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This entry was inspired by some of the comments to yesterday’s post, and by some stuff I happened to stumble across when I was surfing the fandom.

I get around quite a lot on the internet and in the JE fandom, you know, blogs, forums, communities and all these places, and I like reading people’s thoughts and opinions, even if they are very different from my own, because life isn’t all black or all white. It’s grey, and just like in my inkjet printer that grey is made up of very different colours. And that’s good.

Okay, so I get around a lot, and ever so often I come across something really stupid, something that seriously shakes my belief that there might be some form of intelligent life anywhere in the universe. But I usually don’t leave any comments to stupidities, because if I were to do that every time I come across something stupid I’d spend 30 hours a day doing that. I don’t have time for that. And I’m not the person who picks a fight with random strangers. So I usually just shake my head and move on.

Sometimes, however, I come across something so stupid that I just can’t keep my opinion to myself. Like the other day when I read a post of someone who complained that Junior fans supposedly didn’t pay enough respect to the sempais even though the sempais deserve it because they’ve been around so much longer.

Oh please! Let me tell you something about respect: Rodney Dangerfield never got any respect, even though he deserved it. But he didn’t deserve it because he was old. He deserved it because he was funny. I do respect a lot of people, and a lot of the people I respect are older people, even older than me, which that makes them very old. And I do respect them for many different reasons. However, the one thing I don’t respect anyone for is the mere fact that they’re older. There’s millions of people out there who are just stupid imbecile jerks, should I respect them just because they were born before I was? That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I respect people for things they do, not for something that’s completely beyond their control. E.g. I respect Jin a lot for taking time off and going to a foreign country to learn English. That’s great. He has always tried to use English, and he still does, like when they’re doing quizzes and he writes down his answers in English while everbody else write down their answers in Japanese. Even if he isn’t really good at English, at least he keeps trying, because that’s how you learn. I respect that attitude a lot. But I don’t think Jin had any say in when he would be born, so I why would give him respect for being older than somebody else? You don’t reserve respect just for being born a couple of years earlier than somebody else.

Okay, the next thing I read is how “stupid” it is to write in your blog how you hate somebody else’s favourite, especially if it’s a sempai, and especially if it’s Jin. Because then the fans of that sempai will in turn hate your favourite. So if you’re a Ya-Ya-yah fan and you say “I hate Kat-tun”, Kat-tun fans will then hate Ya-Ya-yah just to pay you back.

Again: OH, PLEASE!!! Are people really that simple? Do they really like or dislike some artist based on how they like that artist’s fans? Well, if they do then there’s something seriously wrong with them. Some time after Kindergarten everybody should reach the point where they make up their own minds, and not get influenced by what somebody they like or don’t like likes or doesn’t like.

A word about hatred: even though I respect Jin, for the reasons I mentioned, I still hate him. But when I say I hate him I mean I hate him like I hate broccoli. I don’t particularly like broccoli, but I tolerate it and I tolerate people who like it even though I have no idea how anyone could ever do that. It’s not that I want to swipe it off the face of the earth with fire or something. I just don’t like it too much, and that’s nothing but a matter of personal taste, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t shout my personal taste out to the world.

But here’s what that person whose blog I was reading suggested one should do: if you write in your blog that you hate somebody you should private such entries. Just say good things about everyone. If you don’t have anything good to say just don’t say anything at all.

Yeah right. Because we all live in Happyland, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane. God forbid that anyone should disturb our peaceful harmony. If you have a different opinion then keep it to yourself. Because otherwise we’d have a debate, and debating is something that most people don’t like because they suck at it. And they suck at it because they never learned how to do it, and because it’s so wearisome and exhausting because you’d have to use your brain. So let’s just pretend that we’re all friends.

You know what? Let’s not. Because we’re not.

Let’s be different. Let’s have different opinions. Let’s love different things, and let’s hate the things we love to hate.And let’s be open about it.

Let’s be human. Because we are.