Hate is All Around: The Politics of Enthusiasm (and its Discontents)

Worst of all is the inability of the reflexively positive to distinguish between critical thinkers and haters (succinctly defined as Anyone Who Hates One of My Favorite Things). The concept of a “hater” is a fascinating one, and bears closer scrutiny. It seems relatively recently arrived: the meme-tracking site Know Your Meme cites the lyric “haters gonna hate” in the 2000 hip-hop song “Playas Gon’ Play” by 3LW as one of the earliest appearances of the term; the first Urban Dictionary entry for it appeared in  February 2003. As the example given in the Urban Dictionary definition—”When you make it out the hood, a friend can turn into a hater.  T-Bo dropped a dime on Big Mike just because Big Mike was makin’ some change! T-Bo a hater!”—suggests, the concept of the “hater” seems to have originated in hip-hop culture, specifically in the tensions between African-Americans’ struggles to escape dead-end neighborhoods yet hang onto their racial and cultural identies (“keepin’ it real”), and between ghetto culture’s pride in the Big Mikes who make good and its crab-barrel insistence that those who “make it out the hood” do so at the price of their racial authenticity.

According to The Wall Street Journal,

The word “hater” is a decades-old term frequently used by rappers to describe their detractors. It’s a slight variation on “player hater”—an insulting phrase for a prudish person who wants to bring down people who are skilled at what they do, whether that’s making music or seducing women. […] Hater has gained traction as a way to describe someone who is relentlessly critical—and often secretly envious—of someone else’s success. It’s a kind of verbal force field that allows a person to dismiss and deflect all criticism—no matter the merits—as the product of hateful minds.

On the Web, the concept grew legs and wandered far from its roots, as Internet memes will do, losing its cultural context in the process, not to mention the linguistic precision that makes words useful. Now, “hater” is used to describe everyone from fans of opposing sports teams to those heartless buzzkillers who detest Twilight or Glee or Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga to the godless, socialistic war-on-Christmas Obamaniacs (there’s a slowly rotating holly spit waiting for them in evangelical hell!) to Bristol Palin-bashers. (“There’s lots of haters out there that are waiting for me to fail,” said the teen mother, abstinence advocate, and then contestant on Dancing with the Stars. In a characteristic display of the social grace and subtlety of mind that have made her mother so universally admired on the world stage, the younger Palin added, “Going out there and winning this would mean a lot. It would be like a big middle finger to all the people out there who hate my mom and hate me.”)

At their wound-licking, hater-hatin’ worst, the politics of enthusiasm bespeak the intellectual flaccidity of a victim culture that sees even reasoned critiques as a mean-spirited assault on the believer, rather than an intellectual challenge to his beliefs.  Journal writer Christopher John Farley is worth quoting again: dodging the argument by smearing the critic, the term “hater” tars “all criticism—no matter the merits—as the product of hateful minds.” No matter the merits.