In Youtube Gaming Fans vs. Jimmy Kimmel, Youtubers Lose

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During the August 27th show of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the namesake host launched into a controversial bit about the launch of Youtube Gaming. You can see the bit in its entirety at the link here, but essentially Jimmy thought the idea of watching other people play video games was silly. The natural evolution of the joke was to run a fake video for “Youtube’s Watch Watch,” where you watch other people watching other people watch video games. It’s a fairly easy target to ridicule, and Kimmel was very much on the side of ignorance. It’s fine; geeky things have been made fun of by older men and women for decades.

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The problem is that, even though the Youtube Gaming (and gaming community in general) was in the right on this case, especially with the very much out of touch Jimmy Kimmel, people think that anonymity grants them licence to say utterly horrifying things. Jimmy Kimmel has been the subject of such hate, which was highlighted on the August 31st show, and the responses in the defense of Youtube Gaming make it genuinely depressing to those who identify their appreciation of video games.

Instead of making the salient arguments, like calmly explaining how people watch sports and people make food on television, defenders of Youtube Gaming posted some heinous Youtube comments and tweets. You can see them in the video, as I can’t bear to repeat them.

This is the kind of behavior that not only makes the entire gaming community look bad, but gives Jimmy Kimmel a bigger right to go after Youtube Gaming. I mean, if the community tells him to kill himself in numerous grotesque manners of application, how could whatever arguments he’s making be possibly worse?

By going so aggressive, so inarticulate and so hateful in the defense, it actually gives false credence to Kimmel’s argument. It’s an embarrassing situation all around.


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