When I was in eighth grade, it was the year of “Inside Out.” The Pixar animated film had just been released that summer and come October, a conversation about Halloween costume ideas led me to ask a formative question.
“Who do you think you would be from ‘Inside Out?’’’ I asked. Spinning in her media lab chair, my friend, Louie, thought about it.
“I think I’m Joy,” she said finally.
“I’m Joy too,” I agreed, grinning.
Louie stopped spinning in her chair. “No you’re not,” she told me. “You’re Disgust.”
“No, I’m not,” I scoffed, shocked.
“Yes, you are.”
Was I Disgust?
Despite my initial incredulity, in the years since this interaction the answer has remained the same — unequivocally yes.
At the time, I was taken aback that my friend saw me as this green little monster. She represented all of the annoying traits kids are taught not to possess. Being a picky eater, complaining and criticizing are all classically undesirable characteristics. In my own house growing up, even the word “hate” was forbidden. Anytime one of my siblings or I uttered it, my mom always responded that “hate is a strong word.”
Hate is a powerful word still in the broader culture and in the last few decades the idea of being a hater has often been decried. The public image of a hater is not a flattering portrait. Shrouded by a hoodie, they sit in front of the glow of a desktop computer for hours, typing away insults furiously. They are to be shaken off.
I’ve always been a hater, even if I haven’t always called it that. A critic, a skeptic, a cynic — a hater.
I learned my hating practices in the home. Aside from me, all my older siblings were born in California and when my family moved to Michigan, they were still Californians at heart. In Michigan, people cared a lot about different brands of cars and on Fat Tuesday, the donut shop downtown did not sell donuts. Due to small annoyances like these, my family hated paczkis, the car industry and the word “Michigander.” And by their example, so did I. Our list of collective family likes and dislikes was not limited to just Michigan culture. However, these were the dislikes that separated me from my peers and made me first stand out as a hater. At a young age, it gave me confidence (albeit perhaps unfounded) to speak my opinion in a crowd of dissenters.
To this day, whether by nature, nurture or a combination of both, I am predisposed to hate on things. After leaving the movies — even if I loved what I saw — I have a critique ready to discuss with my friends on our way out of the theater. Reading the first chapter of a mediocre novel, I can’t help but mentally edit the first few pages as I go. Watching an amateur musical performance, my brain starts a list of notes I’d give. Even though I have no authority in skill over any of these mediums, nearly subconsciously, I find things which I think could be improved.
In some ways, critique can be love. Constructive criticism sees what is going right and tries to bring everything that lags behind up to speed. Hate-watching as a phenomenon places a barrier between content and consumer, providing a disclaimer for their guilty pleasure. Even if you are hate-watching, a term I learned in my own household when my older sisters began hosting “‘Teen Wolf’ nights,” your love to hate something is ultimately love in the end.
My own tendency to over-criticize could come from a fear of embarrassment for liking something that others will deem as bad. If I evaluate something from all sides, scanning for impurities, I’m saved from having a wrong opinion. And I’m very opinionated.
In the age of social media, there are many outlets for these opinions and through these mediums, hating has the power to bring us together. Apps like Letterboxd and Goodreads that allow you to log and review media are propelled by their social elements and allow anyone to be a critic. Sharing comedic reviews and checking to see what your friends thought of a book or movie before picking it up yourself has become common practice with the ease and accessibility of social media. For many, there’s a pressure to have the right opinions and if you’re not an auteur yourself, you learn through observation. Coached first by my siblings, then my peers, and then the internet, I’ve been honing my own hating palate for years.
I won’t pretend my hater tendencies stop at the arts. I rag on the people who spent $550 on Airpods Maxes with my coworkers and mentally scoff at the packs of “copy-pasted” friend groups when they march past me on Church Street. While I agree it’s probably harmful to harbor an excess of negative feelings such as these, I also think being a hater is not always a bad thing.
While I may have made enemies of any Airpods Max-wearing sorority sisters or their sympathizers reading this, someone out there might agree with me. Having a common enemy is sometimes the quickest way of making a new friend. In a customer service job, coworkers can bond quickly over the common enemy: the customer. When making small talk, fielding out a mutual dislike of someone between you and an acquaintance is an instant ice breaker. Contrary to popular belief, common dislikes, rather than common likes, are often quicker at making a match. A study from 2006 researched this phenomenon, testing whether a mutual negative opinion or mutual positive opinion would affect how people viewed others. In the experiment, after learning that a conversation partner shared a negative attitude with them, the participants felt closer to their partner than they did when sharing a positive attitude.
I experienced this firsthand a few months ago when my co-worker and I realized we both disliked a certain public figure (rhymes with Scalar Thrift).
“I have nothing against her fans personally,” I said, starting with a disclaimer.
“Of course not,” my coworker agreed.
Pleasantries out of the way, we could now dish about private jets and alleged internalized misogyny. It’s far from unique to be a hater of this artist, yet after my coworker snapped her fingers in agreement with my carbon footprint outrage, we became fast friends.
Hating has other social benefits. Gossiping itself is theorized to have been an important means of survival, providing both an opportunity to bond and draw a baseline under social acceptability. In the workplace, it helps to establish group norms and adds a “democratizing force” between employees and their higher-ups.
Even though we’ve been warned against gossiping, the proverbial burn books of the world serve an important social function: hating on or gossiping about someone, no matter the degree of malintent, establishes an ingroup and outgroup. It feels good to gossip because via downward social comparison, we feel better about ourselves. What is considered socially acceptable varies, but within a given social circle a standard can be formed. If we hear that one girl called another a bad name, the group’s collective disdain sends the message that that behavior is childish and vindictive. Just by participating in this discussion, we feel better than the third party.
In the workplace, employers take measures to tamp down gossip as exchange of information about wages, coworkers and higher-ups themselves are a danger to the structure and authority already established. Discussing one’s salary between coworkers was once taboo; in recent years a movement has begun to remove that social barrier.
Despite this, of course, not all gossiping can be construed as beneficial and, like any tool, it can be used for good and evil. Especially in young people, what might have begun as harmless gossiping can quickly turn into rumors and bullying. For this reason, the taboo surrounding gossiping is of course not entirely misplaced.
As much as I’ve promoted the hater lifestyle, I still have a feeling of shame in spreading and harboring such a multitude of negative attitudes. A feeling which many share and has led to the recent reclamation of the term. I understand why others hate the haters, even so.
Personally, I know there are times when my negativity supersedes more important things. Just as much as I’ve honed my eye for the flaws, I recognize a need to improve my skill in seeing the good. It’s easy to point out the bad in others, to find the blemishes in the world around us, when the good is taken for granted. In art, good criticism finds both what’s working and what’s not. In life, there’s no point hating from a distance, if you can’t see the flaws in your own point of view.
Ultimately, however, I love to hate. Analyzing media and other’s behavior adds color to my life, as it does for many, no matter what “the haters” say. At the end of the day, for better or for worse, I am Disgust.
Statement Correspondent Juliana Tanner can be reached at jntanner@umich.edu.
The post I’m a hater, and I’m proud appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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