I feel frequently out of place. It’s an odd feeling, to be sure, and certainly one that quite a few people can understand. You see, I like things. I’ve noticed this propensity of the internet to be the place where people congregate when they hate the things.
I like comic books. I enjoy the work of Brian Bendis. After long searching for a place online to discuss comics, I came upon Comic Book Resources and was excited. Finally! A place to converse with like-minded folks who enjoy what I enjoy. Huzzah!
I was wrong.
It seems that liking Bendis is wrong. Criminally so. Also, I was remiss to learn, it was a commentary on my intellectual development, that is, I was stupid. Then, I learned that I only liked Bendis because I was a new reader and anyone who had read any comics before 2004 would hate Bendis.
I was flabbergasted. But it continues. I spent some time perusing the forums over at CBR, commenting every now and then on how I enjoyed the most recent issue of New Avengers, or how I liked Fear Itself by Matt Fraction. Subsequently, I was told that it was impossible to enjoy Fear Itself and I was a mental midget for doing so. I have since exiled myself from activity in that community.
Any topic on Spider-Man is soon to be derailed into a moaning diatribe on the wanton hatred of One More Day. I can’t head to the X-Men boards without vitriolic talk of Fraction’s X-men run. And when I present my opinion, which never uses the word ‘suck,’ I am told I am wrong and must leave. I don’t like Avengers Academy? I’m stupid! I like Jeph Loeb? I’m a moron!
It’s the same on a lot of forums across the net. If I like or even moderately enjoy Stand Up, I’d better not tell AntsMarching.org, I’ll be speared. Is Big Whiskey a good album? Gods, no, I’m told! It turns out that because I was unable to attend a concert in 1996 I am somehow not allowed to enjoy a song written post-2000. That somehow I am so lacking my mental faculties I don’t realise how bad anything this decade has been. Don’t let it slip that I enjoy the Busted Stuff version of Captain over the Lillywhite version.
It seems to be about nostalgia. Everything was better back then. Comics? Better when I was a kid. They need to make ‘em like that again. DMB? They were rockin’ when I was ten! Go back to playing in bars.
The fact is, nothing will be as good as when you discovered it. But the problem is one of stubborn obstinacy. The unwilling refusal to see another point of view, to acknowledge another point of view has a stranglehold on many places on the internet. I understand the old adage, ‘if you like something tell five people, if you hate it, tell ten,’ but this goes beyond that.
There is no solution I can present, aside from, of course, don’t be a jackass to other people. If you disagree with someone’s opinion, be an adult and say, ‘I disagree,’ and move on. Don’t berate them for page after page until some nameless moderator bans them for disagreeing with the online masses.
But compounding that point, it seems the internet decries anything remotely popular as a massive trick of group-think. No one actually likes Twilight, they are all merely senseless cows flocking to the theatres because TV told them they should.
Anything popular is only so because the American public is just so damn idiotic they can’t help it. This massive under-estimation of the intelligence of the average American is sickening. Anonymity and an inflated sense of self and ego, has led a generation of people, regardless of age, to believe that they are without fault. They believe that they are special. They have been sheltered into believing that what they say is the be all end all of opinions. That what anyone else says is tantamount to insurrection.
It is an affront to common sense and it must end. I will do everything in my power to be as positive as I possibly can be in all that I post here. If I must be negative toward a subject, I will do so calmly and rationally and move on. I will not spend hours upon hours endlessly debasing subjects I hate. I want to have a place where I can be positive about the things I enjoy.
Let this be that place.
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