George Orwell thought he was giving us a warning. In "1984" the citizens of Oceania are compelled by their all-controlling government to gather around their TV sets every day for a healthy dose of hate. The sinister social engineers of Orwell's overdiscussed and underread novel realize that to hate is human. Why not turn it to the advantage of the all-powerful State? Orwell never foresaw the Web, where there's no government supervision, but just as much hate. In the novel, everyone's hate is carefully focused on an imaginary uber-villain called "Goldstein." On the Web, it's -- David Hasselhoff?

Actually Hasselhoff -- the bare-chested mastermind of both Baywatch and Baywatch Nights (a badge of cultural merit if ever there was one) -- is just one in a legion of online hate-objects. Left to their own bilous devices, spare-time Webmasters worldwide have created what, taken as a whole, amounts to a scathing critique of mass culture. Virtually no piece of the mass media landscape is spared a shot of digital hatred.

But what would compel any right-thinking, healthy human to devote any significant energy to erecting a monument of malice? Their reasons vary from the high-minded to the visceral. For example, Brazilian student Bernardo Carvalho put up his anti-Marilyn Monroe site [http://www.africanet.com.br/~nailbomb/mm/] after "a long discussion about gender issues vs. Hollywood I had with a psychology professor." (Bernardo apparently abandoned the intellectual approach when he got around to doing the site, which he titled, "We Hate Your Fucking Guts Marilyn.")

On the other hand, 16-year-old Kiersten (who doesn't like to give away her last name -- for obvious reasons), felt the need to create a site devoted to hatred of teen idol Joey Lawrence. This need came about after she watched the old NBC sitcom "Blossom" and found that "I would burst into violent convulsions at the sight of Joey." Appropriately, her site is entitled "The Joey Lawrence Makes Me Physically Ill Page." [http://home.earthlink.net/~abbachild/lawrence.html]

Kiersten's bastion of teen-idol antipathy opens with a diatribe against Joey's Tiger Beat-ish appearance: "His head is HUGE. It's a virtual planetoid! It has its own weather system!" She then moves on to an attack on Joey's personality, which she likens to "a piece of toast." The site opens with a profound epigraph, which reads, in full, "Joey can whoa my schlong." (Hmmm. Must be some kind of hip youth lingo.)

The haters' motivations, then, are as diverse as their targets. Said targets range from such predictable villains as Bill Gates [http://www.enemy.org/index9.html] and his Microsoft Corporation (there are anti-Apple sites, too -- see http://www.cyberport.com/~carl/hatemac.htm) to such seemingly innocuous (albeit admittedly annoying) personalities as Bob Saget [http://www.intercom.net/user/webster/bobhate2.html], Hootie (of Blowfish fame) [http://www.onyxtech.com/fstreet/hootie.htm] and the aforementioned Mr. Hasselhoff.

Let's start our little tour of Internet ill-will with the Baywatch Beefcake Boy. On his "David Hasselhoff is the AntiChrist" page [http://www.indirect.com/www/warren/baywatch.html] Warren Apel catches Hasselhoff uttering such compromising (and actual) quotes as "I'm good-looking, and I make a lot of money." And, "There are many dying children out there whose last wish is to meet me."

He also finds that an anagram of Hasselhoff's name reads, "fad of devil's hash." See, Baywatch is the fad, hence Hasselhoff is the devil -- and "hash is what makes Knight Rider popular in Amsterdam." Talk about a smoking gun.

If Apel's page doesn't satiate one's Hasselhoff-hate, Philip Barger has recently inaugurated the "I Hate David Hasselhoff Club" [http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/3826/].

A "17-year-old girl in the Los Angeles area" calling herself "D. Mentia" (not her real name, believe it or not) has found a novel way to work out her feelings of hate toward Drew Barrymore. She beats the crap out of her, virtually.

The young Ms. Mentia spent seven hours one Saturday eve ("when I was bored out of my mind") creating a series of of images portraying Drew in escalating states of physical distress. Click through the series and it appears as if you're knocking Drew's teeth out, blackening her eyes, bloodying her forehead -- and other pleasurable activities.

"About a year ago I saw a 'Beat Up Rush Limbaugh' site and thought it was pretty funny," D. tells us. "The idea for the substance of the page stems from my own loathing of the Drew image -- ditsy, blonde 'Oh, I'm just a girl'-type mindset. You know the type."

We do indeed, D.

But D. is quick to point out that she bears no malice toward Drew, even though on the site she subjects the young starlet to a sound (if virtual) thrashing. "More than her, I hate her clones. At the high school I'm at, there are 3,000 students. There are 500-plus Drew clones." A thought that is either alarming or enticing, depending on your personal predilictions.

Web Hate, however, is not reserved for cheeseball celebrities. Companies, products, services even New Age books come in for vilification. The latter genre is exemplified by Kenneth Moyle's "Why I Hate The Celestine Prophecy" page:"As I trudged my way though the arid, jargon-mined desert that is Redfield's novel, bearing barrage upon barrage of jarring, brutally prosaic, 80's self-help clichés, wincing at the glare of the shiny, shifting, new-age platitudes, I couldn't help but ask myself time and again: What in God's name do people see in this banal, grating screed?"

"My biggest problem with The Celestine Prophecy wasn't with the new-ageiness... there are thousands of new-agey books that I blissfully ignore. My problem is that it's a truly crappy piece of fictional writing perched atop the best-sellers list," explains Moyle, a computer consultanta at a Canadian University. Teleport your aura to http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/csc/moylek/cp/ for that one.

The cable channel cum cultural phenomenon known as MTV comes in for not one simple hate site, but an entire "Web ring" of hate. Once you've exhausted your hate at, say http://www.wco.com/~keebler/mtv/, one click takes you on to another anti-MTV site and you can start hating all over again.

MTV plays little if any country music, but that doesn't mean that the entire genre is not worth hating. But as with D. Mentia's Drew Barrymore hate page, on which hatred of Drew appear sto be, in reality, hatred of her "clones", i.e. D.'s fellow high-schoolers, Jake Van Order's "Yee-Haw: The Official 'I Hate Country Music' Page," [http://members.tripod.com/~Kalamazoo/index.html] seems to have psychological roots. The hate page functions as a means of expressing alienation from one's peers. Though in these cases, that alienation appears well-advised.

"I go to a school where there are hicks aplenty and they all fight about which truck is better, etc.," says Jake. "When they drive around with their trucks and country I just got sick of it."

Most major brands of computer and electronics products elicit deep feelings of hate, which is perhaps predictable given the fanous crankiness of computer enthusiasts. But non-technology corporations such as McDonald's [http://members.aol.com/AnneDroidz/mcdsux.html], Chevrolet [http://www.peoples.net/~wingers/index.html] and -- of all things -- Snapple [http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ziniti/snapple.html] draw similar vituperation.

The supply of online hatred is seemingly infinite. Geez! Can't these people think of something more constructive to do with their time?

"I make such constructive use of 70% of my time," says Marilyn-hater Carvalho, "why can't I spare some of the 30% left for destructive purposes, such as surfing the remote control, drinking booze smoking and making hate sites?"

Well put. Joey Lawrence-despiser Kirstein phrases the sentiment even more succinctly: "Fuck off!" she demurs. "Don't tell me what to do! Can't you do something more constructive than telling me to do something more constructive?"

And that brings up what may be the ultimate motivation behind hate sites -- and it's the same motivation as most other sites. People want to communicate with other people. The irony is, if you run a hate site, people whom you touch with your ire tend not to like you. But that's part of the good, clean, adversarial fun. A hearty e-mail page is an essential component of the well-crafted hate site, because the page will inevitably be filled with -- what else? -- hate mail!

"The purpose of that page is to show how stupid people can be," says D. Mentia. "If I ever get dumb mail from a Drew hater I'll be quick to post that too."

"I do not enjoy getting hate mail," she adds. "I do, however, completely love getting dumb mail from stupid people."

Her e-mail page reveals an ample helping of just that. A quick reading reveals that D.'s correspondents characterize her as "an overweight, thick glasses wearing, no friend having, computer nerd who despises anyone who embraces life"; "one worthless piece of crap who shouldn't even be allowed the pleasure to look at Drew Barrymore"; "one sick freak"; "a sick demented stupid jealous bitch"; "a jealous bitch" (again); and "ugly, bitchy and fat."

In fact, most of her correspondents seem fixated on D.'s alleged weight problem, no evidence of which is offered, either way, on her page. For all we know, D.'s a dish -- or perhaps she weighs 300 pounds. Who cares? But apparently -- and this is some sort of comment on the mentality of the online public -- the worst thing you can call a woman (or anyone) is "fat." Its' even worse than "gay," another popular accusation.

Linda Highland operates the Beatlehater's Home Page [http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/1014/]. She observes that, "Beatles fans seem to be especially homophbic, it seems. Many even assume I'm a gay man!"

E-mailed outbursts of utter disdain often emanate from unlikely quarters, Highland finds. "The first one made me nervous. I wasn't expecting any response at all. And I thought, 'Oh no! This psycho is going to stalk me!" she recalls. "The psycho turned out to be a rather sweet 13 year-old girl."

What, then, can we learn from the preponderance of hate on the Web? Is this a reflection of a growing distemper, an ominous surge of negativity and rudeness?

Probably not. Instead, it looks more like a healthy dissatisfaction with the banalities of mass produced culture. Orwell's Big Brother bad guys channelled hate into a unifying force for their lemming-like subjects, but on the Web the situation is exactly the opposite. Online hate, really just a form of homespun satire, is the enemy of everything the TV, Hollywood and Madison Avenue, our real-life Big Brothers, tries to ram down our throats.

More important, hate sites are yet another way the Internet allows us to make contact with other people we may otherwise never meet -- albeit in a somewhat sadomasochistic way.

So go ahead, reach out and hate someone.

<< BACK