Hate is such an ugly word, isn't it? It's evocative. It makes you think of that emotion you feel when something truly infuriates you. I try not to be hateful normally, so I'm only writing this article because I think I've recently had an epiphany regarding all the various forms of hatred I see around me in my day to day life: I hate it.
Whoa, how meta. If I hate the hate, is that like a double negative? Or just some weird hypocritical shit where I am ragging on something and yet doing it at the same time? Or ... oh no I've gone cross-eyed.
Don't try to overthink this one. You may not like this blog post. You might even already hate it. I mean, it is confusing. But why does confusion/boredom/lack of understanding seem to lead to hate in our modern world?
Don't try to overthink this one. You may not like this blog post. You might even already hate it. I mean, it is confusing. But why does confusion/boredom/lack of understanding seem to lead to hate in our modern world?
I have a theory about hate. It's easy to hate. Things are stupid sometimes, and they make us angry. But deeper than that, think about what position we take when we like something, say an album, or a YouTube video, or a person in our social circle. Now compare our relative position when we hate any of those things.
I've observed that hating on things gives humans (at least the illusion of) superiority over the thing that they hate, whereas liking or approving of something means that we are below or at most equal to whatever it is we are liking.
I've observed that hating on things gives humans (at least the illusion of) superiority over the thing that they hate, whereas liking or approving of something means that we are below or at most equal to whatever it is we are liking.
I'll give you an example. I might be at a buddy's house, and we're just chilling and watching YouTube, using it like a jukebox. My buddy puts on a track by Led Zeppelin, say, the Immigrant Song. We both rock out because we both dig the track. We put it on and mutually agree the song is awesome.
Say, however, that I change the tune and put on a remix like this one which is a mashup of Led Zeppelin and 2Pac that I like. It's still on theme but it changes the tone, and my friend may not be instantly down for it like he was for the Immigrant Song. He probably says something like, "Turn that shit off, I fuckin' hate it."
Instantly he is then, probably without realising it, placing himself and his musical taste, above both mine and the music I chose. He is better than the remix, and he hates it because it sucks. Now, this buddy is not necessarily doing this on purpose, he legitimately just DOES NOT LIKE the music on first listen (or on principle or whatever). He thinks he is doing me a favour by helping me not to like a genre or track that 'sucks'. It's subconscious behaviour -- but because he has vocalised the hate (or typed it in the case of Internet hate) it becomes a force unto itself. It's a force that, I believe, is ultimately selfish and serves no other purpose than to force your frame of reality onto another person.
Now that long-winded intro is out of the way, how about I keep making my point with a list. It's a tough point to write about, because like I say, I am not exempt from being a hater at times myself either. I just feel like if we all understood why we were spewing this hate all the time, we would be able to tone it down a notch, put our chin up and smile. You know, remember the things we like and be indifferent to the things we don't. Wouldn't that be nice?
Anyway, here are 8 types of hate I hate.
Say, however, that I change the tune and put on a remix like this one which is a mashup of Led Zeppelin and 2Pac that I like. It's still on theme but it changes the tone, and my friend may not be instantly down for it like he was for the Immigrant Song. He probably says something like, "Turn that shit off, I fuckin' hate it."
Instantly he is then, probably without realising it, placing himself and his musical taste, above both mine and the music I chose. He is better than the remix, and he hates it because it sucks. Now, this buddy is not necessarily doing this on purpose, he legitimately just DOES NOT LIKE the music on first listen (or on principle or whatever). He thinks he is doing me a favour by helping me not to like a genre or track that 'sucks'. It's subconscious behaviour -- but because he has vocalised the hate (or typed it in the case of Internet hate) it becomes a force unto itself. It's a force that, I believe, is ultimately selfish and serves no other purpose than to force your frame of reality onto another person.
Now that long-winded intro is out of the way, how about I keep making my point with a list. It's a tough point to write about, because like I say, I am not exempt from being a hater at times myself either. I just feel like if we all understood why we were spewing this hate all the time, we would be able to tone it down a notch, put our chin up and smile. You know, remember the things we like and be indifferent to the things we don't. Wouldn't that be nice?
Anyway, here are 8 types of hate I hate.
- YouTube Hate
WTF, YouTube?! Reading your comments makes me lose hope for humanity. It was worse before they introduced the top comment, but even still the amount of garbage you have to read on any YouTube video's comment section is astonishing. "FUCK JUSTIN BIEBER HE'S A FAGGOT!!!@!!@" I struggle to picture what pleb is sitting there typing that in all caps for emphasis, what they're trying to get off their chest. Why the fuck do you care about a teen pop star that appeals to a demographic of 12 year olds? It's obviously not the pinnacle of music but it has been happening for DECADES. What are you accomplishing by posting one comment that will no doubt get lost in the ether within minutes on a video with millions of views. Are you hoping all the fans are going to read it and realise the error of their ways? No? Then fuck off out of the YouTube comments section and go fly a kite or something.
- Facebook Hate
The amount of people that don't realise exactly how public their Facebook profile is boggles my mind. Does it register with all of you that everyone on your list can see what you just wrote? Yes? Then why do you think anyone gives two shits at all about the fact that you had to switch to Timeline? Just chill out and roll with the changes, if little shit gets you that worked up, you are going to have a hard, hard life filled with inconvenient change after inconvenient change that you are ill-prepared to deal with.
- Religious Hate
This one's a touchy subject for like, everyone. It used to be that the only ones religiously forcing their beliefs upon others were religious people, but now the non-religious are a big enough vocal minority that they are joining in the fun. Now I'm not against touting your own religious beliefs, but it just sucks for everyone when it leads to hate-filled rhetoric being spewed at each other. Which is, oh yeah, EVERY TIME. I've had to change my Facebook status from 'Atheist' to 'No Religion' because I'm starting to see more atheists arguing with the same vitriolic zealotry as the worst fundies. I understand each side is pretty infuriating to the other because it deals with core, internalised questions like 'who are we, why are we here, why do we dream, what is the point of life' etc, but the debate is not leading to a conclusion at the moment guys, it's just leading to more hate. It's just a case of someone hearing a belief they believe is wrong, then coming back with more hateful vitriol in order to make THEIR established world-view more comforting to themselves.
- Elitist Hate
In that same vein, this is the one I see more than any other, and it applies to all these, at least a little. Elitism is a construct of the human ego. I have an ego, yes, so does everyone. It's just hard not to be annoyed when other people don't appear to notice their own, and spew venom against anything they believe is beneath them. "Fuckin' Skrillex ruined dubstep." Well, maybe he did, maybe he didn't. The more likely statement is: "I liked dubstep, but then artists like Skrillex made it popular and therefore I couldn't feel like it was my own anymore, and all these shitty people I hate started to talk about it." THAT'S what ruined it for you, not Skrillex. If you're going to be an elitist dick, at least be honest about it. Actually scratch that, if you're going to be an elitist dick, have a cup of tea, and don't. Just enjoy what you enjoy and let others enjoy what they enjoy. It's not hard.
- Music Hate
Yeah, yeah, these are overlapping. I hope you've read enough not to let that bother you by now. Music is such a wonderful part of life, and it took me a long time to get out of my phase of being a hater to whatever types of music I looked down upon in my teenage years. I liked Punk, Rock, and Metal when I was in High School, and I absolutely deplored anything to do with Hip Hop, Country, Electronic, Jazz, Classical or the like. After a while, I realised all the genres had merit and I stopped picking and choosing which ones I could or could not appreciate songs from. This was a big point in my musical life, because I realised while I didn't have to like everything, I had been dismissing some really excellent music because it was 'cool' or 'elite' to be a hater. Fuck that. I also stopped spewing my naive 15 year old opinion to the Internet, thank Christ. Now I get to spew my slightly less naive 24 year old opinion.
- TV/Movie Hate
Similar to music hate. I understand it's cool to have an opinion as to whether a show is good or not. I just think people sharing that (hateful) opinion totally ruin the spirit of the show. For instance, I'd have to say my favourite show at the moment is a toss up between the Office and Community. I love them and watch them religiously. Some times they have an off episode, but I'd say the writing on these shows is my favourite comedy writing on TV. I love it. They produce a new half hour of entertainment every week, and I'm thankful for that. However, if I read articles on the internet or Facebook, Twitter etc opinions of the show, I'd think it was a horrible laugh-less half hour waste of time if I believed all the hyperbolic bullshit people will go on about it. Kids: If you don't like a show, don't go on the Internet and complain about how it 'sucked', just go outside and go for a walk, let off some steam, y'know? You are the kind of people that are getting my show cancelled, most of the time because you can't be bothered reading the layered writing of the show, the clever undertones which add to the humour even on multiple watches. Which I suppose, leads me to...
- Lazy Hate
This one irks me a lot. A lot of the time, people dismiss things that they are too lazy/disinclined to do the work to look into. Then, when they get into an argument about it, they miss the point SO HARD and end up just spewing a bunch of hate that shows they're too lazy to do the research/look into the point further. Case in point is people that hate Wikileaks or Julian Assange. I see both Julian and his website get beat up in the media, and people too lazy to look into the work that Wikileaks is doing decide they're annoyed at seeing Julian's face, or they don't understand the absolutely immense ramifications of the leaks he and his site have already uncovered. Now this isn't an article about Wikileaks (despite Julian losing his final extradition appeal only last night -- good luck, mate), but the amount of people who have misinformed, ill-educated views which lead them to this particular brand of lazy hate is staggering. I just want to force feed some of them a big ol' education burger or something. Ah well.
- Blind Hate
The last on my list of hated hates, blind hate is probably the most common and prevalent. If I had made my article about any number of a particular SPECIFIC types of things, like Jesus, drugs, evolution, abortion, asylum seekers, the economy, then I would have been automatically infuriating SO MANY PEOPLE who possess what I like to call blind hate. They've thought about the issue, sure, but they are so heavily set on one hateful view point on whatever topic that they are UNABLE to open their eyes and evolve their beliefs, and indeed evolve out of their hatred. I don't know how such anger and contempt gets ingrained into people's core philosophies, but if you look around, it has. And until we as a society work out a way to get past many of these issues of blind hate, I'm afraid we're going to be stuck in a form of philosophical dark ages. And if there's one thing we as humans should be directing our hate towards, it's that.
So there you have my list. It's a confusing topic and there's no way to really 'stop' hate in our society. People are emotional creatures and they let their passions dictate what they say or write more often than not. I just think if we all realised what horrible douche bags we are being when all we do is cynically hate on things, we would be able to move into a more constructive form of language, one not based on opinion, but on fact. On things that can be proven. Maybe that's the catalyst we need to get out of our culture of destructive, destructive hate.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed my list. Or, at the very least, kept your hate for it to yourself.
Until next time,
Peace and Love,
Willskis
No comments:
Post a Comment