Post-Productive Critique as Affective Substitution: A Micro-Digital Ethnography of Commenter Displacement Under Perceived Creative Threat

This working paper presents a micro-digital ethnography analyzing a single antagonistic YouTube comment as an interactional artifact within AI-adjacent creative discourse. Rather than treating the comment as an argument to be rebutted, the study reframes it as ethnographic data, documenting how affective condemnation substitutes for substantive critique under perceived creative displacement. The paper introduces a behavior-based taxonomy of post-productive comment types (e.g., Authenticity Defender, Production Gatekeeper) and details a qualitative classification method focused on observable rhetorical strategies rather than inferred intent or belief. The analysis highlights how assertions of “human authenticity” and production legitimacy function as moral boundary-setting mechanisms when evaluative footing is lost. Included in this record is the full working paper (PDF), which contains the primary artifact, thematic analysis, taxonomy table, and methods subsection. The work is intended as a methodological contribution to digital ethnography, AI discourse analysis, and interpretive studies of platform-mediated critique.