The fine-art of hate-reading
Have you ever hate-read a Medium article?
The first time I ever heard the term hate-read was about Donald Trump hate-reading articles on himself in various esteemed US publications like Time, The New York Times, Washington Post etc. I read he was a passionate hate-watcher of specific TV news channels too, in his spare time between golfing and presidenting.
The concept of hate-reading includes hate-watching and hate-listening. Can you think of any other forms of hate-information gathering? I currently can not.
So, what exactly is hate-reading?
Urban Dictionary defines it as an online activity in which one visits a website, Twitter feed, or facebook page for the express purpose of ridiculing — or indulging one’s disdain for — the author and/or the content on the site.
Dictionary.com defines it as a verb (used with object), hate-read, hate-reading, to read (a blog, newspaper, etc.) that one professes to dislike, often with the intention to mock or criticise. A blog, newspaper, etc., that one hate-reads. The activity of hate-reading: my hate-read of her weekly column.
My interpretation
My interpretation of a good old-fashioned hate read is when I feel compelled to read something I know I am going to hate reading before I start, based on the title alone. I will wonder why on earth I wasted X minutes reading that drivel both before, during and after the act.
There is an interesting article here that goes into the psychology of why we hate read, listen or watch. Very briefly it states we do it to feel good, those damned endorphins again they’re everywhere I tell you! Or we do it to bolster our sense of self-righteousness.
There’s a lot of rambling on the internet about people hate reading, as it is safer than discussing politics (for example) with someone because they’re too afraid of getting into a heated debate, discussion or all-out virtual fisti-cuffs.
I find this fascinating as it was a US based article and it doesn’t seem like that happens to the same extent here in New Zealand. We can have a disagreement on politics yet remain friends or civil, except perhaps for the extremists and people not willing to learn from another viewpoint even if you don’t agree. Then again, I could be living in a bubble.
It’s ok to agree to disagree and move on.
Hate-reading can become something of an addiction. A 2008 PLOS ONE study revealed some surprising findings. “[M]ost intriguingly,” they wrote, “the network [associated with hate] involves regions of the putamen and the insula that are almost identical to the ones activated by passionate, romantic, love.”
Hate is Love? We love Hate? It gets more confusing as I delve into it more, I discover there are at least five different types of hate reading, and I recognise my hate-reading in a few of them.
Types of Hate-Reading
The ideological hate-read: The ideological hate-read is pure and true. You have no personal investment in hating the target, just an avid intellectual distaste for the author’s beliefs and opinions.
The envious hate-read: In which a miserable person peruses the social media accounts of ostensibly shiny happy people (faking it, most likely), looking for reasons that they should be miserable, too.
The delayed reaction hate-read: You realise hours after reading something how much you hated it, probably because the Internet told you to. Be careful this doesn’t cause you to lose your love of good hate reading, so it’s even more critical now to ignore other people and the internet.
The reluctant hate-read: It’s in the Style section. It’s about young women. It’s in the Atlantic. It’s about working mothers. It’s a blog about sandwiches. You see the headline and know you’re going to hate it. You can call up the hate even without reading it. You don’t want to read it. You’re not going to read it. (You read it.)
The surprise hate-read: You start reading with no inkling of what you’re in for. The rage sneaks up on you like a creature in the night. You are shocked and filled with rage-joy. Or is it joy-rage? Whatever: This is genuine, grassroots hate. Lucky.
Last year was the year of articles titled ‘X things you are doing wrong with Y’. Every morning, the front page of the main newspaper would have an article titled something like ‘Ten things you’re doing wrong with Avocados’ or ‘Seven ways you are blow drying your hair the wrong way’ or something a bit more serious like ‘Five ways you are feeding your children wrong’. They were all designed to be a combination of clickbait, play on people's guilt for feeling like failures, and curiosity for seeing if you are doing the things wrong, then the sense of triumph to discover that you’re not.
These articles really pissed me off. And you know what, I read EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. Even lists of X number/things you need to own / get / recycle / upscale / downsize type articles turned into hate-read articles for me. It dawned on me that it isn’t so much the content, but the phrases “you are doing wrong” or “you need”. I think at 46 I probably know what I am doing wrong and I know what I need and don’t need some article created for engagement and clicks focused on keywords to tell me so.
Not this year
This year I decided to focus on positive and useful reading. I’ve seen so many articles that look positive, yet take a scratch underneath the surface, and they are simmering with negativity, telling you what you’re doing wrong. What started as a happy-read turns into a hate-read, and I guess that’s what is referred to above as the surprise hate-read. These really piss me off. I don’t like surprises. Otherwise, no thank you, you can stick your surprise right up with the avocado that you ruined from the list of seven things you’ve done wrong to it.
So now we know all about hate-reading, the different types and what sets it off, I’m curious, have you ever hate-read a medium article? Please let me know in the comments if you have, and all the better if you’ve even got a link to it. Yes, I’ll try and act with dignity when the first one of you links back to one of my ‘articles.’ 😛
I have not yet hate-read an article on Medium, The time will come. I have started to read many and thought ‘what a bunch of bull….’ and moved onto something better. Much of my reading on Medium comes from links from the emails I get sent twice a day. Am I trapped in an echo chamber of articles I agree with? Do I need to expand my mind and go in search of articles to hate-read? If I did that, I’d get nothing else done as I am spending more time inputting than outputting when it comes to Medium or any outlet for creativity, enterprise etc. at the moment. I think I’m going to try to be more like the girl in this fascinating image below.
If you’re after a good old fashioned list of books to enjoy hate-reading, here’s a list Mother Jones put together in 2013. Old hate-reads never die.
I would apologise for the lack of brevity here, but I’m not really sorry and I’m only new at this. Tomorrow I’m going to post a haiku to make up for it.
