10 things I hate about the hater

1.    Vociferousness: The biggest reason for my hating haters is their vehemence. They don’t try to convince you, but to shout you down. Of course, that’s exactly why you’re reading this; not for a reasoned argument, but in fact for the comments section shouting match that will shortly ensue.

2.    Gender imbalance: Strangely, every time I read any article with the heading ‘I hate…’ the author turns out to be female. No surprise then, that in the ‘ten things I hate’ series, 80% of the haters are women. I don’t know why. Are all these women really the proverbial shrews of Shakespearean fame?

3.    Too judgmental. Haters are too quick to condemn any thing, person or place without really thinking things through.  The automatic assumption is that nothing can be good, and that everything is worth hating. Pretty much like the assumptions I’m making right now!

4.    Trying too hard to be funny. Haters always try to bring humour into their arguments and fail miserably.  Their jokes turn out to be clichéd and banal. Even though we’re already at point no 4, I can almost see your bored and snide expression and the sheer disdain you have for my failed attempts to bring some chuckles into points 1-4.

5.    Boring writing style: Their articles are so sleep-inducing that reading them is like torture. Haters can’t seem to express their hate in an articulate way, leading to even more hate by the readers. As I write this incredibly somniferous and boring hater, I am 100% sure that 99% of you would have skipped to the comments already.

6.    Ennui: Haters totally lack joie de vivre and don’t want others to enjoy life either. Just because they themselves clearly don’t.

7.    Anger against trivial things: Haters will hate on you for wearing or not wearing skinny jeans, and watching or not watching some random TV show. No matter what you do, they’ll hate on you for it. Just look, here I am hating on the haters!

8.    Repetitiveness: Hating and repeating yourself seem to go hand in hand. After two or three logical points they start plagiarising themselves.  If you don’t agree, try to read my last four points again.

9.    Vocabulary: Instead of filling their articles with ideas and arguments they fill them with vocabulary. Every time I’m reading them I have to oscillate between the article and a dictionary.

10.   Jealousy: You only end up hating what you’re a little (or more than a little) jealous of. Does this mean that I’m jealous of people who can actually come up with ten things they hate about anything? Possibly.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, March 25^th, 2012.