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One of my favorite rabbit holes on the internet is YouTube. I frequently dive into videos with interesting thumb nails, and then continue on with related or recommended videos. Most of them are about music, usually live videos or covers done by talented drummers or guitarists, even some oddballs ones like a Game of Thrones theme on the Piano, or this guy who does death metal covers on his clarinet

It's no real secret I prefer extremely complicated and heavy music. I have a soft spot for classic rock and pop, but if I'm on my own kit, its almost exclusively metal. So recently I've been looking at some new bands and I came across one called The HAARP Machine. They seem really promising, with extremely technical riffs in horrifically complicated time signatures. The first video I saw of them was of their guitarist yawning through one of the most brutally complicated guitar parts I've ever heard. Any time you can make something this difficult look this easy, sign me the fuck up.

I'll be honest and say the first thing that drew me to the video was this guy's appearance. I'm not sure I've ever seen someone wearing traditionally Middle-Eastern attire like this in a progressive death metal video. Of course a quick survey of the comments section yields the obligatory "towel head" or "jihad core" comment, which is clearly the worst part about YouTube.

The ability to perform a drive-by via internet anonymity and shit all over someone with a hateful comment is a well documented problem in society today that I'm not sure we had to deal with 50 years ago. You see it all the time in any setting that has a "shield". Whether it be someone making passive aggressive moves against you in traffic that they would never do if they weren't separated from you by their soundproof car interior, or someone calling you retarded or gay or worse on Twitter, this type of behavior is rampant. And its not just 13-year-olds on XBox Live, it's grown fucking adults who feel compelled to spew hate while hiding behind a keyboard.

I'm not one to throw stones in a glass house, in my formative years I was one of these imbeciles challenging the world to "fight me in real life bro", but that stopped around the time I got into college. You hear it a lot from celebrities, being scrutinized for every comment they make and every bit of content they produce. And God forbid they make a grammatical error due to sending a Tweet from their iPhone. It's funny to see how they all handle it in a different way too. Some really internalize it, and shut down their Twitter accounts in short order. Some take the troll bait, and engage their digital adversaries. One of my favorite methods is used by Joe Rogan, who probably has no shortage of wannabe tough guys following him due to his UFC affiliation (note: I am a UFC fan who freely admits I have no idea how to fight). He simply Re-Tweets someone who's making an obviously overblown hateful reaction, with no comment. Then its a feeding frenzy as the guy who formerly had all of 35 followers now has a timeline full of "What the fuck is your problem dude?" from Joe's thousands of followers. That may not be fair to reverse the hater's polarity, but it sure is hilarious.

One thing I did appreciate was when YouTube allowed you to use your real name as your ID. To me, that's the first step of breaking down the wall of anonymity. You don't want a potential employer Googling your name and finding 600 comments using the word "retard" or "faggot". But YouTube stopped short by making it optional. I personally opted for this, but I wasn't really part of this growing problem. Maybe some day we'll have a reliable method of shaming these people in real life, and when that day comes, only the most hardcore of the internet trolls will continue this idiotic behavior.