This is Part Two of I-don't-know-how-many of A Cranky, Rambling Rant about how some people can't cope with you not liking what they like. Part One was here. It was about how my non-love of Star Trek bothered some people. This part is about the opposite situation: "How dare you like something I don't?"
I love the movie, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and every so often, I get scolded by someone who has a real problem with that; who wants to argue with me like I've made a grievous factual error which demands immediate retraction. There's one guy in particular who writes me every time I express any fondness for the film and the fate of mankind hinges on him being able to convince me that it's a horrible movie without one laugh in it. I'm sure that before he even got as far as this sentence, he began composing a scathing e-mail to me.
Right after he read the first sentence of the preceding paragraph, he surely thought, "Why the hell doesn't Evanier listen to me?" Then he probably began writing me the same stupid message about how he is an infallible expert on comedy and he saw the film thirty-some-odd years ago and he walked out on it around the time Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney flew the plane through the billboard because he knows what's funny and that, by God, is that.
Apparently, he's a far greater authority on what I like than I am. And all those people in theaters I've seen howling at this movie over the years…well, they're just plain wrong and everyone ought to tell them that.
Oh, he says things like "Everyone's entitled to their opinion" but he gets pretty irate when yours isn't his. He sounds like me advocating the criminal prosecution of those who make cole slaw except that I'm kidding — parodying the folks who think not pleasing them oughta be illegal, in fact — and he's serious. (In case your ability to recognize humor is as bad as his: I don't like cole slaw. Due to food allergies, I can't eat cole slaw. I have no earthly reason to care if you do.)
We are not all the same people, people! We are not supposed to all like the same things. We are not supposed to all think the same way. And when we could be using the Internet for educational or entertaining purposes or even to discuss issues that matter, too many of us are cluttering it with outrage because someone loves or doesn't love some TV show or movie or play or CD or comic book or something.
In the next of these — or maybe the one after — I'd like to discuss people who are not quite on board with the premise that time moves in only one direction. Thank you.