After Jimmy Kimmel’s YouTube jab backfired on Friday, the clip’s YouTube page and Kimmel’s Twitter were hit hard with criticism, anger and insults. Overnight, the late-night host took a moment to address these comments. He might have made things worse!
“This is the most disliked video we’ve ever posted to YouTube, and we’ve posted thousands of videos to YouTube,” he told the audience.
Kimmel then went through a laundry list of not-so-flattering comments to poke fun and make jokes. He’s a comedian. That’s what comedians do. Watch the clip below and decide if you think he did it well!
The way he seems to have made things worse was by inadvertently showing how out of touch he was with online culture. For example, when Kimmel was reading through one comment, he didn’t know what “smh” meant.
“What is smh?” Kimmel asked his audience.
“Shaking my head,” the audience replied.
“Oh,” Kimmel said. “Alright.”
Alright, indeed. At time of writing, the clip has 895 likes and 1481 dislikes. Below, you can see some of the reaction to the clip:
Again, making fun of things is much easier when you know what you are talking about! But I do bet Conan or Jimmy Fallon could make smarter Let’s Play jokes.
Comments
27 responses to “Jimmy Kimmel Responds To YouTube Backlash”
Wow… the unneeded venom in this article… the seething entitlement… might I indulge you in the advice of “harden up” Bashcraft?
Agreed. As much as I love gaming (been doing it for over 25 years!…..shit I’m old…) I’m sick of hearing about people acting like this, about people wishing death, cancer, aids on people or wishing harm on their family, just because a comedian made a joke. Gamers making fun of people is apparently ok, but others can’t make fun of gamers, lest their fragile egos be shattered.
I feel ashamed to be a gamer after that backlash! Telling him to die of cancer? WTF. For a group of people that are constantly sledging each other in online competitive games you’d think they would have pretty thick skin.
Jimmy is irrelevant to the younger generation, great! So why take what he said to heart?… I get called all sorts of names playing CS everyday and I don’t plot a way to execute them or wish cancer upon them. If Jimmy visited any major gaming forum, wow, lol, dota etc he would have enough ammo to last decades as the toxicity in those wastelands know as the forums is appalling. Fortunately or unfortunately he only got a small taste of the degeneration known as modern day gaming.
Thank god for sites like kotaku that offer a bastion for decent gamers, who can talk and debate without bashing.
I wouldn’t say the trend is exclusive to gamers. It’s a horrible trend developing where people just attack with bile at opinions different to their own. Debate is dying
It reminds me of Bladerunner. I like Bladerunner. Heck I think I love it.
But do I get upset if someone else says that it sucks?
No way. It’s just their opinion. I will still enjoy watching that movie no matter what someone else thinks of it.
As if somebody could dislike Bladerunner.
Remember, the Ashcraft School of Journalism is all about irrelevant articles, one sentence submissions and creating titles with pre-conceived bias. It’s all part of the curriculum there…
I didn’t watch the original video but this was pretty funny (and I don’t particularly enjoy Kimmel). I don’t think his knowledge is particularly important for this bit, he’s just reading weird abusive comments. Really don’t know how people get so bent out of shape about this pointless stuff.
Oh no someone made fun of Youtube gaming, I’m gonna wish aids and death on their family!? How is that an appropriate response? Why do people even care?
Because: Clickbait article really *shrug* I guess.
I’ve wondered for ages what smh meant…
Same I could never be assed to find out though
I learned what it was in this context a few years ago, but I still instinctively read it as Sydney Morning Herald…
I always thought it meant ‘so much hate’.
And if it actually does I guess that just shows how out of touch with Internet culture I am. Most days I consider that a blessing.
I thought it was “so much hate” for so long…
Sydney Morning Herald?
Forever Sydney Morning Herald.
Making a lot of assumptions there.
Amazing that there are so many thin skinned people out there with no sense of humour..
It’s a serious medical condition.
God the gaming community (broadly) is a bunch of overly sensitive sooks.
People bang on and on about how gaming is mainstream, how it’s some massive force that can’t be stopped… and then those very same people burst into tears the seconds someone is even slightly cynical of the hobby.
Maybe the gender-warriors of the world are as sensitive, but outside of them I can’t think of a group that drowns in a sea of tears and vitriol if so slightly threatened.
If Kimmel went on TV tomorrow and said that Mixed Martial Arts is barbaric, the competitors morons and that it should be banned, you’d still get a more mature response from the MMA community than that. You really would.
Wow, so much vitriol. Can people not take a joke? Instead of attacking him over the video why not explain why people watch streams in the first place and give him the facts.
Classic case of people find things funny until it is about them.
It would have been alright if the actual video was funny in the first place, but it plain wasn’t. He pretty much spent two minutes saying “LPers are a bunch of assclowns”.
NEWS JUST IN: PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET ARE DICKS.
Well, shit. I never saw that one coming.
That said, Kimmel dismissing the comparison between watching a sport and watching gaming is pretty narrow-minded, but unsurprising given his angle on this.
I find it funny that no one mentioned the fact that when God was watching a video featuring a black guy he says “Ive created a race of idiots!” :O
No but really, what the hell is this?
I simply stop watching youtube videos I dislike. I don’t threaten people or post my hatred and the only reason I dislike them is to stop youtube suggesting them to me.