Dear Amritsar,
I hate aliens from Earth Prime 4-6-4-0-8-9 dash Omega. The little blue bastards come to our universe and don’t take our jobs seriously. They eat strange foods like strawberry rhubarb steak and kidney pie, and Hamburger Helper with bacon, lettuce, tomato and cheese on a sesame seed bun – just no hamburger. They stick close together in their little clans and don’t make any effort to spend time with people, to get to know us.
I thought I was the only one who felt this way – other than the people on Fox News, obviously, but the one time I tried to contact Glenn Beck, I ended up spending my lunch money for a month and a half on gold coins. Most celebrities are aloof; some are downright expensive!
Then, I discovered the r/24hour2minutehate forum on Deddreddheddit. People with names like u/aliansgobakwareucamefrum and u/SecureOurTransuniversalBordersNOW! were talking about how much they hated the aliens. Just like me! I had found my clan! Now, I don’t have to make any effort to spend time with idiots, to get to know them!
Almost before the first glow of communal rage could fade away, a debate broke out among people in the forum. u/PenniesRPeople2 put forth the proposition that the exquisite three piece suits that all of the aliens wore were woven with the blood of human babies. u/helptheyeastofthem said that was stupid, that it would weaken the fabric, and, anyway, everybody knew that the blood of human babies was being used by Jews to keep their bread from becoming real bread.
Before I could even choose a side in the debate (I thought mixing blood into the dye was a viable – if gross – option, especially for those dumb innovative aliens, so I was leaning in that direction – the vertigo didn’t help), a flame war had broken out on r/24hour2minutehate forum. I’m talking napalm level flames, here!
I posted to the forum that maybe we shouldn’t focus so much on our differences and, instead, focus on what unites us: hating aliens. Well! I should have worn my asbestos suit (I like to be prepared for a wide variety of apocalyptic scenarios – I’m what you could call a…paredder), because both sides started flaming me!
The last I heard, r/24hour2minutehate had splintered into 27 different subdeddreddheddits. And I had only been on Deddreddheddit for three minutes!
Oh, Amritsar, why can’t we all just get along?
u/AmericanHerosandwhich
Hey, Babe,
Aaah, Deddreddheddit, a discussion forum for people who believe Farcebook comments are too tame. When I was just a teenaged advice columnist, I hung out on the forums there; it was a rite of passage, like overdoing mascara and not being able to get it out of your eyes for three days, or pogoing on the subway (which is not as easy it looks, although we wore the stitches as a badge of honour).
What you experienced is referred to by social psychiatrists and cheese shop owners named Wensleydale as “the tyranny of small differences.” We all need to feel superior to somebody else, but feeling superior to people we’ll never meet isn’t nearly as satisfying as feeling superior to people we interact with all of the time. If nothing obvious presents itself, we will find something, no matter how small, to fight about because our egos demand this trivial pursuit.
Personally, I believe the term “the tyranny of small minds” is much more accurate a description; we don’t all outgrow our childish passions, do we? But where too much mascara on somebody who is no longer a teenager is socially frowned upon, hate never goes out of style.
Perhaps the problem is that social networks on the internet allow us to find communities of like-minded individuals, then amplifies our passions. If we don’t let those passions out, our heads could explode (David Cronenberg has so much to answer for!). For example: people who might have been friends at science fiction conventions become ready to murder each other over who was the better Captain on Star Blap: Pompous or Plush.
There is an obvious solution: we must take small-minded bigotry off the internet and put it back in our town halls and evangelical churches where it belongs!
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service’s sex, love and technology columnist at questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: Werewolves make bad pets. You can’t train them to go in a litter box. You can’t keep them safe in the house in the middle of the night. They will often bring you offerings that are too big to be birds, laying them at your feet for your approval and ignoring your disgust. Do yourself a favour: get a budgie.