Because everyone has an EGO, whether big or small, and stroking one's ego in whatever fashion (I'm different/ special/ better/ right!!!) makes the world go round.
The facts don't matter, where there is a potential for drama/ polarity there is potential for ego-stroking. Drama/ polarity also creates butthurt egos, giving birth to a vicious circle.
Anyone can and at certain points in his life will experience this first-hand (through participation). It's one of those distinctly human experiences.
Cynicism is today's romanticism. It's become fashionable to hate and shun, so that is what we do. Besides, uniform positivity is stagnant. I prefer the drama that arises from discord, it sweetens the dullness of my own banal existence. Nice, even tones puts me to sleep, and agreeing to disagree is such a boring way to close. I love a good discussion with clear victors at the end. Personally I take great delight in reading through the archives of a debate where someone manages to decisively undress their foe's argument to the point of someone admitting their own fault and falling on their sword, or buggering out out of cowardice. It's why I get my kicks when I come across sites like this [http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/HateMail/] and Plinkett's reviews of the Star Wars and Stark Trek movies, and not watching c-span.
Still, it's not as bad as one might think. Even the most hateful of people get tired over spewing toxic vitriol nonstop, just as an audience gets bored when sharp criticism sets the benchmark for mundane. We've met a balance of constructive deconstruction, where we can thoroughly abuse a subject yet still find time to point out what it did right and what it could do to improve.
It's because hatred bubbles under the surface of LIFE. We have to wear a facade of happiness, sweetness and light all day long, some of us, even when the proper response is to punch and strangle; the stress of doing so gets to run free when we discuss things we hate, because we can lump all our hatreds together.
For instance: can you see, in Duke Nukem Forever, that your hatred of bad gaming ideas like limited weapon inventory and regenerating health, could be joined to your hatred for shallow, misogynistic heroes, and your hatred for re-treading old franchises "for money"? I did. Hate gross-out humor "for the sake"? Hate the idea that pregnancy is some kind of punishment? Me too!
Ahhh...spleen vented, I can go back to acting normal.
[edit: 2nd question answered: yes, we can act sweetness and light, most of the time. I can be, even. I just store negative feelings for rants like that ^^^]]
Being positive while being all-encompassing and fair is hard. Hell, its half of what makes up many world religions.
At best, you're going to get opinionated analasys or a thoughtful but vapid comments that are hard to comment on or discuss.
People want attention and taking the time to be patient or kind in hopes that someone's going to take notice is simply too much trouble for most.
Because if these forums have proved any one thing to me, it's that saying you like something (unless it's obviously hugely controversial) doesn't last long as a discussion. You will perhaps get some lists of favorites, but not really much, if any discussion.
Controversy by its nature has innate discussion value (or at least interest), but with controversy comes hate; especially for perennial and endless "chestnut topics".
Every topic that I've created that lacked the element of controversy, and approached the subject as neutral research or mere curiousity, died immediately in obscurity.
Conversely, every useless fad topic, Popular-game hate (CoD4.x and ME3 especially), or any such "Vs" topics thrive. It's come to the point where legitimate, rational discussion has become something of a rarity here (or is found in small pockets within other topics).
When you subtract rational, involved discussion from the equation, what you're left with are hate topics.
Captcha: "Kiss me"
How quaint. Don't ever let me make it through a post without feeling like a corporate shill or a total jackass, Captcha, you silly, useless thing.
I was gonna write this long post about the difficulties in interpreting other peoples true intentions through simple impersonal text because a huge part of human interaction is reading body language and how even just hearing another persons voice makes it so much easier to fully understand him. Also how we probably tend to over dramatize what we write to make sure we get our point across.
But I decided against it on the (very) small chance that people would actually start to think that I know what the hell I'm talking about.
Because I don't.
That stuff just popped into my head, I don't know if it's true. I just wrote it down. I can write anything in this box and never think about other people's reactions or how they might be affected by my words.
I've written about my passionate, spiteful hate toward Tidus from FF X when in reality I only generally dislike the character.
Because that's what it is in the end, just black text on a white background. It's just words tossed out into the void.
I can write whatever the hell I want and then forget about in an hour.
Unless someone qoutes me, that makes it a bit harder.
It's all about the never ending pursuit of happyness, which is in itself and illusion. The best anyone can ever hope to achieve is temporary contentment. It's part of human nature and the thing that drives our advancement as a people. It's present in every community without question. Do the bankers reach a state where they are happy with their millions? No, they make larger investment to make more money. Gamers are no different. We play a game and want more from it in the future.
This is where entilement comes from.
Although we are powerless to impact future developments, we expect, even require, our wishes to be delivered upon regardless. This can only lead to everyone becoming angry or hurt when things don't turn out as expected. This is a growing problem in our developed society. Everyone, from the lowest unemployed person to societies very richest are reliant on everyone around them. No one has any freedom anymore and it's plaguing us with a sense of entitlement and impotence that is rubbing of in every facet of what will be our cultural memory.
just take a look at those "worst game you own" and "games not worth playing" threads
I can pretty much garruntee you that you wouldnt get the same amount of responses from posative equivalents of those threads
we love to hate
we like to focus on the negative, on whats wrong, on whats sucks, on what used to be great but NOW sucks, on whos screwing us, on whos screwing them, or who they are screwing
why?
Im not saying "geeze guys..can't ya'll just be posative for a change?" what Im asking is why do we find anger and negativity more satisfying than posativity? I mean theres has to be somthing to it...otherwise people would nerdage about all things videogames as mcuh as they do
and heres a second question
is it possible to make a concious effort to NOT be negative and cynical? to enjoy things more rather than hate? I genuinly curious,
I mean lets be honest, how can people who claim to love gaming hate it so much?
I am unsure as to why people enjoy hating so much, but I can say that if someone is a negative person they can rewire their brain (so to speak) and cultivate new habits of positive thinking if they want. It takes time and practice, but after a while their habit will be to look to the positive as their first reaction to environmental stimuli rather than jump to the negative as their first reaction.
I am unsure as to why people enjoy hating so much, but I can say that if someone is a negative person they can rewire their brain (so to speak) and cultivate new habits of positive thinking if they want. It takes time and practice, but after a while their habit will be to look to the positive as their first reaction to environmental stimuli rather than jump to the negative as their first reaction.
its just I look at other peopel and they always seem so unhappy..with this or that
and I don't want to be stressed or unhappy or disapointed like person X,Y or Z...so I don't, I do things to avoid that
and thankfully because Im lucky I'm a state of contenment..mabye even complacency, the worst thing to happen to me was ME3's ending..and when I think about it thats great
but I know that it can all come crashing down at some point...which I need to make sure I can deal with (but thats unrelated)
It's easier to find the negatives than the postitives, so people just focus on the negatives.
Look at Mass Effect 3. The first few days when people were playing it, loads of people were loving it, people were already calling "Game of the year" and I heard many a reference to a "Near-perfect game."
Then came the third day or so, and oh boy. The rage. These same people instantly forgot all the good that they were saying just a day ago because the ending was really bad for them. I'm not saying that they were whining, or wrong, or whatever, but that negativity just swarmed over all their positive thoughts.
You will have a harder time talking about what you like about something that what you hate about something. That's why I tend to respect people more if they have as deep an insight on why something is good rather than why something is bad.
I really really like Mass effect and I could talk about it untill hell freezes over (which will be the moment they say indoctrination theory was true all along)
people love to hate on "fanboys" but I think being a "fangirl/fanboy" isnt about holding somthing up to be the greatest ever while overlooking the flaws
no I can see and accept the flaws in things I like (more or less)
I think being a fangirl/fanboy means that the work in question..game/movie/book/TV series does somthing for us on a personal/induvidual level..it pushes all the right buttons, its like a girlfreind/boyfreind thats "knows exactally what to do" <- if youll forgive me for using that example, sure it may be flawed..but you don't care because it does somthing for you
I don't know I'd call it "normal" or not but mabye some of us tend to "connect" to a certain thing..emotionally even (is this getting weird yet?)
like I dont bat an eyelid when somone slags off Valve or Portal 2 (even though I absolutly adore portal 2) but if somone badmouths Bioware or Mass effect I secretly cringe inside...before I understood subjective opinion and "they are jsut people on the internet" I did this with everything I liked..now its just Mass effect that does it...that weird "obsession" I have
this kind of emotional investment can blow up in ones face if somthing happnes (like the ending) but then the bigger the payoff is if things turn out well
It's easier to find the negatives than the postitives, so people just focus on the negatives.
Look at Mass Effect 3. The first few days when people were playing it, loads of people were loving it, people were already calling "Game of the year" and I heard many a reference to a "Near-perfect game."
Then came the third day or so, and oh boy. The rage. These same people instantly forgot all the good that they were saying just a day ago because the ending was really bad for them. I'm not saying that they were whining, or wrong, or whatever, but that negativity just swarmed over all their positive thoughts.
You will have a harder time talking about what you like about something that what you hate about something. That's why I tend to respect people more if they have as deep an insight on why something is good rather than why something is bad.
I really really like Mass effect and I could talk about it untill hell freezes over (which will be the moment they say indoctrination theory was true all along)
people love to hate on "fanboys" but I think being a "fangirl/fanboy" isnt about holding somthing up to be the greatest ever while overlooking the flaws
no I can see and accept the flaws in things I like (more or less)
I think being a fangirl/fanboy means that the work in question..game/movie/book/TV series does somthing for us on a personal/induvidual level..it pushes all the right buttons, its like a girlfreind/boyfreind thats "knows exactally what to do" <- if youll forgive me for using that example, sure it may be flawed..but you don't care because it does somthing for you
I don't know I'd call it "normal" or not but mabye some of us tend to "connect" to a certain thing..emotionally even (is this getting weird yet?)
like I dont bat an eyelid when somone slags off Valve or Portal 2 (even though I absolutly adore portal 2) but if somone badmouths Bioware or Mass effect I secretly cringe inside...before I understood subjective opinion and "they are jsut people on the internet" I did this with everything I liked..now its just Mass effect that does it...that weird "obsession" I have
this kind of emotional investment can blow up in ones face if somthing happnes (like the ending) but then the bigger the payoff is if things turn out well
I don't want to be unhappy either, but I also don't want to make the mistake of searching for happiness; instead, I try to cultivate contentment within myself, and that seems to work pretty well. This will probably sound cheesy, but I think people are kind of like trees, in that some trees will become to brittle, and loose their ability to bend, so when a storm comes the wind will snap them in half, and they'll fall to the ground. Were as other trees stay limber and green, and when the storm comes they bend with the wind, and so don't break. My goal is to be the tree that doesn't break, and I think that means having the mental flexibility to let troubles come without them destroying me.
I don't want to be unhappy either, but I also don't want to make the mistake of searching for happiness. Instead, I try to cultivate contentment within myself, and that seems to work pretty well. This will probably sound cheesy, but I think people are kind of like trees, in that some trees will become to brittle, and loose their ability to bend, so when a storm comes the wind will snap them in half, and they'll fall to the ground. Were as other trees stay limber and green, and when the storm comes they bend with the wind, and so don't break. My goal is to be the tree that doesn't break, and I think that means having the mental flexibility to let troubles come without them destroying you.
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