Reading the comments on Rihanna's new video

Yes, call me a masochist. But I spent some time today reading YouTube comments. Today the new big thing was Rihanna's stripper video "Pour It Up." I previously listed my observations on the "7 stupidest comments posted on every sexy video on YouTube." Let's compare my findings from today.

1) 90% porn, 10% music

Holy shit yes! Except the comments on Rihanna's video are mostly 99% porn, 1% music. Sometimes they say 100% porn. The only interesting variation was 99% porn, 1% money (since earning money stripping is a big part of the song's subject matter). The stupidest comment of this nature was 99.999999% porn, .111111% music. If you don't immediately see why this comment is stupid, try plugging the two numbers into a calculator and see what they add up to.

2) This porn has nice music

Yes

3) This porn has shitty music

Yes

4) This video is terrible because it's too sexual.

Probably a quarter of the comments. Even after the Robin Thicke video with three topless models, which not only is still on YouTube but has 22 million views for the uncensored version, people are still apparently surprised that you can have sexually suggestive videos on YouTube. Lots of questions about why this video wasn't on Brazzers or YouPorn instead of YouTube (from people who have never looked at Brazzers or YouPorn, apparently).

5) Fap fap fap

Yes

6) Slut shaming

Far too much of this. Lots of people miss the old Rihanna and think she's ruining her career or her image by twerking and making a video with strippers. Lots of comments just straight up call Rihanna a dirty whore and a slut for making the video. A new variation that I hadn't seen before is people saying that because of Rihanna's video, women are going to get raped. Because I guess back before the sexual revolution and the mainstreaming of porn and other sexualized entertainment, nobody ever got raped. What's that? Rape has decreased? Hmmm.

7) [Insert # of dislikes] people are gay!

Yes

Finally, the most common stupid comment was actually not on my list. Probably about half of the comments I saw were making some kind of comparison between Rihanna and either Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus (mostly Miley). Most of this seems to be fans of other singers trying to pick fights with Rihanna fans and Rihanna fans fighting back. But among these comments you see the ludicrous suggestion that Rihanna is somehow copying Miley, as if Rihanna hadn't been making sexy videos for years at the same time that Miley was still Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel. Thankfully, Rihanna fans stepped in to point out how ridiculous these comments are.

My favorite thing about this video is that despite the Explicit label in the title of the video, it doesn't even have an age-restriction, so anyone can watch it even without a YouTube account. This is a win for the idea that you shouldn't have to be 18 to see sexy stuff.