Yakety-Yak, Don't Talk Back(wards)...
If it's one thing we've learned at NamibiaCam Chat, it's that some things are unlikely, some things are unusual, and others are so bizarre as to be impossible.
Wait, that's three things... but let's focus on one that should be impossible to the point where nobody had it on their "Ways You Tube is Weird Tonight" bingo card.
It's February 25th of 2026 and the chat is tense: for a couple of days, every post had to be checked to ensure it posted and could be seen. This was done, by the way, by clicking on the "three dots" beside every posted comment: if one of the displayed options was "remove comment", you knew it posted. Since 20-25% of comments were NOT posting, one had to check each time and it was both annoying and exhausting.
Then, things got worse... much worse...
Suddenly, NOTHING was posting. Not so fast, here's a comment in Japanese. There's another in German. Moderators can remove them, as we're supposed to, but our warning messages aren't posting. In fact, NO ENGLISH comments could be posted, by anyone!
Well, not everyone: "mrhuae1987", infamous for his "word salad" comments few could understand, was able to post in English (or his version of it). Everyone else? Nada!
This presented a conundrum. How could moderators do their jobs if they couldn't communicate with chatters? How could they post timestamps?
How could they tell chatters not to post in non-English when English could not be posted? I had an idea... if You Tube could tell English from non-English, would it be able to identify and hold English comments written backwards?
It - the You Tube algorithm or whatever - could not! Mods and chatters began posting in English backwards and, while unwieldy and headache-inducing after a while, it worked!
Using sites like Textreverse.com (yes, there is such a site, do not ask me why) helped us craft longer comments and un-backwardsed posted ones. To paraphrase Prof Malcolm, "Chat, uh, finds a way".
------ ------
Postscript: Our backwardness and all of the fun it engendered was short-lived; You Tube got their act together and suddenly we could post in English again AND all comments were posting properly so there's no longer a need to check them. We could also still post in backwards English, though no one did... well, except me, just to see if I could. It was somewhat less amusing this time.
So what happened?? According to Android Authority, "the issue may have been related to the platform's overzealous AI-powered content moderation." AI, huh? The program that's destined to run the world's militaries, surveillance and control functions? I'm sure that's gonna work out juuuust fine...