Dating a YouTuber?!

Chapter 23: The comment section

In hindsight you can say that I was calm before the storm. I hadn’t quite mentally prepared myself to what it really entails showing your face on the Internet in front of so many people.

Since I had no public social media it didn’t even notice the commotion until I asked Nate if people liked the new daily vlog. I did this every single day, since I knew he loved to talk about the funny comments he got and generally discuss topics and points that viewers made in the comment section.

He was as usual on his laptop and I was making tea in his kitchen as I asked him. I wasn’t near him but I could immediately feel the tension emitting from him as he heard my question.

“I guess… I mean, they’re…” he couldn’t seem to construct a coherent sentence and I was guessing that he was weighing his options. We had agreed never to lie to each other under any serious circumstances and Nate looked like he was considering if this fell under that category.

“Didn’t they like it?” I asked worried and tried to remember what he had been filming yesterday. Then it struck me, I didn’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I had been in yesterday’s video which he had just posted. I probably had to do with me.

“Is it about me?” I asked sternly and Nate looked at me with the most adorable puppy eyes he could muster. Normally, I would fall for it and give up on the topic if it was just something minor but I got the feeling that this might be more major.

“Nate…” I said with my toughest voice.

He sighed in defeat and just shook his head. “It’s really nothing,” he said.

“Well, if it nothing why don’t you just show me…” I said and made a move to grab the laptop out of his lap but he was much faster than me and had it shut down and out of my reach.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said calmly and I could see the sympathy in his eyes.

“Nate, you better give me that laptop,” I demanded.

“I don’t think you should look at the comments. People are mean.”

“I know that,” I said but maybe I really didn’t. I usually never put myself in a position to get judged. I hated it. If I could I would rather please everyone and never make anyone disappointed. Maybe I wasn’t too good with handling criticism but Nate couldn’t just hide it from me.

“You’ll be upset if you read them and I don’t want you to get upset, Abbs. Please, listen to me,” he said with those pleading eyes.

 “Nate,” I said calmly and composed myself. “You can’t hide the reality from me. I got on camera voluntarily and now I’ll have to deal with the consequences.”

“It’s just you shouldn’t have to deal with it. It’s no big deal that people leave hate, I get it all the time but you wouldn’t be able to read past it and see all the good thing people wrote about you. Like how happy and cute we looked together. How amazingly beautiful you looked. How kind and honest you were.”

“Hate?” I said with a tiny voice and hated the fact that I could hardly hear all the nice comments Nate mentioned after that. Had people really left hate messages? How could they hate me? They didn’t even know me. I was furious and on the verge of tears at the same time. I wanted to scream.

“See, you’re getting all upset. Let’s just forget about it,” Nate suggested and went to hug me. I had never been able to reject the comfort of his touch and neither was I this time. I felt relief as I had his arms around me but I knew that it didn’t solve the problem.

“Nate. You’ve been doing this for years and I get that you probably know how to handle it but I’m new to all of this. Three months ago no one knew who I was, now thousands of people has seen me and have an opinion of me. That terrifies me. I’m still partly that shy girl that hides behind a camera, never wanting to reveal something about herself. I care what people think of me a lot, probably even too much. You need to understand that. I can’t just ignore people if they write something about me. I’ll have to know,” I said quietly.