Just to get this out of the way first, I'm not upset in any way.  When I saw the dislike, I had a few moments of disbelief and confusion.  Then I laughed my a$$ off for a couple minutes.

Here's the story.  I have a friend who likes to disc golf and recently started a YouTube channel.  I finished watching a video he recently posted and logged in to subscribe to his channel.  While I was logged in I did a casual scroll through the stats of the videos I have posted.  One of them seemed to have an unusually high number of views.

It's one of the earlier videos I made.  It was during the 'egg hit' challenge in 2019.  It's here in case anyone is curious, https://youtu.be/xxOone9vokc.  The video isn't even hits on the egg, but rather the paper plate that was holding it.  The view count was over 100 (which is huge for me), so I opened it to take a look.  And saw that it had one dislike. :-?

Again I'm not upset at all.  It was quite amusing to me.  From a video quality standpoint, it's pretty bad.  It hadn't occurred to me that I should use widescreen rather than portrait.  The light isn't good (although that's the sun's fault).  And the quality is low because my phone was junk.  But all that said, I would be shocked if the dislike came from a slinger. ;)

Congrats Joe!  You’ve reached the next level as a YouTuber!  You’ll know you’ve really made it when your comment threads start attracting trolls :)

Thanks!
For the comments I put up a defense.  I just disable them.  I don't know if I could handle that. ;D

I've had the same with some of my videos. I recently noticed my old staff sling video has a crazy number of views: 544! That's not me bragging, it stands at 4 likes 3 dislikes which is actually a pretty terrible rating. I have no idea how it happened but I assume it somehow got picked up by the all-mighty algorithm.

Another weird thing, my 11 second wood gas stove test video got 332 views, which is again bizarre, but the very next video of me making a cup of tea on it (24 seconds long) now stands at 7 views.

How do people make a reliable living off it? No wonder so many YouTubers burn out from stress.

I don't understand it either . what is it that makes someone hit dislike? my comments are on I haven't got an answer yet. I don't remember if I've ever disliked anything only to like.
I remember when I uploaded the compound sling video, it got a dislike in the first hour. probably a purist slinger ?
probably people see a video they take it as a statement and if a statement is different than their perspectives then they dislike it.

@Kick
that all-mighty algorithm seems very dystopian, living off the time of humans. Longer videos, consistent uploads, clickbaity thumbnails, diluted content. pewdiepie is probably trying to break it by uploading 3-4 videos an hour long in a day lol :P

I don't understand the dislike button. It's so meaningless and petty to dislike videos.

Everything draws dislikes on Youtube.  Even a Jimi Hendrix vid will draw a few dislikes.  I definitely wouldn't give it a second thought.

Kick wrote on Mar 27^th, 2020 at 10:18am:

I don't understand the dislike button. It's so meaningless and petty to dislike videos.

Often videos deserve the dislike button.  Though I think it is overused.

You could make a video of you revealing the cure for cancer while walking on water with light shining down from the clouds and angels announcing peace on Earth and someone would downvote it. It’s inevitable. I think I’ve bothered to downvote all of 10 videos in the last 12 years of being on YouTube. It never even crosses my mind for the most part. Some trolls love it though. It’s not really a reflection of the video until you really get a lot of downvotes.

just switch comments off :-)

Yeah, I have comments turned off.  I still have the thumbs up/down visible though.

It's all good.  It was a pretty entertaining moment when I discovered it.  Not meaning I hope to get flooded with thumbs down ratings.

Kick wrote on Mar 26^th, 2020 at 11:55pm:

Another weird thing, my 11 second wood gas stove test video got 332 views, which is again bizarre, but the very next video of me making a cup of tea on it (24 seconds long) now stands at 7 views.

Ok so I really felt I needed to update to just show how insane YouTube is. This video, 11 seconds long remember, now has


1061 views.


What?
How?
Why?
I don't get it.