"What's So Bad About Hate?" Response

What should be classified as “hate”?

Is the labeling of crimes as “hate crimes” really necessary or could they simply be labeled as the crime committed without the word “hate”?

Is this hate really fueled by hate or is hate fueled by other feelings such as jealousy?

Humanity is full of emotions.  There are many emotions and feelings we put a label on, such as happiness and anger.  Yet the feeling/emotion that I doubt is hate.  Do you really hate somebody or something or do you feel something else towards them (question 3)?  Whenever somebody says they hate something, I always ask, “Why do you hate it/him/her?”  I firmly believe there is a reason—another feeling/emotion—behind this hate.  Why do I say this?  Well, simply because I have been a victim of this so-called hate.

In junior high, I attended a private Catholic school (K-8).  Nothing bad should be happening here, right?  Well that’s what I thought.  Long story short, I was isolated, shunned, bullied by my three “friends” who got the entire class to partake in their actions—to put it simply, I became an outcast.  I, being the naïve child I was, thought my class hated me for something I did.  However, after having a talk with those three girls, it came to my realization—they were extremely jealous of what I had and achieved.  They wanted what I had so they put me down.  At the end, when they apologized, they said, “We like you and your personality, but since you had what we wanted, our actions were fueled by jealousy, forcing us to hate you.”

Hate fueled by jealousy not hate?  This experience is what caused me to firmly believe that “hate” is just a word that society has used to cover up the true emotion behind what they feel towards somebody or something.  There is a reason—an emotion/feeling—that causes you to “hate” something.  The article talks about these “hate crimes”.  After reading the article a second time, in my opinion, these crimes are not filled with “hate” but rather another emotion/feeling, such as jealousy, disgust, or even superiority. 

Response to Kimberley

I also agree with you—just because there has not been any news regarding Gaga being a “misfit” when she was younger does not mean she was a perfect child.  After all, no one is perfect.  Paglia fails to consider how one thinks of themselves; maybe to Gaga, she stood out from the crowd.  Since everybody is unique, Gaga is merely finding herself and what makes her unique.  Her outrageous actions and appearances show her finding herself.  Also, since her actions are so unique and different, it helps those who are insecure of themselves to embrace their true identity and not be a fake.

"Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex" Response

Is the Gaga Revolution the death of sex or did the sexual revolution die before she rose to fame?

Are Gaga’s actions (such as music videos and her fashion) meant only to portray sex in her own way or are they actions to make herself stand out from the crowd of celebrities and be remembered?

Is Paglia going too far by labeling Generation Gaga as basically automatons?

Nowadays, sex has intermixed itself with the social world through the network of the media.  It is being broadcasted all over—in movies, TV shows, pictures with sexual innuendos, and even our music.  Something that used to be shared privately between two lovers is now out and about.  One would think something like sex would never die, but it has.  Paglia argues that Lady Gaga’s crazy antiques have slaughtered sex in the world.  Of course, one could never completely destroy sex since humanity needs it to keep the population growing.  However, in the media world, it has died, but I believe it is not because of Lady Gaga and her actions.  Rather I believe it is because of sex being so widely spread for the world to see.

I myself have been taught to be modest and conservative, which means that I believe what is meant to be private should be kept private.  However, ever since before I was born, unnecessary skin was already being shown to the world.  As producers and media people started getting more competitive in revealing sexual things to gain larger margins of profit, the private soon became the public.  Yes, when all of these sexual things were first released to the public, it indeed attracted attention and money was made since these sexual things have never been on media.  However, once everything sexual was revealed, after a while, the sexual became the normal.  Lady Gaga was not the one to kill the attractiveness of sex, but she was unfortunately in the spotlight during the time when sex became the norm and no longer the exotic.  Paglia forgets that if something exotic is shown and exposed for too long, it no longer holds the same attractive force it had before.  Something secretive and mysterious always attracts attention since the person will want to find out more about this mysterious thing.  Sex and the human body has been exposed to the media for much too long and now no longer has the same power they had over the audience; they will never again have the same power unless sex and the human body are removed from the public’s eyes for a while then revealed (but not fully or else the cycle begins again).

Response to Rachel's Google Response

Indeed I understand your point of view--this ease of access to the Internet and information makes it so much easier for a person to stray away from their main intention of using the Internet in the first place.  I, for one, am guilty of this act and I am pretty sure anybody who uses the Internet is guilty of this act at least once in their Internet lives.  My brother is also prone to this disease (if you could call it that).  However, I guess he is one of the few that browse around from link to link yet still retain the information he has read for quite a long time.  Most of the time the information he obtains from these periods of browsing is somehow relevant to what is happening around the world--be it celebrity news or international crises, he knows it.  It's sort of freaky at time, but it goes to show that this access to information is indeed useful is one chooses to use the information provided in the right way.

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Review

What advantages does the increased use of the Internet have on humanity that Carr does not address in his argument?

What other components in our modernized lives affect our capability to enjoy reading for long periods of time?

Do Carr’s examples (such as Nietzsche and the typewriter) really show some type of correlation between the use of the Internet and our short reading span?

In this article, Nicholas Carr discusses how the increased use of the Internet has negatively affected our lives and way of thinking.  Indeed, with the Internet so readily available to the general public through places that have free wi-fi, it’s hard not to log onto the Internet and surf around a bit.  Also, another added “evil” of the Internet is the ability to jump from link to link—something we can’t do so quickly with books.  The speedy Internet can possibly be a reason for our short reading spans, but it is not the reason.

I believe there are other components in our lives that affect our capability to read for prolonged periods of time like we used to (question 2).  Besides the Internet, the presence of the television may also affect our reading span.  Nowadays, since there are so many TV shows on at certain times, once one gets home from school or work, there is only a short amount of time between getting home and one’s favorite TV shows.  This short amount of time is usually spent undressing, taking a shower, eating, doing chores/homework, and then some down time before picking up the remote and warped into the world of graphics and pixels.  There is very little time to actually pick up a book or read a long article and soak up the words.  When one watches TV, it’s very difficult to be able to read a book for a long time and watch TV at the same time.  Also, since there are so many TV channels and shows, when one show finishes, people simply pick up the remote and change the channel.  The world of TV takes away from the precious reading time one used to have before the TV became a big hit.

Another component in our lives that takes away our capability and time to read for long is the invention of smart phones.  Not only do these phones have access to the Internet, they have the ability to occupy someone for hours.  This touch-screen texting makes it much easier for people to communicate quickly back and forth, similar to a face-to-face conversation, which leaves no space for a book to make it into people’s hands.  Though one could argue that texting has been around in flip phones, which I can’t argue against, I bring up another point that smart phones have the capability to download a lot of games to entertain anybody for prolonged periods of time. 

All of these time-consuming activities keep people from having time to pick up and enjoy a book.  People don’t feel the need to read to entertain and update themselves; they have the Internet, television news and shows, and electronics to fulfill the same desires.