Put Down the Haterade

Guys, we don't have to do this.

I was going to write this article anyway, and when I logged in to do so, I had a notification waiting that perfectly underscored the point I want to make.

Last week I took my son to see the new He-Man movie. I was blunt and honest about it—it was a fun time with my kid, the movie had some pretty good moments, overall it was dumb, but so was its source material, they just executed well on the adaptation.

A subscriber (and I do thank you for subscribing, Big K—this isn’t an attack on you) misread my assessment as if I was telling people to go see Masters of the Universe so they could own the chuds, or whatever. I was not. I’m just a dad who saw a movie with my son and we had fun together. I even said at the end of the review that if I’d seen it without him, I’d have felt dumb because it is a kids’ movie. It just has a lot of dirty jokes in it that they should have left out. The end.

Setting aside the timeless piece of cinematic IP that is the He-Man universe (note: this is sarcasm), I think the response to it is symptomatic of a larger sickness that continues to echo from the death rattle of the Culture War. Pop culture got so bad—and so ideologically one-sided, in favor of degeneracy and indefensible storytelling—that an entire subculture of entertainment arose simply out of mocking it.

I think it kind of started with CinemaSins on YouTube around 15 years ago, and then new iterations evolved from that, like How It Should Have Ended, Pitch Meeting, and others. Then the more committed haters popped up, like Nerdrotic, Az, Critical Drinker, Geeks & Gamers, and more. They strapped up for the Culture War and made a lot of money and clout by making fun of bad art.

The problem is that things did eventually get better, and there’s no money in saying that. It isn’t what their audience wants to hear. Mainstream audiences, normie audiences, are back in the business of liking things.

But even if they weren’t—this is the crucial part—it’s still not healthy for us as individuals or as society to constantly s**t on everything all the time. To throw a punch where it isn’t merited. To engage instead of just…ignoring something that doesn’t work for you.

This isn’t a phenomenon limited to one side of the spectrum. Things that we could enjoy together—or ignore altogether—instead get crowbarred into a partisan ideological conflict so people can force the entire world into their perspective. Around 2016 it hit the NFL with the Kaepernick kneeling campaign, and suddenly we weren’t allowed to watch football without getting lectured about race relations, which only forced people to examine shared spaces through a divisive lens. This spread into other sports like soccer, where the US Women’s team won their World Cup a few times (right?) and rather than being able to celebrate that, we got lectured about their paychecks, and any mention of them in the news had to bring that up.

It happened in publishing with “Own Voices” and “representation” and “inclusion,” usually about race. It hit comics like a freight train, usually about rainbow stuff. TV, the little sister of movies, got hit too, nothing was spared. This went on for years and wasn’t made any better by Covid or the other shenanigans from 2020. I don’t think we started to crawl out of it until Top Gun: Maverick came out, which was very broadly enjoyed, and even then there were haters who were determined not to like it because the plot was basically Star Wars.

(I mean yeah, it was, but it was awesome, like Star Wars, so who cares?)

Too many people are still rolling along in that gear. Something cool or fun or even harmless comes along, and there’s this urge they can’t control where they just have to s**t on it. The Left have always done this, and the Right are getting worse about it. Oh, the USA won gold in hockey at the Winter Olympics for the first time in 46 years? “I’m so glad I don’t have to care about hockey! I’m above that!” We’re hosting the World Cup of soccer and doing well in the tournament? “Soccer is a third world sport, I’m proudly not watching it!” The New York Knicks won the NBA title, breaking a 53-year dry spell, and they’re going to the White House to meet the president—the first NBA team to do so under Trump—and the response is mostly enwerd enwerd enwerd enwerd with reminders that NYC is a communist hellhole.

And don’t get it twisted, NYC is a communist hellhole, but what does that have to do with the Knicks accomplishing something great and reversing an ugly trend in professional sports? “Their fans went on a crime spree and destroyed cars in NYC after they won!” Yes, they did! NYC is full of stupid people, is this news to you? It wasn’t the players who did this, they put everything they had into the series and they won a title! Do we not celebrate real meritocratic success any more?

Europeans have traveled to the US in droves to watch World Cup matches, and they’re posting on social media about how awesome America is—how it’s not the America they see on TV back home (largely depicted as NYC and LA, two communist hellholes). This comes right on the heels of a massive social media waves of Europoors insulting America, only to love it when they actually see what it’s like.

Rather than be gracious hosts and high-five our guests, you get grumptards on the Right condemning the celebrations because hurr durr, you’re acting like you need their approval, that’s little brother behavior. Yes that is an actual take I saw. It’s almost like it doesn’t matter what actually happens, these people can find a reason to be assmad about it. That’s brain poison right there.

Again I reiterate the next best option: if you don’t like it, let it die. We live in the attention economy. Any mention of something online is a mark in the data trail. That is useful to creators. Bad press is still press. Take it from an indie author: it is SO DAMN HARD to get people to talk about my work. (Go read HEARTLANDERS.) If I had people spamming out content about my books, even if it was negative, I guarantee you I’d be using that to reach an audience that is not them, and it would help me sell. But I can’t even get that much because marketing is basically voodoo and I do not understand it.

Look for this behavior. You’ll recognize it more and more as you do. Mention “James Gunn Superman” and some guy will lose his everloving mind over it (it was a good movie) and predict the instantaneous financial death of Gunn’s DC with whatever he releases next. It’ll do fine, they’ll ignore it, and move on to the next thing.

We finally got another Star Wars movie 7 years after the sequel trilogy ended, and it was a good movie, but that doesn’t matter because it’s cool to hate Star Wars so nothing gets an objective shake. (I also reviewed that movie. The plot was safe and straightforward, the movie was adventurous and energetic, and I had fun watching it.) The Marvel offerings are better, including last summer’s Fantastic Four and the last two seasons of Daredevil: Born Again. Were they flawless? Like you, they were not.

Books have been way better especially if you know where to look. ( Upstream Reviews is a great place to start.) Comics have been awesome for a while now, especially the Unknown War from Ghost Machine, the Energon Universe from Skybound, and the Absolute line from DC. I’ve really enjoyed Zdarsky’s run on Captain America since last summer too. Things are good and while you don’t have to glaze them to enjoy them, there’s nothing healthy in figuring out some excuse to s**t on them.

And if those things aren’t to your taste, then by all means, boost the ones that are! We don’t have to be like this. (For a long time I definitely was, and it’s a miserable way to survey the arts.) There are great stories out there. Tell people what you’re into. Let’s leave the constant crapping-on-everything behind. It isn’t good for us.

I’m gonna turn on the Netherlands-Sweden game and go fix my wife’s car. Then I gotta catch up on comics from the week. It never ends.

Drive safe, see you out there.