The most widely discussed comedians of this generation have finally opened their comment sections, and the response has been overwhelmingly negative. YouTube channel American Redact talked about it in a recent YouTube video.
Rather than reflecting on why 90% of comments express criticism, these performers have chosen to dismiss their detractors as lonely, unemployed people living in their parents’ basements, perhaps the most unoriginal response to online criticism available.
Bert Kreischer recently spent a week alone with his VR headset and came away with an unusual conclusion: his critics must be doing the same thing every day.
“It’s loneliness. It’s loneliness not being attached to a real world,” he explained, seemingly unable to recognize that viewers have grown tired of his shirtless stage routine and tendency to redirect every conversation toward himself.
Instead of examining why his content attracts such consistent negativity, Kreischer theorizes that negative commenters simply want attention. “You’re not going to get noticed if you say something nice,” he reasoned, suggesting that criticism stems from people’s desire for engagement rather than genuine response to his work.
Whitney Cummings has faced accusations of using automated systems to inflate her podcast views. Her episodes average around one million views but receive only 200 comments and fewer than 1,000 likes, which is significantly lower engagement than comparable podcasts. A Joe Rogan episode with similar view counts, for comparison, garnered 10,000 likes and over 2,000 comments.
Cummings denied the allegations with remarkable confidence for someone who admits being “not even erudite enough about bots to know what exactly I’m being accused of.” She then launched into a lengthy response claiming that commentary channels only discuss her because “when you talk about yourself, nobody listens.”
Her defense contained a fundamental contradiction: she argued that if channels use her name to generate views, then her own content must genuinely perform well. Yet this logic ignores that controversy and criticism often drive more engagement than the original content itself.
The pattern reveals a significant disconnect. These performers built careers on roasting others and pride themselves on handling harsh comedy environments, yet they struggle when receiving similar treatment from audiences. Their defensive responses, dismissing critics as lonely or claiming not to read comments while simultaneously crafting detailed rebuttals, suggest difficulty accepting that public perception has shifted.
