Why do we hate?, Good article on anti-fandom.

Hate, Dislike, Disgust, Distemper, and Distaste
Written by Jonathan Gray, Prof. at Fordham University

The biggest reason for me disliking a certain person, TV show or movie is overexposure. If it is not my cup of tea (so to speak) and ends up being all I see on the Internet and TV and all I hear on the radio, then I tend to get irritated by it.

A good example is popular TV shows like Friends, The Real World, and Sex and the City. For a long time, you couldn't read a magazine or watch TV without hearing or seeing or reading some reference to Friends or Sex and the City. MTV seems to have The Real World in reruns all the time, and after 10+ years, hasn't had the grace to end this extremely old, extremely pointless show YET.

Then there are other people whose lifestyles and behavior irritate me. Like Paris Hilton. She is not famous for anything important - a semi-famous last name (the Hilton name meant nothing to me before I knew who that skank was) and a widely circulated sex tape. She is a selfish and deceitful person who plays a 'character' in front of the camera and trashes the name and reputations of other people when the cameras aren't running. And she is everywhere, hawking her various products, 'acting' in movies, and releasing a crappy album. I can't open a magazine - fashion or celebrity - without seeing a reference to her. I can't turn on the radio without listening to her stupid 'music'. I certainly cannot watch TV without seeing some reference to her. For a while, I could not even go to the Amazon home page without seeing her fugly pelican face because she was hawking her stupid costume jewelry.

The same could be said of Madonna. No music countdown or list - in magazines, on websites or on TV - could possibly be complete without the crusty old hag being mentioned. I cannot escape her in magazines or on TV. Radio is mostly Madonna-free, with the exception of stations that play old '80s music.

I mean, if you hated cockroaches (which I do), would you want to see them every single day? It's the same with celebrities or TV shows or whatever - if I am not interested to begin with, I don't want it clogging up every single media in existence.

I haven't read the article yet, but I will.

I'm willing to bet the author does not cite "jealousy" as one of the reasons.

~ Okay, just read it. This is what I see in the Man-donna fans quite a bit:

Matt Hills (2002) also notes that fan cultures develop defensive "mantras," used to explain why a show is good or not. These mantras may or may not accurately reflect a fan's feelings, but they do the job of deflecting questions or ridicule. So too do anti-fans develop mantras.

As for this part,

So too do anti-fans develop mantras.

If they mean mantra in the sense of frequently repeated arguments (which suggests unoriginaility and intellectual laziness), I don't entirely agree.

Or, if I do at all, it's with a qualification or two.

One reason I repeat some of the same points about Man-donna is because they have to do with the very qualites I dislike about her, the ones that really aggrivate me...

I so strongly dislike some of her views and characteristics that I feel better if I vent about them. I also find it annoying that the very traits I find annoying some glorify or try to justify.

Another is that for a long time, nobody seemed to be telling the truth about her. Most of the magazine articles and TV mentions about her were positive. It's like they were all ignoring what an unoriginal skanky 'ho she was.

The most obvious reason:
Madonna fans and journalists continually repeat the same points about Madonna.

They continue opening their writings with the same crap they've been doing for eons now, such as

(1) "At age 48, Madonna looks great."

[Back in the late 1980s, it was "Madonna is so buff, I can't help but admire her dedication to her fitness routine!," etc.; nobody tacked on the obligatory "for her age" line when she was in her 30s]

(2) "Author. Scarf knitter. Singer. Tap dancer. Nose picker. Mother. Wife. Frisbee catcher. Chameleon. A genuis at Reinvention. She's conquered them all. Is there anything left?"

(3) Love her or hate her, you must admit she's a [take your pick]
(a.) savvy business woman
(b.) courageous, in-charge, take- no- prisoners feminist

-and so on.

If the fans and media continue to raise the same points about her, I have to responsd with the same answers.

If you think it's bad now - the 1980s were awful, awful, awful.

At least now when I go to the grocery store, I don't see her face on the cover of every other magazine every single week, like back in the '80s.

When I was a teenager, I had subscriptions to a few teeny bopper magazines and to Rolling Stone, and my mom had subscriptions to stuff such as Ladies' Home Journal.

Not only were my magazines filled with photos or articles of Manny stuff, but even my Mom's housewife material had Manny mentions in articles, or in fluff pieces such as, "What are the make-up secrets of the famous" kind of thing.

MTV not only ran her videos all the time in the 80s, but they had I- don't- know- how many "Madonna marathons" (even had one in 2003!) where it was hour after hour of solid Manny videos.

Of course, she was on the radio quite a bit from about 1984 - 1989.

When I was a sophomore in highschool, I took a personal fitness class for a gym credit. For a few weeks, we had to go to the weight lifting room. There was a sound system that piped in local radio stations.

Sometimes when I was in that class, in the weight lifting room - can you guess whose music was playing while I was doing stomach crunches and curls? (I'll give you one hint: Madonna's True Blue album had been released several months before.)

God, that would have sucked. I think it's like that in Europe right now - I was just at two Madonna fan sites and there were articles and magazine covers galore from Europe and Asia.

I think Madonna's magazine coverage dried up when she went on the Confessions tour (even late last year/early this year there wasn't much coverage of her).

I've stopped listening to radio, and haven't listened to it for at least three years now. Well, I stopped listening to the pop stations and the hot 100 stations, becuase they are saturated with crap that plays over and over and over again.

It also reminds me of Britney Spears' height of popularity (2000) - you couldn't escape her, she was everywhere - commercials, print ads, radio, movies, etc.

Out of curiousity, I wanted to see what would turn up if I googled the phrase "I hate Britney Spears," and here was one result:

Ananova - Britney has more hate sites than Saddam Hussein

Britney Spears has more hate websites than Saddam Hussein. The 22-year-old singer has spawned 2000 "I Hate Britney" websites, according to a survey on the ...
www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_843697.html?menu=
news.technology.websites - 13k - Cached - Similar pages

The original article link is down now. I wanted to read it again. Oh well.

This post has been edited by Mihoshi Marie on Oct 21 2007, 01:21 PM

Brain's 'hate circuit' identified

Excerpts (please click link above to read the whole thing):

Public release date: 28-Oct-2008

People who view pictures of someone they hate display activity in distinct areas of the brain that, together, may be thought of as a 'hate circuit', according to new research by scientists at UCL (University College London).

The study, by Professor Semir Zeki and John Romaya of the Wellcome Laboratory of Neurobiology at UCL, examined the brain areas that correlate with the sentiment of hate and shows that the 'hate circuit' is distinct from those related to emotions such as fear, threat and danger – although it shares a part of the brain associated with aggression. The circuit is also quite distinct from that associated with romantic love, though it shares at least two common structures with it.

The results, published today in PLoS One, are an extension of previous studies on the brain mechanisms of romantic and maternal love from the same laboratory. Explaining the idea behind the research, Professor Zeki said:

"Hate is often considered to be an evil passion that should, in a better world, be tamed, controlled, and eradicated. Yet to the biologist, hate is a passion that is of equal interest to love. Like love, it is often seemingly irrational and can lead individuals to heroic and evil deeds. How can two opposite sentiments lead to the same behaviour?"

....The 'hate circuit' includes structures in the cortex and in the sub-cortex and has components that are important in generating aggressive behaviour, and translating this into action through motor planning, as if the brain becomes mobilised to take some action. It also involves a part of the frontal cortex that has been considered critical in predicting the actions of others, probably an important feature when one is confronted by a hated person.

The subcortical activity involves two distinct structures, the putamen and insula. The former, which has been implicated in the perception of contempt and disgust, may also be part of the motor system that is mobilised to take action, since it is known to contain nerve cells that are active in phases preparatory to making a move.

..... "Interestingly, the activity in some of these structures in response to viewing a hated face is proportional in strength to the declared intensity of hate, thus allowing the subjective state of hate to be objectively quantified. This finding may have legal implications in criminal cases, for example."

Unlike romantic love, which is directed at one person, hate can be directed against entire individuals or groups, as is the case with racial, political, or gender hatred. Professor Zeki said that these different varieties of hate will be the subject of future studies from his laboratory.