We should be careful with the word hate.
One of my relatives recently became somewhat famous (details here). This week his home town had a “day” for him–mayor read a proclamation, key to the city, the whole cool small town deal. And of course there was an article in the local newspaper.
So someone just had to jump in the comments section of the online article and complain about how we give too much attention to certain people and he doesn’t deserve it and we should be spending time on more important matters.
And my aunt, this young man’s grandma, was deeply hurt. She’s in her eighties and doesn’t understand the Internet. Several folks tried to reassure her. Sadly, the word hate got tossed around, including the Internet favorite Haters gonna hate.
I read the comment in question, and I don’t think there was much hate involved. At most I saw a little jealousy and perhaps a bit of misdirected anger, but the young lady said nothing that rose near the level of hatred.
Honestly, I felt bad for her.
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More and more it seems we’re a culture of extremes. I believe one of the causes is the rise of entire media industries built on commentary. Some of the most well-known people in our society don’t actually build or contribute anything original. They don’t even report or do journalism.
All those folks do is comment, critique, offer opinions. They don’t enter the arena themselves. The’re the talking heads who exist only to tear apart what others do.
To attract an audience, they have to be outrageous, extreme, even a little crazy. So all day long these fame-seeking critics look for attention at the extremes. They make a lot of money and get a lot of attention.
I feel kind of bad for them. I don’t think most of them are haters. I just think they’re taking the easy way out.
Instead of following their own dreams, they criticize those who actually stepped out and took the risk.
How sad to spend your life critiquing the hard work of others, not to help or coach but simply to get attention for yourself. How sad to scramble for ratings by finding a more extreme way to rip apart someone’s effort, regardless of logic or fairness or long-term impact.
How sad that just because there’s a market, someone thinks it’s okay to fill it. And these professional, full-time extremist critics set the tone for Twitter and Facebook and all the rest, until some young lady decides it’s okay to jump in and criticize a celebration for a guy she doesn’t even know.
That’s not hate. It’s just kind of sad.
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