From Alan Levine: You(Tubers) Dissin’ My Dead Drops?

Drawing conclusions about human nature based upon a small spike in YouTube comments is maybe as questionable as predicting election results based on polls. But hey, this is my data! For a likely in…

Source: You(Tubers) Dissin’ My Dead Drops?

I like Alan’s projects no matter what form they take. And unlike the bozos commenting on his YouTube clips highlighting dead drops, I don’t want him to install a USB Killer. That’s like someone saying, why don’t you install a Claymore Mine that goes off the moment someone attaches their device to the USB. I don’t wish strangers ill will, I don’t take advantage of people’s trust or their generosity. Playing a dirty trick on an unsuspecting fellow human is not entertaining in the least. And I think it’s that lack of xenophobia that always makes me surprised at the kind of snide comments and suggestions people put in YouTube comments.

I documented a home made paint stripper patterned after a project a fellow posted up on the Internet. It wasn’t highlighted in Hackaday or on Gizmodo or any of those sites, I just did a Google search on Infrared Paint Strippers and found the guy’s site. He had hacked the heating element out of a space heater that used quartz tubes, just like your Panasonic toaster oven. He had bought a used one for $50 and deconstructed it. He then made a holder for the tubes out of aluminum bar stock, put a handle on it, wired it all up and put a 20amp fuse on it to keep it from getting dangerously hot. I more or less copied his pattern and posted the videos of me testing it and using it. I had one comment immediately about how unsafe lead fumes are, another about how unsafe this thing was to use because wasn’t UL tested and branded. All these things, and I would respond, and like Alan saw with the comments relating to putting a USB Killer into a Dead Drop, no one would answer in rare instances would take 2 months to ever come back and see I had responded.

The casual anonymity of YouTube comments just makes them kind of worthless for anything other than a sort of drive by graffiti. Those are not words, those are tags, proving by dint of their existence that the person that typed them exists. And that’s about it, the full extent of their commitment or engagement with the thing they commented on.