Why hating is the new cool: Ditch love, embrace disdain

Business Mayor

25-05-2025

Love, my munchkins, is for the birds and bees, and swamijis. Affection is so affected. And to think there was a time when (lazy, last-minute) people actually paid good money to keep the greeting cards industry up and running and 'hearting'. You already know this in your bones, but if you really want to come across as part of the sophisticated set, the true mark of intelligence, taste, and social grace is having a burning disdain for things. And then show it.
Music is where we usually first earn our hater's chops. I have been proud, for instance, of hating jazz since my ears started forming out of the sides of my head. While many of my contemporaries and I moved away from Michael Jackson and the Eagles – with an evolving sense of disdain – many also developed a well-tempered fondness for free jazz, where the piano or sax emits notes like my steps out of my favourite Friday night bar.
Frankly, I really, really tried to like jazz. But then, I gave up – only to figure that if I'm deaf to Thelonious Monk, Wynton Marsalis, Vijay Iyer and all those who play that slippery stuff, I might as well hate them. Ditto for fusion music, Grammy-winning Shakti be damned.
Hating things is so much more focused than loving things. Think about it. Do people respect the guy who says, 'I lurrv pineapple on pizza'? No. But they bow in reverence to the one who viciously denounces it as a culinary crime against humanity.
Loving things can be embarrassing (for others), especially when there's a herd who 'adorates'. In college, my friends would swoon over the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 'If one hasn't read One Hundred Years of Solitude, one should go to a Macondo corner and die a solitary death!' As a result, I avoided reading Garcia Marquez for almost a decade. Even though, over time, I grew to admire the third greatest Colombian (#1 performer-singer Shakira, #2 footballer Carlos Valderrama), my lingering distaste for magic realism is a result of my early brush with the Cult of Garcia Marquez.
Fan-gushing reeks of naivete and too-wholesome enthusiasm – two traits that should be reserved exclusively for Bengali parents of single man-boys, and Trump and/or Modi bhakts.
Real influence lies in the fine art of hating through the unhinged critique, scathing takedown, snide remark, hit-and-run social media comment. Instead of gushing, 'Koi yahan, aha, nache nache' is SO catchy,' say, 'My god, this is SUCH a rip-off of the Buggles' 'Video Killed the Radio Star'!' Instead of 'I enjoyed Khauf,' say, 'OMG, it's Hindi horror at its most hilarious!' In an instant, you showcase not just your opinion, but the fact that you are opinionated, making you stand out from the liberal/gawaar/fascist/jholawala/[fill in the favourite group you detest] crowd.
The media actively encourages social currency to favour those who roll their eyes hardest, sigh the deepest, shout the loudest. If Mark Antony had said, 'I come to praise Caesar, not to bury him,' I wonder which contemporary channels would have lent him their ears.
Hating things certainly is a one-step process to make you look tough. You sound like you're ready to do the needful that namby-pambies don't have the cojones for. Calling for war (from well behind the front line), demanding people who have 'Mahmud' ('of Ghazni,' who else?!') in their names be locked up, threatening people who speak in Hindi in Maharashtra and people who don't eat fish in Bengal… It's just a way cooler way to get attention in these attention-deficit times.
Love is simple. Hate is layered, fashionably complicated, an anti-naivete vaccine. And nothing bonds people faster than mutual contempt. Anyone can love peace, Kishore Kumar, rainbows, India, rainbows… But along with terrorists, hotel lobby-elevator piped muzak, sycophants, and pleated pants, I HATE cauliflower. Read More Legalize Magic Mushrooms? Massachusetts Should Just Vote No
There, I said it. And have no qualms in shouting 'Gobi go home!' from mainstream, social and mixed media rooftops, no matter what the floret-power hippies and broccoli bhakts. You wouldn't have bothered if I had bhajan-ed on about hing kachauri, would you?