Good Things Come to Those Who Hate

“Don’t hate the player, hate the game,” is a phrase oft-uttered by people struggling to articulate the sentiment that if a system is corrupt, then one must operate within the laws of that system even if that means appearing to act in an undesirable way, until such time that they can break out of the system. Sort of like Neo learning the rules of The Matrix, before breaking them and becoming Jesus. And for the record, actively hating the two Matrix sequels is a waste of hate. They are never going away, and if the ‘game’ is the Hollywood studio system, which throws money at sequels, prequels and remakes left, right and LeftRight 2: The Centre, then the ‘players’ would be the Wachowskis. So don’t blame them, even if the Architect was a tedious character. Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. I’m a Matrix sequel apologist. Back to hatred.

A few months ago, it became popular on Facebook to allow an app access to your profile, and tell you the most common words used in your status updates, as a representation of the overall message you put out (and probably as a test of people’s levels of trust in a computer programme they’d never heard of, but could give them some easily obtainable information, in exchange for free reign of the most personal online representation of their life). Since I have just the right mix of self-obsession and self-awareness, I gave it a go, but decided not to share the results with anyone, so I could still feel superior to those who had. Once I’d handed over my mother’s maiden name, the app told me one of the most frequent words I used was ‘hate’. Part of the reason the word crops up so much is that comedically it’s easier to say something’s shit than to give it praise. You only have to look at how many stand-up comedy routines, sketches, talk show anecdotes and YouTube vlog rants (or mentions of Gogglebox in these blogs) there are about how something purportedly great is actually shit to see that it’s a popular stance to take on a topic when trying to be funny. It’s much harder to make people laugh by saying how much you love something. It’s easier to make someone laugh by saying how much you hate romantic comedies than it is by saying how much you love period dramas. And people would rather hear you talk about how videogames are a load of old toss, instead of hearing you talk about how Lego is by contrast actually incredibly stimulating and twenty-five is nowhere near too old to be constructing a scale plastic model of the Batmobile.

But why is this? Why is hatred funnier than praise? In my first year of university, one of the first creative writing tasks we were given was to write a poem, about anything. I wrote a poem called ‘Ode to an Iconoclast’, in an attempt to satirise people who try to seem discerning and cool by openly condemning broadly popular parts of pop culture, for example saying they thought The Shawshank Redemption was rubbish. It seems strange to me that criticising something is considered both funny and cool, because in a surface sense, funny people are sometimes seen as cool, but in stand-up comedy, the comedian shouldn’t be seen as cool, he’s the idiot, the buffoon, the opposite of cool. So why isn’t it more popular to say that you think something considered unpopular is actually brilliant? What if I started saying, in all sincerity, why I think that Katie Price’s ‘novels’ are the apotheosis of literature, or why Coldplay are better than Bob Dylan, or that no movie has ever reached the perfect, dizzying heights of X-Men Origins: Wolverine?

Do you see what I’ve done there? Even in speculating on the idea of praising things that are considered shit, I’ve given myself the opportunity to list things that I think are shit, for the purposes of comedy. I’m shameless.

But it would be an interesting thought to, without a layer of irony, use comedy as a delivery system for unpopular positivity towards something. Something harmless of course, I’m not suggesting it would be a good idea to earnestly convince people of the merits of mass shootings through laughter. But perhaps something like, why I think The Matrix sequels aren’t as terrible as everyone thinks.

Furthermore, this very blog entry is a condemnation of how easy it is to use hatred for comedy, thereby taking a stance against it. I’m doing the very thing I set out to dismantle. I have unplugged. There is no spoon.

Before I finish, it would be very unfair of me to reference a rubbish ‘poem’ I wrote at least five years ago, and not let you read it. So here is a poem which, while positioned in satirical contrast to the target of this blog, is sadly not so subtle about it. Here, submitted for your disapproval and ridicule, is ‘Ode to An Iconoclast’:

Like The Beatles do we?

Well I think The Beatles are shit

Their songs all sound like nursery rhymes

How were they such a hit?

I hated The Shawshank Redemption

It’s the worst film I’ve ever seen

My friends say I should go to the cinema more

And that I should own more films than just Mr. Bean

Yes, I have read Catcher in the Rye

It left me feeling bored and bereft

Admittedly, I didn’t quite finish it

But there were only about 80 pages left

I find Shakespeare drab and one-dimensional

I can’t understand a word he said

Wherefore this and bodkin that

It’s impenetrable, superfluous and I’m glad he’s dead

What is all this hype about The Wire?

‘The best program on TV’ it’s been named

‘Top that!’ they say, ‘there’s nothing better!’ they say

‘Three words’ I say, ‘You’ve Been Framed’.

*Holds for applause*

Next time on the Bandwagon – Tony promised me he never touches the stuff, and I believe him. So, it was probably just a dizzy spell.