In employment, wherever it is, whoever it is with, there is one constant that pops up year after year after year: the annual appraisal. It’s that one time of the year when you pause, reflect, and try to be honest with yourself before talking to the boss about what went well and what could have gone better! You can’t pull the wool over their eyes because they were there too, and it seems like some passive aggressive form of humiliation reliving those lows. If they were weighted, the negative points seem to be several kilos while a positives are a handful of grams each. Such is the way the human minds works, focusing on the negative and not seeing the positive. You read about the same phenomenon with actors or writers, who fixate on the one negative review in a sea of overwhelmingly positive ones.
What has this to do with me? Well, I haven’t had an annual appraisal since 2019 when I left full time employment to become a full time carer, and I’m not an actor or author. But I do make YouTube videos and there is a metric visible to me that no one else sees: dislikes vs likes.
Across all videos, the average is 99.2% likes which by any measure is pretty frickin’ good. And I get it that on some videos there are dislikes, and in fact I expect them where I’m showcasing a Ren track that’s rooted in hip hop, or some Scandinavian extreme metal track. But the ones that really bug me are videos where it’s mostly just me talking or unboxing something, or doing a chat about my records. What is it these people don’t like? I’ve got nothing to go on as there’s rarely a comment left that says “disgusted with your approach to filling your records alphabetically” or “your voice makes me want to hurl” or “your face looks like the arse end of a bus”. I’m left in self doubt limbo Even though 100 people have liked the video it is that 1 dislike that has me scratching my head in confusion. I know I shouldn’t care, but I really do!
Jim’s Adventures In Music 
Dear Jim, I drove a bus for 32 years and I can say with utmost certainty your face in no way resembles the back of a city bus.
AND you have no diesel fumes emanating from your mouth…
🗽🎄🎼☕❄🚌
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Just a lot of hot air!!
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Ah, Jim… 🤗
Ever since YouTube did away with displaying dislikes to viewers, I’m always surprised to hear there are those who still click that thumbs down. I honestly believe the ones who do that without leaving a comment to back it up are folks unhappy with life and themselves in general trying to get a “haha, fellow loser” moment for themselves. Sort of like the school bully or the office non-official micromanager.
In my opinion, unless a comment is left which backs it up, do your best to disregard it. Unless it actually affects your algorithm behind the scenes in some way, consider it a blowhard flexing their minuscule muscles.
>
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Actually, it positively affects the algorithm as it demonstrates to YouTube that people are interacting with the video. I appreciate and welcome criticism, it helps me get better. But I just wonder what it is about me that they don’t like! Yeah, you’re right, I know I shouldn’t pay any attention but it’s hard not to sometimes! Thanks Pam.
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hmm… Just a shot in the dark. Perhaps these are folks who understand the click has a positive effect on the algorithm (personally, I had no idea a dislike had a positive effect), but are particularly picky about handing out “likes.” Not wanting to have no impact on the algorithm at all, they click dislike to boost the video without having to water down their own significance of what their clicking “like” means. For example, I rarely click like. I had seen an area that stores links to all of the videos I clicked like, and it was getting unwieldy in usefulness. But, I never click dislike. Something may not be to my taste, but I would rather leave a gentle comment, rather than potentially hurt someone by actively showing dislike for their effort. More often I view and then move on. Am I actually harming the algorithm by not clicking dislike? I’ll reconsider using those clicks more often, if so.
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Actually, I don’t think the algorithm notices dislikes. I’ve just googled it!
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Good morning Jim and friends ! Everybody is different, thinks different, acts different. So I usually try a philosophical approach to questions like “why do dislikers dislike”. As my latin teacher at school taught us a lot about the philosophy of the old Greeks and Romans, I learned a lot and it helped me through life in many different situations. Over all my credo is : if you cannot change something, you have to accept it. And in the case of dislikers I would simply start to ignore them and don’t waste any energy thinking about them. You can discuss a bad comment with the commentator, find out about his reasons, maybe change his mind. But the disliker is anonymous, you will never find out why he disliked whatever you did. Is it your accent, your dress, is it your success ? Weren’t we all confronted with disliking throughout our life ? At school, in the football team, at parties, in the disco, at work ? I personally have decided not to waste any energy into those people and if you cannot avoid talking to someone like that, for example at work, I usually talk to them, smile and think “asshole” 🙂 …. that’s the way I am.
So Jim, as you can see, almost everybody of your supporters, subscribers, non subscribing commentators love what you do and how you do it and we all will continue to overload you with likes in 2024.
You all have a great evening and get safe into 2024 … and don’t drink too much, you might dislike tomorrow, what you did today 🙂 yours Rudi …. with a german approach to the question of the day
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You are, of course, as always completely right Rudi!
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too bad you cannot give a dislike for dislikers 🙂
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JIm, please don’t put much energy on that. Especially if the person has not given reasonable feedback. There are some people give a negative “because they can”. There are certain people who search out for an opportunity to be negative for their own personal gratification. They are not worth bothering about or wasting energy on! If they gave constructiove feedback then fine, you can learn something, ofteh they don’t. Relish in the 99.2% Jim not the 0.8%!
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I realised your topic was “the power of the negative” which for whatever reason the person reacted that way, you have given them power. Better is “Power of the positive” we are many and they are few 🙂
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