Further to my rant yesterday about YouTube’s shortcomings, I have noticed there are two types of failings that seem to make people particularly angry.
One is the case that I mentioned yesterday, namely, when someone seems capable of great things but falls painfully short of the standards you expect of them. They may be achieving higher than 99% of the population but because you placed such high expectations on them (rightly or wrongly) you end up really disappointed with their failure to achieve.
A second one I’ve noticed is when you see yourself in someone else’s failings. I know I do this myself and based on my observations, other people do it too. I’m not sure what it is but I definitely have a tendency to get more angry with someone when they’re doing something that I know is one of my bad habits. The thought process goes something like this:
“That person really pisses me off…
“I do that as well…
“I hate being reminded of what a fuck-up I am…
“Man, fuck other people! Like I give a shit about what anyone else thinks…
“HEY DICKHEAD, WAKE THE FUCK UP TO YOURSELF”
Or maybe I’m the only one who’s this neurotic. Does anyone else react this way?
Angry 365 Days a Year 
No. I don’t particularly agree with your analysis of #1, either.
All we want is a service that works. We’ve already seen that they’re capable of reducing the processing wait to minutes rather than hours.
Not to mention the stupid shit with the front page subscriptions panel and the embedded player fiasco. I don’t know of any mainstream website that beta tests directly on it’s normal site, with normal people, and consistently manages to fuck it up.
With the number of Youtube clones out there, they really should be concentrating on making their users’ experiences satisfactory rather than continually trying to find ways to milk the site of money, for themselves and their partners.
Without the community, there’d be no Youtube or their partners.
I really don’t think there’s an excuse for their failings and I don’t think our expectations are unreasonable in any way.
And re: #2, I don’t have any failings, and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t be associating with people that shared them!
My thought process for number 2 usually goes:
“That person really pisses me off…
“I do that as well…
“Hey idiot! Don’t be like me! Dammit, when will people learn…”
“Well, I don’t learn, why should they…”
“Oh great, now I’m depressed as well as pissed off.”
Rob: I’m not saying they’re not shit, they ARE shit. I think in my case at least, they piss me off more because they can get difficult stuff right but they continually fuck up relatively easy stuff.
Massif: that sounds a bit familiar to me and all.
I keep telling everyone… it’s *not* paranoia if they really are out to get you! Geez….!
As for #1 – to me it’s all a matter of customer service or should I say the serious LACk of..said service. I can’t pinpoint when it went away but it was like an avalanche when I finally realized it was gone. Suddenly, it was gone from everywhere!
#2 – umm…nope…definitely not as nuerotic as you, since it would seem that you are having conversations with yourself. They always say it’s okay to talk to yourself as long as you don’t get a response….but you seem to have bypassed response and gone to full blown debate. 🙂
I agree on one thing though- I do get more pissed off at people that do the same stupid things that I do because obviously they are doing it at an even higher level of stupidity than I could have ever thought of or managed. When will everyone learn that the world would be a much better place if they would all just do what I tell them? Yeesh!
re: #2
I smoke a pipe, have done for what seems like eons…
Seeing young kids suck on the weed, coughing, spluttering makes me wonder. Why the hell would they want to do that?
Then the pipe smoke wafts into my eyes…Ooop’s
cinnkitty: I would hope you’re not as neurotic as me – you’d be in real trouble
tlir: a familiar two-edged sword – what I do is smart for this reason, but dumb for that reason.
Sure, I had noticed it long ago: the most loathed by me deficiencies of others are those I’m afraid I have myself…. 🙂