Blogging Twilight: Part 1.5

My reading scedual is all out of wiggity-whack lately. I've only gave the barest of glances to Bella in the last couple of days, mostly due to the fact that my newspaper job is keeping me crazy busy, and also because I've been playing Dante's Inferno.

As an English Geek I feel obligated to go to hell in video game terms at least.

Anyway, I came across this blog which highlights the reasoning behind this little social experiment of mine. Not only does it deal with the crazy fandom that this series of books has created, but it is run by people who are completely hateful about it, which is just as bad.

Let's say they come up with a new form of pancake (and by "they" I obviously mean Denny's). This new Pancake is made mostly of sugar and artificial pancaking agents, but lots of people love it. So many people love it that it becomes the most popular breakfast item for a while. Would people who are fans of other pancakes devote time and energy to denouncing the new pancake, which would be called Denny's Ultimate Pancake Delux Redux?

Why is it that if you don't care for something that is crazy popular the default position is ultimate hatred? I've read studies that suggest it's a result of the global community we find ourselves living in. Before if a movie didn't interest you, you didn't watch it and that was that. These days if a movie doesn't interest you, you are bombarded by thousands of people who disagree with you. In order to make your point more solid, and hence your person more important, you take the extreme view. Same thing with Hanna Montana, Pokemon, and Obama.

Look at George W. Bush. There were people who dedicated most of their time for eight years hating Bush, people who were completely unaffected by anything Bush could have done, but you have to take the extreme measure if you want to count. Same thing with Obama. I'm not a fan of the man, but the amount of hate thrown at him, and more to the point the amount of effort put into throwing hate at him, is confounding.

And I admit I was in the Hate Twilight camp for a while. I didn't like the fact that it reinvented the vampire novel, or tried to at least. I didn't like that Stephenie Meyer became the highest selling Mormon author with a book that couldn't hold a candle to Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game". And I didn't like the fact that IT WAS HER AND NOT ME.

Yes I was jealous.

So that is why I am plowing through. And I'll plow through more of it with a proper post soon.