Hater

On the Virtues of Utter Disagreeability

John Semley

$32.99

Hardback

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English

Prentice Hall Press
18 October 2018

Social services & welfare, criminology

"A manifesto for everyone tired of pretending to like things--really, really bad things.

Hater begins from a simple premise- that it's good to hate things. Not people or groups or benign belief systems, but things. More to the point, it's good to hate the things everyone seems to like.

Scan the click-baiting headlines of your favourite news or pop-culture website and you're likely to find that just about everything--from a premium cable adaptation of a novel to Will Ferrell singing a Whitney Houston song at a college commencement ceremony--is, supposedly, ""what we need right now.""

We are the victims of an unbridled, unearned optimism. And our world demands pessimism. We need to curb our collective enthusiasm. It's vital to be contrarian--now, as they say, more than ever. Because ours is an age of calcified consensus. Criticism has been supplanted by aggregation, be it in the form of Rotten Tomatoes or the cumulative Metacritic score--metrics that make even the thumbs up/thumbs down schema of Siskel and Ebert seem highly sophisticated. Consensus is the inertia that keeps our culture snowballing. And Semley hates that.

In this scathing and funny rebuke of the status quo, journalist and pop-culture expert John Semley provides a rallying cry for a generation struggling to agree on what stuff is actually any good. Looking for and identifying nonsense isn't just a useful exercise for society, it's also a lot of fun. But Hater doesn't just skewer terrible TV shows and hit songs--at its core it shows us how to meaningfully talk about and engage with culture, and the world. Ultimately, Hater is what we actually need right now."

By: John Semley
Imprint: Prentice Hall Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 133mm,
Weight: 168g
ISBN: 9780735236165
ISBN 10: 073523616X
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 18 October 2018
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

JOHN SEMLEY is a pop culture and media expert who regularly writes arts features and reviews. He is a frequent contributor to Salon, as well as many other publications, including The New York Times Magazine, Esquire,The A.V. Club, Globe and Mail, Now, Maclean's, Walrus, Toronto Life, Toronto Star, and others. He also lectures in film studies at the University of Toronto.

Reviews for Hater: On the Virtues of Utter Disagreeability

In this clarion call to turn down the suck, John Semley turns up the good. Do hate the player, do hate the game, and do read Hater to do so decently. --Benjamin Errett, author of Elements of Wit In an age where pop-culture opinions are evenly sorted between rigid agreement and insubstantial trolling, John Semley makes a fierce case for the dying art of informed criticism. Hater is necessary reading for the modern misanthrope. --Andray Domise, Maclean's Contributing Editor