We need to stop referring to people who dislike something we like as "haters". "A hater's gotta hate," so the saying goes, and there's the problem.
If someone says they hate, say, Minecraft, you could raise questions as to why. Do they think it takes away focus from their favorite genre? Do they worry it will all too quickly lead to a thousand imitators? Do they find the mechanics repetitive? Do they worry about the long-term viability of the title as a "garage game"?
You can say things about someone who hates a game that question whether their reasons for disliking it are rational, if they're employing a double standard that they wouldn't apply to a game they've said they like, if they really have enough information to make the kind of absolute judgement about it that they've made.
But when you refer to someone as a "hater", you're basically saying that they hate something reflexively, that there's no thought process at all going into that judgement. Dismissal. Case closed from line one. A hater's gotta hate.
And speaking for myself, my reflexive response to that is: "@$%# you. I'm not wasting my time trying to bang your two remaining brain cells together making you understand that I have goddamn reasons for the way I feel about things." Which, like the comment that provokes that response, isn't exactly productive.
You don't start a discussion by putting the people who disagree with you in the position of having to dig themselves out of how you've pigeonholed them. Not if you want to sit at the adult table.
Oh, and one last thing, while I've got your ear. "If you don't like it, don't play/watch/read"? Yeah, there's a time and a place for it, and money/clickthrough talks, and so on. But a forum is a place for discussion, for the forwarding of ideas and opinions, and if we're really at a point where inaction and absence are the only ways we're supposed to make our opinions known, well, ideas like democracy are in a sorry place indeed. It shouldn't all be black and white- there's a place for saying that things should be better than they are, and if a forum isn't it, where do we go?
If someone says they hate, say, Minecraft, you could raise questions as to why. Do they think it takes away focus from their favorite genre? Do they worry it will all too quickly lead to a thousand imitators? Do they find the mechanics repetitive? Do they worry about the long-term viability of the title as a "garage game"?
You can say things about someone who hates a game that question whether their reasons for disliking it are rational, if they're employing a double standard that they wouldn't apply to a game they've said they like, if they really have enough information to make the kind of absolute judgement about it that they've made.
But when you refer to someone as a "hater", you're basically saying that they hate something reflexively, that there's no thought process at all going into that judgement. Dismissal. Case closed from line one. A hater's gotta hate.
And speaking for myself, my reflexive response to that is: "@$%# you. I'm not wasting my time trying to bang your two remaining brain cells together making you understand that I have goddamn reasons for the way I feel about things." Which, like the comment that provokes that response, isn't exactly productive.
You don't start a discussion by putting the people who disagree with you in the position of having to dig themselves out of how you've pigeonholed them. Not if you want to sit at the adult table.
Oh, and one last thing, while I've got your ear. "If you don't like it, don't play/watch/read"? Yeah, there's a time and a place for it, and money/clickthrough talks, and so on. But a forum is a place for discussion, for the forwarding of ideas and opinions, and if we're really at a point where inaction and absence are the only ways we're supposed to make our opinions known, well, ideas like democracy are in a sorry place indeed. It shouldn't all be black and white- there's a place for saying that things should be better than they are, and if a forum isn't it, where do we go?
