Goodbye Internet Snobs

Not everyone's a critic

In the early age of social media, when cyberbullying was all people could talk about, a hater was the person you weren’t supposed to be. It was someone who was unjust in their distaste for you, who said anything to get a rise. The people you are not supposed to respond to on social media. Who poked fun at anything. They were those who punched down, or even up, or any which way they decided. Their “hating” was based on an emotional response to you and never really on fact.

Things have most certainly shifted. Being a hater has since blossomed into the envy of the internet. There is a dopamine hit in dogpiling on a topic that has gained mass attention through hateful commentary. It’s a high that so many are willing to ride. Why wouldn’t you take the shot? It’s a sitting duck. The first cultural phenomenon of being a hater that I could think of was Twilight. Twilight By Stephanie Meyers came out in 2005 but the movie premiered in November of 2008. The hate I believe peaked at the release when it became more apparent just how “bad” it was. A year later in 2009, Kanye interrupts Taylor Swift at the VMAs sending both fan bases into an internet war. One Direction was formed in 2010 and became the punchline for girlhood haters everywhere. Twitter was flooded constantly with the best celebrity beef. From “Miley what’s good?” at the VMAs to the falling out between your favorite female singers. Joan Rivers on Fashion Police and Taylor Swift’s Reputation release. Hating was cool.

In the present day hating is still widely viewed as socially cool. Though Taylor Swift has safely escaped it for the most part (at the present moment Twitter is knocking her new album which I haven’t heard so I refrain from forming an opinion.) It has transformed in the onset of TikTok as the cultural landscape continues to shift. TikTok is where I see the self-proclaimed hater most often. Twitter is a close second.

Hating at the current standard is centered around cultural criticism and analyzing trending topics. The issue is not that criticism is not needed or invalid, but the basis of criticism often spouted online comes from the desire to go viral or appear clever. It is done for a laugh and it’s done very publically. Often subjecting the people who enjoy the topic of critique to humiliating and dramatic comments about who they are as people. Everyone wants to be a hater because it’s the funny thing to do online and it gets you followers. To do that, you latch onto any information you see from other haters. Creating a wave of ill-informed ideas under the guise of intellect and a social hierarchy that the hater made up and positioned themselves at the top of. Morally declaring themselves better than the rest all for a whopping 300 likes.

The issue is the lack of credentials to critique. At the root of the problem is the belief that opinion is fact, and that disliking something on taste alone makes it bad technically. To a self-proclaimed hater, they are society’s critics. To me, a critic is someone who loves a certain area of history or art and can make the proper analysis that helps a medium or artist grow into all it can be. The basis of good criticism is founded in love, and the desire to see what we love flourish. When I was in art school there was a correct way to critique your peers and it was done so in a way that showed our belief in their ability to achieve their desired results. It was never done out of hatred. The lack of curiosity people have to learn makes them unwavering in their ideas. They say the things that make them feel morally superior and fail to see where they are misguided because they self-affirm with media that agrees with them, or misunderstand the media that doesn’t. Their range is limited. Criticism takes reference and the only way you can acquire reference is by doing the work.

This is not to say I’m the perfect critic and I often refrain from talking about any sort of art even photography because there is so much more for me to learn. I am curious to know things, to have an opinion formed on facts, rather than agree with whoever is to my left. I want to know why things are good or bad. I am not a hater. But I do come home sometimes and explode to my sister about the things I can’t stand seeing. I make jokes with my friends about trends I don’t like. I was there when Don’t Worry Darling was being dragged on Twitter. I have done it. I have done it in private where the thoughts hold no real weight. It’s fun for a time, but my finger is rarely on the pulse and it might do some people some good to see theirs isn’t either. It’s rare that I’m ever saying anything new, but I’m not pretending either to be profound. I am never under the impression I am, and always will be, right. I believe that you can critique me. The modern hater is rarely that willing.

Twilight is still my point of reference. What makes it such a perfect case is how it impacted culture so resoundingly. The blanket statement people might make about Twilight is that it’s bad. I find an issue with this because like anything I consume I’d at the very least have some evidence as to why. My friend Maddie watched the entire series with us recently because I had never seen it. In watching she explained the deep-rooted issues with the text and movie due to the information and context she knew from actually enjoying the series. Her critique came from a place of interest and information. It made sense. Robert Pattinson was hailed a hero for hating the movie. However, he had the intellect and context to know why. He read the books and was part of the process of bringing it to life, he’s an actor who knows good acting. He had the material that gave him the right to critique the work. Only for the rest of the world to fall in line, hating something they’d never read or seen. The hivemind takeover of our beliefs is what bankrupts us all.

But there are people who could talk endlessly about how dumb the rest of us are for enjoying something so bad. People who are devoid of any nuance or sincerity, who offline we’d label as “not very good at having fun.” Either because not everything is so deep or because they suck at having a why. The whole thing is you have to know why these things are bad. Understanding is essential, it gives you the ability to analyze from a well-rounded perspective instead of a limited one. You have to subject yourself to both good and bad art to know the difference. It’s like math, please show me your work. If you don’t tell me why I’ll assume you copied someone else. 

Recently in Twitter discourse, a woman posted a tweet that has since been deleted remarking on finishing a notebook that she photographed closed on her desk. Another Twitter user quoted the tweet and chastised her for performative journaling and how we have capitalized on the idea of it. But how does she know the contents of a closed notebook? And what exactly was so performative? Come to find out the journal was just full of to-do lists. Anything for a like though right?

I don’t go online and hate, it’s a boring take. I love to love. If the world has no haters then I am alive. Things are much more interesting when done in an act of love. In those spaces, I am begging for the information. Tell me why you love it, tell me why it’s good, and tell me how it can be better. I want to know because joy is almost tangible, please let me be a part of it for even a moment, even if what you love is inherently bad. Maddie loves Twilight and I love her because she loves it. I love that her critiques come from a belief in the good. When I go online I am rarely inclined to bash anything. I see no joy in making other people feel bad. I am not a hater. I’m, at times, a critic but even not one who believes I stand higher on an intellectual pedestal. Even haters I believe have the power to do a little better. I believe they can become the critic they want to be if they drop the desire for viral content—if they lose the taste for likes.

I enjoy the internet for the reason that we can find like-minded lovers. I love that when Annabel and I talked over Zoom we discovered our love of Pride and Prejudice the 2005 version. I love that the newsletter I read about interiors comes from a certain love of design history which means I am always learning something. I love the people on TikTok who let me walk into a world they love and look around. We can still critique here but it never feels that bad. It feels encouraging. There is such depth to sincerity, you should go swimming in it. To be a hater is to be shallow, it’s always about how it looks and never about how it feels.

I encourage people to get out more. I encourage the expansion of our minds. Go on Letterboxd and be sincere in your review instead of coming up with a snarky one-liner for a movie you don’t care about. Enjoy something every once in a while—see how it feels to acknowledge the goodness. Talk about what you love and not in a snobbish way. Not everything is a masterpiece and not everyone is a genius, and you do not always need to be impressive. Life moves on. A hater is no critic, they see only what has failed us, incapable of seeing all such things could offer. That’s just no way to live.