YTMD - YTMommaDrama // laughingstock's forum exploration

[Laughing Stock]

YTMommaDrama
https://ytmommadrama.com/

It's no surprise that the advent of vlogging would result in an influx of mothers sharing their experiences on youtube, but the communities they harbor are far and beyond some of the worst I've seen. YTMD is a forum much like ours, but instead of buying and playing games we hate and complaining about them, they follow mommy vloggers to a point of obsession and complain about them.

Here's a primer before we go any further:

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/938e2544-ffda-4fa1-9e53-65faf73bfc62/image.png

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/14f44d56-208c-4f33-a004-2a55eb062565/image.png

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/8297506a-fd55-4e72-be86-2363d1206ea3/image.png

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/e0947b2d-2838-4da2-9b6c-aee1a39fd072/image.png

There's a total of 23 categories devoted to specific youtubers and a variety of other sections for miscellaneous ramblings or other parenting figures on other platforms. As of now, there are 2.1k topics, 806k posts, and 11k users, with the most active sections being the ones devoted to the youtubers.

"Mommy vloggers" aren't a new phenomenon but many have been popping up and quickly amassing a large following, some gaining millions of subscribers for their regular/daily vlogs about parenting, lifestyles, and other family oriented content. Obviously this leads to questionable parenting choices being pushed front and center in front of millions of viewers, and a couple thousand needing an outlet to raise their opinions against what they see.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/7e354510-bb22-4ccb-85ba-047d3805e043/image.png

It's curious that a forum which had a late start in 2012 has managed to stay active after all these years despite platforms such as reddit and discord sapping many communities and rendering many forums lifeless. My best guess is that there are hours of footage for these users to watch and scrutinize over the course of a day so there will naturally be hundreds of posts in response, centralized entirely in a single forum. There are many regulars which can be found in the usual topics across the site, and occasional users who only post during big developments, but they've remained consistent and will probably last until the end of youtube.

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/82448cc4-3ba7-4ab5-9308-688f9890ea5e/image.png

No community that active can go on without developing their own flair. Much like the mommies, Facepunch has also given birth to many children(MEMES), and fostered many wholesome and oddly relevant memes such as Loss. YTMD manages to work harder than us by offering 100% OC in their own rendition of LMAO Pics, all of which are gut-busting TOP TEXT BOTTOM TEXT memes. Other forms of comedy can be found in thread titles, in which jabs at the youtubers in question are made regarding their choices and the judgement bestowed upon them:

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/1359c6e3-50e8-4876-a468-2157e15e28be/image.png

A lot of the criticisms found in these threads are reasonable, but there is an unsettling vibe that everyone is vicariously living through them and judging them for doing the things which they wouldn't have done. References to past videos and other events are brought up in every discussion as if any given individual is an all-knowing knowledge base of their lives. I have no idea how anyone could get this invested in something they hate, and often times there is a complete lack of self awareness as a result:

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/3cff9b0a-9498-4c56-b641-058dc9fe5453/image.png

It wouldn't be fair for me to say all of the users are like this, because there are some who are genuinely wholesome and probably stumbled upon the site as lost fans:

https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/133590/f64211fd-2cf3-454d-a772-949ef00966ca/image.png

It's a real mixed bag in there but the negativity hits you harder than a 12 year old smashing that like button.

Overall I give this forum a 2/5.
★★☆☆☆
1 star for genuinely surprising me by being active, and 1 star for all the users out there not shitting on the lives of others.

I have a mental list of other forums I've stumbled upon and I'm wondering if anyone else would be interested in me documenting them. It's becoming a lot harder to find a forum you can get invested in and learn about so I felt it's important that these are preserved in some form which gives people a good idea of what was going on.

[Col. Buggernuts]

Ye that'd be pretty neat, this was a fascinating read.

[Sierra]

Initially I thought this was a new You're The Man Now Dog. I'd love to see more of these forums, I bet there's some real crazies lurking.

[Laughing Stock]

So if you're born in the 70s, where are your kids then? Should've had them a long time ago if you pratice what you preach

If you really want to know I will never have kids. It’s kind of sad. I
am badly disabled and can’t have them. I will never experience that or
being married.

there's an endless supply of gold in there, these people can be terrible to one another.