Comment Collapse as Ethnographic Data: Screenshots and Analysis of Epistemic Failure in YouTube Comment Sections

This dataset contains two manually captured screenshots of YouTube comment threads and an accompanying formal ethnographic report analyzing them as diagnostic artifacts of epistemic failure under interpretive stress.

The screenshots document organically occurring comments posted in January 2026 on two separate videos published by the same creator. Despite minimal volume, the comments exhibit distinct and highly legible epistemic failure modes: (1) authorial indistinguishability and (2) conspiratorial over-attribution of agency.

The accompanying document, Comment Collapse as Ethnographic Data: A Micro-Study of Epistemic Failure in YouTube Comment Sections, provides contextualization, methodological controls, analytical framework, and comparative typology. Together, the materials demonstrate how trivial comment interactions can function as high-resolution probes of platform-conditioned sensemaking breakdown.

All data were collected manually under a non-intervention protocol and are preserved in original platform context.