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Sunday, January 15, 2012

Opinion vs. Hating

Sometimes it seems like it gets to be the "in thing" to hate on somebody on social media.  (Current examples in music would be Nickelback, Scott Stapp....)  In other words, someone falls out of fashion, and suddenly it's the cool thing to trash on them.  This has nothing to do, really, with the person's talent, in my eyes.  People trash them because it's currently "in fashion" to do so.  It's a cheap shot and it's not necessary.  Frankly, it lowers my opinion of the speaker significantly.  It seems to have nothing to do with whether the speaker likes whomever may be the "out of flavor of the month", and it has nothing to do with their talent level. This is about trashing people just because it's the popular thing to do.
 
I could give you a list of artists that I do not listen to because I can't stand their music, and you'd frankly have to pay me to go see them.  Does anyone see me trashing them on Facebook or Twitter?  Not so much.  It's one thing to say for example "I don't like country music" and another altogether to say nasty shit about a particular artist.  I don't think anyone just wakes up and goes "Yeah, I think I'll go out and just do things that outright SUCK." 

I mean, OK - clearly some people have enormous amounts of talent, drive, creativity, charisma, and we all have strong opinions on who we think really rocks it.  But that doesn't mean character assassination is necessary.

It's one thing to sit and have an intelligent conversation about music, movies, or whatever and express your opinion.  It's quite another to needlessly trash someone.  OK - off my soapbox.  I needed to get that out of my system.

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