Love.
To love is to give yourself wholly to whatever it is you’re loving. Be it a family member, a
significant other, a tiny puppy or a piece of media, if you claim to love that thing, you’d likely take a bullet for it to continue its existence.
Hate.
To hate is to give yourself wholly to whatever it is you’re hating. Be it an enemy,
nemesis, a tiny puppy or a piece of media, if you claim to hate that thing, you’d likely put a bullet
in anyone defending it just to put an end to its very memory.
Love and hate are split by a thin white line, so thin at times that it may be difficult to tell
them apart. Two figs of the same tree, so to speak. As Pixar taught us, emotions are
complicated, and often confusing if not outright confounding at times.
The willingness to take a bullet for a loved one is admirable if not completely honorable.
The willingness to take a bullet for, say…Steven Spielberg’s “Hook”, isn’t as honorable. In fact
it’s stupid. You’re stupid if you take a bullet, real or metaphorical, defending the honor of “Hook”.
Because after all, love and hate are also the two most extreme of opinions. There’s a saying
that everyone abuses about opinions. Pretend I wrote that here instead of this sentence.
In our geek world, the words “love” and “hate” are tossed around more often than in a
middle school cafeteria. Everyone on the internet is so excited to tell you just how right or wrong
you are about feeling a particular way about a particular thing. In my younger and dumber
years, I spent countless hours defending the honor of Yu-Gi-Oh! to complete strangers on forum
after forum. Was I wrong for doing so? No! I was thirteen, back off. Were they wrong to not
agree with me? No! Yu-Gi-Oh! is mostly terrible, but here’s where emotions come back in.
It is completely understandable for someone to get toxically defensive about something
they love. I completely understand the war between Star Trek and Star Wars. Do I think that it is
entirely pointless when you can easily enjoy both equally? Abso-freaking-lutely. But that doesn’t
mean I don’t understand it. It’s a base human instinct to defend. Whether from physical violence
or intellectual, we react accordingly. If you love Star Wars and someone comes up stomping all
over its importance with their mean, mean words, it’s incredibly easy to flip off that switch in our
brains that prevents us from pile-driving anyone who disagrees with us and teach that
mammajamma a lesson about The Force. And the opposite is true as well. You’re a die-hard
Trekker, and some hoity-toity Jedi-Jockey comes around dismissing Jean Luc or Bones McCoy,
it makes sense that you’d lose yourself for a second and want to lay the verbal smackdown on
that fool.
But is it possible to hate something and love it at the same time? Yes. Absolutely. I
freaking hate Twilight and everything about it, but in a sick sad little way…I think I love it too. It is
a profoundly confounding subject. That something of such little literary value has taken over
such a large portion of the last decade. But I’m fascinated by it. The sheer size of its fanbase
and the sheer veracity of their passion for what may be the worst thing to ever happen to the
vampire romance genre (which yeah, that’s a…genre…ugh…) is baffling if not entirely
astounding. I hate that Twilight exists. But I freaking loooove talking about it. I don’t understand
why, but I think that’s what makes this feeling all the more human.
We LOVE to talk about what we hate. And why we hate it. More so than we like to talk
about the things we love. I could sit here all day and spit wisdom about The Gospel According
To Ghostbusters, but what would be the point. It’s freaking Ghostbusters. It’s freaking Star Wars.
It’s freaking Star Trek. Of course you love them. They were made for you to love them. But I bet
you dollars to donuts, you spend less time talking about all the things you love than the things
you hate. So I ask you this question, Geekdom; will you join me in a journey into the deepest
depths of horrifying and peer into the darkness of your most despised subjects? Will you join me
in embracing the hate?
Thank you for reading my new column! Coming up on next week’s Hate: A Love Story:
The Twilight Series. Bare in mind that everything I say in these articles from here on will be
purely opinions of the “mine” variety. If they aren’t yours…well that would make sense, wouldn’t
it? But don’t let that stop you from flaming the ever loving life out of me in the comments. I can
almost taste your vitriol from here. :)
- Danny Nick
@nickcommadaniel