The Strangers

As you ought know, I have strong views on various things, the one most prominetly featured on my page being AniTV, which I extremly dislike. But, in some way or another, I think I manage pretty well not to make any demeaning remarks about people (please remember the distinction between people and corporations or groups) or senslessly bash anything. I never filled a page with multicolored text screaming ANITV SUX    ANITV SUX   ANITV SUX, and on and on and on. And while the Strangers have not yet done that, I'd rate them at most a shade or two above.

Who are the Strangers?

They are two guys who have devoted themselves to making themselves a web-entity of haters. They hate: Animorphs, Pokemon, N'SYNC, Hanson, Sailormoon, Star Wars, and will probably decide to hate other popular things soon. When I first saw a mail from Giuli (whose guestbook was flamed by them) I thought it was making too much of it to form a webpage and group against them. But when I saw their flame and their website, I had to make one of my own. Their motto seems to be "Face reality, there are people who hate the things you love," leading us to believe that they created their site purely to diss other people who are fans of something that has a big fan following. Plus they flamed my Guestbook, as well as that of many of my other web-friends.  Now it's personal!! ::cliche off::

What makes you think they are so bad?

The main reasons I dislike these people are that they:

• Made a hate page for Animorphs, Star Wars and Sailor Moon, three things I love. I also happen to have a thing for Pokemon.
• Defaced beautiful art done by hardworking, talented artists with pathetic Paintbrush editing.
• We all know that being in the majority does not make you superior, but that dosn't mean that being in the minority does. And while they seem resentful of these "mega-popular" things, with the exception of N'SYNC, these things arn't really as popular as they seem. So they have made such a big deal out of nothing -- or not much.
• Gave their pages listing the reasons for not liking the various things absolutly no thought. They're something I could have written, (even though I have nothing against any of those things except the DiC dubbing in SM, commercialization in Animorphs, and other things that the actual show/book etc can't help) had I been rabid.  See, I actually like some of the so-called hate sites, some of them are simply complaint sites, which is the way to go when you don't like something. A good example is Chaos in the Sailor Moon sector, which rationally goes over why the author dosn't care for SM (and even I have to agree with her points).
• Speaking of disliking Sailor Moon, these two guys are very sexist. As a girl who is opposed to all "isims" (even "species-isim" of fictional characters in a book series that shall go nameless) especially ones that try to demean her personally, I find this, in one word, disgusting.
• They can have an anti-Animorphs religion for all I care, but they would be better off leaving the Ani-fans alone. If they want to go to Animorphs websites and sign their G-books, why not put in a comment like "Your page is nicely done, but I can't stand Animorphs though!" -- at the very least. What's the point of selecting something to hate, finding people who love it, and shoving your hatred of what they love in their face? Do they have nothing better to spend their time with?

Their typical defenses against angry fans are that they are

• Just expressing their opinions
• Superior to the fans because it's stupid to like popular things
• Superior to the fans because they assume we are 9 yrs. old with an IQ of 10.

• Too generally big-and-bad to be messed with

Now of course these people have the right to express themselves. That's what the First Amendment and the Internet are all about. And no matter what it is, if it is something distributed to the public, there will always be people who hate it. Or are irritated by it, or are annoyed by the number of people who love it because they can't understand why. So they make a webpage for it. I'm not criticizing that -- I think that's a good thing. Not only do you get to express yourself in a way you never could before (no matter how much you hate AniTV, do you think you could go around toting a marquee "AniTV is the worst TV show on the planet and makes a farce of my favorite books" or stand on a soapbox and condmenm it to the world in real life?) -- but it also creates debate, and debate makes people think. Thinking is always a good thing (not as obvious to many people as it may seem) and when people hate something and don't think, that's when you have trouble.

They also seem to have a superiority complex. They think because they hate something we love, they will crush us horribly and leave us, (yes, I quote) "crying to our mommies." Hardly. Actually, it's kind of inspiring for me, because I always thought of Animorphs as kind of a "hidden" thing among kids my age. If two guys that age can be exposed to enough Animorphs to get annoyed by it and create a hate page about it, that means that Animorphs popularity must be going good, at least where they live. Or they could just have a little brother who bugs everyone about Animorphs. Either way, I'm not too terribly upset, except for the fact that they're flaming everyone's guestbooks.

They also assume that we're all fairly young. Though, I have to say, since the basis for their graphic came from the Scholastic site, they probably surfed it (and I'm sure it's the *only* site they surfed) they probably read the Forum, in which case I couldn't blame them except they don't seem to have read anyone else's webpage content. If they did, they would know that some of us are fairly old to be obsessed with something rated RL5. And while they boast of reading Shakespeare and getting A's in reading, (making them totally superior to us, of course) they ought know that it seems to be a trend among older Animorphs fans to be smart. Almost everyone I talk to, especially the mailing list I'm in for Ani-fans such as myself, are in all the Honors classes, get A's in them, and are very well-read and generally intelligent. I myself read lots of things, though I tend to like fantasy and sci-fi, and I know a good book when I see one, as do all the others I know.

It has apparently never occured to these Strangers that there might be something more to this series which everyone is so strangely addicted to. I'm not going to go on about it, because I already wrote an editorial on why I like Animorphs, but just the creativity and originality make it worth reading. Usually, if you've read one kids-save-the-world-from-parasitic-aliens story, you've read them all. And if you have kids with special powers, they always use it for fun and to later learn an important lesson. Who would have thought that the parasitic aliens could involve a moral debate, and the morphing, besides being symbolic of the character conflicts, could create all kinds of personal problems?

What is there to do about this?

Not much, unfortunatly. It is, though, important to remember that these people want others to be mad at them. Don't send them flames just because they hate Animorphs and other things you love; that's what they're after. If you have a real bone to pick with them, give them a detailed, reasonable (not to mention coherent) letter of why. And the last thing you should do for them is please them by giving them more mail and hits.

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