Mahendra Singh has posted a bunch of comments for our hatefest and various threads. They are so deliciously hateful that I wanted to preserve them all in one place: so here they are.

And let’s face it, “twee” is the closest that American pop-culture will ever get to simulating tragedy. Back to the 17th-century, that’s my Fascist motto … Après toi, Rubens, le déluge!
__________

or perhaps … the only real tragedy of pop culture is its antithesis — the quotidian life of the average human being?
_________

Here’s a hateful thought: North American eight-year olds may not be reading comics but they are making movies, recording music, drawing comics, writing fiction, producing TV shows … the puerile list of their achievements is a breathtaking omnium of the entire rotting corpus that is contemporary pop culture.

Hate week continues, Winston …
_________

The problem with hating pop culture is that pop culture is based on hate … hate of thinking, hate of complexity, hate of adulthood.

But it’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity: under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me.
___________

When you look at too much crap, you draw crap. When you read too much crap, you write crap. When you listen to too much crap, you compose crap.

Years of mass-produced, ubiquitious pop culture has produced a bumper crop of stunted artists, writers, musicians and most important, audiences.

But enough of hate, let’s talk … rage. Let’s rage against the rage! Screw Orwell, gimme Petronius.
__________

I think Domingos is being generous in his explanation of why mediocrity is OK in modern comix. As is Suat.

The underlying reason is that many artists/critics/audiences prefer it. Mediocrity is the essence of pop culture and pop culture is inescapable. It’s a vicious circle: feed young people with rubbish from birth and they’ll learn to prefer it, to praise it, to protect it. It’s cheaper & quicker to make crap and the profit margins are higher, thanks to volume.

People love crap which is why this particular Hate Week is so darn good. Let us drip our mordant venom upon the squirming flesh of the proles to the tune of a Boccherini fandago which would just make their ears bleed anyway.
__________

The myth of a perpetual, socially-acceptable rebellion is the sweetest revenge yet of conservatism upon romanticism. I’m starting to like this Western Civilization after all …
________
Click here for the Anniversary Index of Hate.