hatewatching or hatereading isn't specific enough

[cimorene]

Sometimes you know you're going to hate all of it, but you have to experience it anyway because some bizarre sense of internal fairness tells you that it's not technically fair to decide (even privately) that you hate it without giving it a chance, but once you check you'll be free to judge it with a clear conscience.

The reaction videos I've seen for Cats make this familiar process look a lot more fun than it usually feels to me, though. I laughed all the way through Folding Ideas's.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Folding Ideas made a Cats reaction video? 👀👀👀👀👀 I gotta run off to watch that now.

Also, yeah, I feel this -- like, for me it's more about knowing I have things to say about it, but not being able to say them because I don't want to be making criticisms based on "hearsay." Like, hearing about a dumb plot point and being able to put together in my head how it's dumb despite not even knowing all the context, and needing to watch the thing to be able to angle my criticisms better.

[cimorene]

I often describe Finnish culture as containing a Fairness Kink which definitely would apply to this situation among others.

I feel this way sometimes even when I'm not planning to share criticisms publicly with anybody (like, maybe ranting to my wife or my bff, but not like... posting about it). It applies if I'm even going to decide that I hate it most of the time. - I don't necessarily have to see every movie that I get the impression I would dislike from other people's reviews or whatever, though - just the ones I would otherwise feel invested in, like from fandoms I care about or whatever.

In the case of the She-Ra reboot, though, I think I maxed out after finishing the first season... initially I was planning to watch all of it to maintain fairness, but after feeling sick with dread for a couple of weeks when they released the second season I changed my mind.

[yvannairie]

"Fairness kink" and "a deep suspicion towards things being pleasurable" probably cover it, yeah >_>) Calling Finnish people out on having emotionally motivated opinions on things can get pretty hairy b/c of it.

I feel you, though. I'm kind of Like That with the Transformers comics, partially b/c everything I've seen about them points to them just not being that enjoyable, and partially b/c the Greater Fandom seems to have made up their mind about their objective quality so me not liking them would go over like a lead balloon. Shit, comic fans will debate me on the point of Not Wanting To Read Them, occasionally, it's that bad.

[cimorene]

Oh, ugh. Yeah, it's really irritating when you have such strong opinions about your canon that you can't really even enjoy the new canon in spite of tons of people shouting about it. That feels like it happens way more often than it should to me...

[yvannairie]

It's... people can be so protective of their fandoms, and not realise how that can make the thing less appealing. If someone repeatedly tries to override my stated preferences in order to "give me a good experience", even if I end up enjoying the thing, it will always be tainted by having been pressganged into "enjoying myself".

IDK. Fandom's marbles seem to have gotten particularly scattered lately.

[vass]

Scrupulositywatching?

I kind of liked Cats. It wasn't good as such, but it was strangely compelling.

[cimorene]

I've seen this is a popular reaction too, alongside the stunned and surreal horror crowd. I haven't see any reviews from that perspective, though.

[vass]

I think it was seeing Anthony Oliveira rolling around in it like a dog in dead fish or a cat in, well, catnip, that sold me on going to see it. Well, that and I decided not to go to my parents' for Christmas lunch, and that's what I did instead.

[cimorene]

I mean I've definitely had a great time watching terrible movies before. I think the weirdness of Cats is throwing an extra variable into the metaphor (observation?) because it highly increases the odds that the reaction is going to be laughing regardless of whether the person decides that they hate it or it's terrible or that they loved it or... whatever else. Whereas a lot of "HOW did something this bad get made??" movies just don't become that entertaining. Much like a lot of things that most people regard as uncanny or surreal, there's a decent amount of people who are like "hahahahah this is uncanny and it's an eldritch horror, unclean" and a decent amount who are like "hahahah this is bizarre and I'd like to watch it at a party while playing drinking games".

[phosfate]

The clips I've seen make it look like they spent $95 million on a movie for the Adult Swim stoner audience.