesus or James, son of Alphaeus.  Obviously I got my martyrdoms mixed up in the heat of the moment, but the whole thing was just a throw-away comment in a tangential point on a 30 minute video.


******************************************

These actually aren't even the worst comments I get.  I get other nasty comments (here, here, here, here, etc), but it's the pedantry that gets under my skin the most.  Like, dude, I'm clearly talking without a script.  These are clearly not professional quality videos.  If I mess up something minor, then calm down.

I actually don't mind it when people put a correction in the comments.  (These videos are unscripted, I'm speaking entirely from memory, and I get little details wrong all the time.)  If you nicely correct me on a detail I got wrong, I write a little reply thanking you for the taking the time to correct me.
But for the life of me, I don't know what causes some of these people to fly into a rage every time I get a small little detail wrong.
It's a little depressing when you spend 30 minutes talking to the camera, trying to share your thoughts with the world and get some positive feedback, and then all people want to offer is negativity.  They watch a video for 30 minutes, find something minor you messed up, and then can't wait to lord it over you.  

I don't know... maybe it's me?  Maybe I attract these kind of comments?  Maybe I have a demeanor which aggravates people?  Maybe I come off as smug and pseudo-intellectual, and trying to sound smarter than I am, and then people can't wait to try to take me down a peg when I mess up on something minor.

Or maybe this is just the comments section of Youtube generally.  Go to any video with a lot of views on Youtube, and you'll see a lot of negativity.

Addendum:
I may just keep this list active, and add to it as I get more pedant comments.

I should clarify that, in my mind, to be a pedant requires 3 things:
1) You correct an error
2) The error is very minor to the main point of the video
3) You are rude or abrasive about it

You have to get all 3 of these to be considered a pedant in my book.
So, for example, these - guys are a bit rude about the fact that I described 1632 as in the Medieval time period.  But admittedly that's a pretty major error on my part, so I'll give them a pass.  They're not pedants.
Similarly, this guy is a bit snarky about the fact that I mispronounce "Aspidistra", but since it's a major part of the book, I'll give him a pass as well.  He's not a pedant.
This guy has made a hobby out of listing everything I got wrong in all of my Flashman videos, but as he makes some good points, and has pointed out multiple inaccuracies, I'll give him a pass.  He's not a pedant.
This guy  takes issue with my pronunciation of French names, which I consider a minor thing, but he's not especially rude about it, so we'll give him a pass.  He's not a pedant.
Et cetera.  You get the point.  If you correct a major error, I don't consider you a pedant.  If you correct a minor error without being abusive about it, I don't consider you a pedant.

But if you find a minor error, and you're overly rude about it, I'm putting you on my pedant list.  Consider yourself forewarned, Booktube!

Second Addendum
Actually, having had a few days to think about it, I've decided that this post and this list are all wrong.
If you take it upon yourself to speak about a topic, and you get something wrong, then you have to take your lumps.  Even if you're doing it informally and unscripted.  If you're in the public sphere, you have to expect you are going to get corrected on mistakes, even minor mistakes.
Now, in an ideal world, everyone would be polite and civil about everything, and there would be no rude or abrasive language.  But clearly the Internet is not the ideal world.  People are going to be rude because it's the Internet.
And, the person who made the mistake is not in a position to dictate the tone in which they are corrected.  They made the mistake.  They just have to shut up and accept the correction in whatever tone the corrector choses to give it.

...all of which is stuff I should have known.  It's stuff I did know.  I was just in a sensitive mood the day I made this post, and I temporarily forgot what I should have known.
This post was a mistake.  But, I'm not going to delete it.  I'm going to let it stand.
However, I won't be updating this list either.  In the future, whenever I get corrected on anything, whether it's in a nice way or a rude way, I'll do my best to take the correction in good graces.

2 comments:

Joel Swagman said...

Ah, I shouldn't have written this post. Negative comments are a part of social media. Ignore them and move on.
Sorry... I was just in a certain mood today.

Joel Swagman said...

>>>Maybe I attract these kind of comments? Maybe I have a demeanor which aggravates people? Maybe I come off as smug and pseudo-intellectual, and trying to sound smarter than I am, and then people can't wait to try to take me down a peg when I mess up on something minor.

Actually, upon further reflection, this is probably exactly what it is. I think I come across as an annoying smug know-it-all, and the fact that I act so arrogantly combined with the fact that I get so much stuff wrong must aggravate people.
At this late stage in life, I'm not sure how much luck I'm going have changing my personality, but what I can do is to be more tolerant of other people's corrections.