The Race to the Bottom.

How Hate Livestreams Are Poisoning YouTube.

After more than a decade on YouTube, I’ve seen waves of trends come and go — pranks, reaction videos, challenges, long-form storytelling, and everything in between. But there’s one new pattern that’s quietly grown louder and darker, and it’s dragging creators and viewers into a pit of ugliness.

I call it the race to the bottom.

It’s the shift from creating something — anything — with effort and originality, to simply going live and tearing someone else down. The formula is depressingly simple: pick a target, turn on the camera, and spit venom. No research, no storytelling, no production value. Just ridicule, name-calling, and character assassination packaged as “content.”

I recently tuned into one of these livestreams. A woman in her sixties — old enough to know better — spent her evening publicly deriding another woman in her forties:

“You are a disgusting YouTuber. A disgusting mother. A disgusting wife. A disgusting human being.”

That was it. No constructive criticism. No attempt to debate ideas or question actions. Just bile. It struck me how easy this type of broadcast is to produce and how perversely rewarding it must feel to those doing it.

Why bother writing, editing, filming, or researching when you can fill airtime by demeaning someone else? Why craft a story when you can rake in chat engagement by fanning the flames of outrage? This is the lowest cost, highest drama model of content creation — and it’s addictive.

But here’s what people rarely admit: the race to the bottom doesn’t just harm the target. It corrodes the creator. Hate erodes credibility. It attracts an audience that thrives on cruelty, not curiosity. It trains the algorithm to feed you conflict and gossip, until your channel is a sewer you can’t escape. And it normalizes behavior that, in real life, would be unthinkable — yelling “you’re disgusting!” in a stranger’s face on the street.

It also signals creative bankruptcy. When a creator’s only output is tearing others down, they’re essentially admitting they have nothing of their own to say. Hate is a cheap replacement for talent; it’s a shortcut that looks powerful but produces nothing of value.

For those of us who care about YouTube as a platform for ideas, creativity, and authentic voices, this trend is discouraging. But it’s also clarifying. The race to the bottom only works if we watch. It thrives on clicks, shares, and comments — even hate-watching keeps it alive.

Creators who want to build something lasting have to resist the temptation to fight mud with mud. Viewers who want better content must learn to starve toxicity of attention. Algorithms are built on our choices. If we don’t click, it doesn’t stick.

I’ve seen fads come and go, and I suspect this one will too — but not before it leaves scars. The choice for creators is simple: join the race to the bottom, or stand for something higher. One path builds a legacy; the other leaves only wreckage.