The specific drain caused by the platform's algorithmic rabbit holes and the paradox of infinite choice. The trauma isn't just about the content, but the relationship with it: the hours lost to autoplay, the guilt of feeding a recommendation engine that then radicalizes others, the whiplash from cute animals to conspiracy theories, and the crushing pressure of "content creator" hustle culture. It's the feeling of your attention span being industrially farmed, leaving you with a hollow, overstimulated mind and the eerie sense that a machine knows your subconscious fears better than you do.
Example: "His 'Watch Later' playlist has over 900 videos. He has classic trauma from YouTube—can't focus on a movie, gets anxious if a video is over 10 minutes, and once had a full existential crisis because the algorithm recommended a kids' cartoon after a documentary on dying stars." Trauma from YouTube
by Abzugal January 30, 2026
Get the Trauma from YouTube mug.Venturing into the most lawless, id-driven textual battlefield on the internet and expecting civility. The trauma is the sheer whiplash of human expression: one comment is a brilliant, sourced analysis, the next is a racist screed, below it is a bot selling counterfeit shoes. Engaging guarantees exposure to staggering ignorance, weaponized pedantry, and personal attacks over your opinion on a video about toasters. It shatters your faith in collective discourse and leaves you with a lingering, low-grade misanthropy, questioning how so many people can function while possessing such a profound lack of reading comprehension or basic empathy.
*Example: "He made the mistake of politely correcting a fact in a history video's comments. The ensuing 200-reply thread, featuring personal insults, whataboutism, and a guy linking to his cryptocurrency scam, gave him permanent trauma from YouTube comment sections. He now types replies and deletes them, screaming into a digital void."*
by Abzugal January 30, 2026
Get the Trauma from YouTube Comment Sections mug.