How should creators respond to hateful comments and criticism?
Early on both met hateful comments with humour: Hank with Shakespearean insults in 2008, John in 2009 by telling insulters they embarrass themselves. Later Hank says to recognize meanness fast and discard it and to take criticism without feeling victimized, and John in 2017 urged leaving snark and hostility behind.
Axis: engage and answer ... ignore / do not feed
Positions by date: 9 records in 9 videos. The position did not change in these records.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-06-29 (said on 2009-06-28, implied) | first on record | John answers hateful comments publicly with humour and tells insulters they embarrass themselves, not him. | GAY is NOT an INSULT 00:02:45 |
| 2017-12-26 | restate | Leave in 2017 being snarky in comments when tempted to provoke, respond to trolling or meet hostility with hostility. | LEAVE IT IN 2017 00:02:29 |
| 2019-05-14 | restate | John says it is important to find places to be a person, a Reddit account or offline, or you start believing both those who think you more than a person and those who think you less. | An Open Letter to Professional YouTubers 00:02:26 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-12-29 | first on record | Hank says he is a big fan of answering haters' comments with Shakespearean insults, as Nerdfighters do, and accepts a hater's insult as a label. | Comment Haters and Christmas 00:01:22 |
| 2018-08-10 | restate | Hank's one-step guide: look in the mirror of other people's eyes to see your power, and let it give you confidence to handle criticism without feeling victimized, even unkind criticism. | My Giant Robot Suit 00:02:24 |
| 2020-08-07 | restate | Hank's third type: people just being mean; he tries to recognize it fast and discard it, since it is about something other than the work, though it always hurts. | Her Finger and Her Thumb in the Shape of an 'L' on Her Forehead 00:02:12 |
| 2023-08-18 | restate | In his opinion as a long-time creator, Hank says the only thing to do with bizarre takes is to see them as fringe weirdness, like a particularly ugly frog. | The #1 Tip for People Who Use the Internet 00:02:04 |
| 2023-12-08 | restate | Hank says he knows the right thing is not to let his anger at those people show in how he talks about them, and he is trying. | Did Natural Cancer Treatments Save My Life? 00:03:17 |
| 2026-03-06 | restate | Hank says the hardest, rarest option, never taken 100%, is to just be brave: knowing many will call you a bad guy, you do it anyway. | How Do You Create When You Don't Feel Safe 00:04:35 |
Background
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-06-23 (said on 2009-06-22, implied) | background | Hank answers hater and confused comments from the front-page video to explain what the brothers do and to lift 'the crushing weight' of YouTube haters. (playful) → refers to The World Sucks: Help it Suck Less | Fighting the Flame War! 00:00:00 |
Dates are upload dates, which set the order. Where the speaker gives a different recording date in the video, it is added as "said on YYYY-MM-DD, implied" (derived from the date said in the video).