Please Don’t Downvote

By M.K Rushokye

It’s been a while since I wrote something. So, we are talking about social media, again. To be fair, social media has become one of the major entities of our human existence in this past decade. So yeah, one can talk about it again and again. As a control mechanism, I will only write a third of what I was originally going to write, unless there is an encore. Who am I kidding? I meant unless I get a single upvote which, unfortunately for the upvoter, I will inwardly misrepresent them to have meant an encore. Which brings me to what I actually intended to begin with in this post.

Downvoting

I’m talking about YouTube downvoting/disliking. I honestly haven’t ever downvoted before and I always wonder, what kind of people downvote? No, this isn’t one of those who eats pineapple on pizza? kind of questions. These are invalid because, come on, people’s tastes are different. Some people love good food and others like… you know. I’ve heard some nomads eat dung. Garnished of course. This the way of human beings.

But honestly downvoting a YouTube video? To be fair, there’s some pretty bad stuff out there that deserve downvoting and maybe even censoring. Like the third most disliked video on the platform, the ‘Baby’ music video by Bieber and Ludacris that caused mass hysteria in girls all over the world whenever the boy wonder flipped his hair. 2010 amirite? Should have censored that shit and saved our girls’ hearts. (You’re looking just a little green there Kevin). No, I do not partake in cancel culture.

There is a lot of good stuff (in my opinion) that still gets downvoted. As an example, the other day, a few days after I had checked out a conspiracy theory about the Catholic Church, the algorithm thought it wise to recommend to me the Pope’s prayer against this bloody virus. Now, I’m not the most religious person but I was baffled. Thousands of people downvoted the pontifex. The man is literally telling the whole world, ‘get well soon.’ You don’t have to be a Catholic to agree with him. Okay, again, some people out there hate him for whatever reason; maybe they don’t like the Catholic Church, or maybe they too have watched the conspiracy theory video. Or, maybe they don’t like his close resemblance to Jonathan Pryce’s Game of Thrones character, the high sparrow, who, I’m sure, we all wouldn’t mind downvoting to death. Perhaps, the pope is a bit divisive.

What about the video of Martin Luther King’s famous I Had A Dream Speech? Thousands of downvotes. Who are those, the KKK? What about the video of those Thailand kids getting rescued from the flooded cave? Remember those kids, the football team. Very sad story. Who downvotes that? What, some people wanted them to die?

I’m starting to think that there must be some ISIS volunteers downvoting as many YouTube videos as they can because they hate a happy world. And those cat videos of cats doing random shit, playing piano and stuff, early YouTube. Tens of thousands of dislikes. So, some people hate cats? Really, cats? Cats are cuter than people, people!

You know what we need? Two things. One; ID of the people downvoting. Yeah, let’s see those people. They might even be the same thousands of people, working overnight to downvote as many videos as they can. We need to see who downvotes videos of homeless people being given stuff, and clips of people making emotional performances. Then we need to hand those names over to the FBI and Interpol watchlists. These are the people who hate humanity and they’re starting with crimes of humanity on their smartphones. Those are the future street knife attackers, phone snatchers and restaurant cooks that bring you African tea that is 8 parts water and 2 parts milk.

All this reminds me of something similarly unsettling found in the next-door house, on the sister social media, Twitter, the epitome of express news, disrespect, fun and ignorance. Quite the assortment of fruits. Freedom of expression for you.

The black American man’s neck was knelt on for more than 9 minutes in a viral twitter video that was incredibly sad. While I was scrolling through the replies, grieving with my fellow bereaved, a tweep used that opportunity to post their hustle of a lingerie business, a graphic post. Right there and then, I realized why the downvote button was invented.

We need the downvote button on Twitter for all those who post inappropriate replies under sad or tragic news, including those who peddle toys that are the opposite of unsexy.

Random clout chasing tweeps bringing break ups to twitter, downvote! People spreading ignorance, blatant lies and unverified news, DOWNVOTE! People who follow me ignoring my clever tweets with well thought out wordplay and due spellchecking, DOWNVOTE ALL THEIR PAST MONTH’S TWEETS, RETWEETS AND EVEN LIKES. Yes! Downvote twitter and all it’s mental health disrupting BS. Now, as for Instagram? ho ho!

Five minutes later.

With regret, I have realized that I have become the monster that I swore to destroy. I shall stop here because perhaps I don’t even know what downvoting is supposed to be. The algorithm might have got to me and influenced me to rant. I’ve run out of paper to write yet I have more to write about social media. This just part one.

This post is dedicated to the health of the impressive, fledgling website by the brilliant book reviewer, poet and all round (awesome) writer, Mable Amuron. Feel free to get inspired to read a book after a thorough review from Growing Pains. You’re going to love it.

Much love y’all.