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If you’re feeling like a pacified balloon person bobbing between bland aesthetics and anodyne conversation and the siren song of someone else’s outrage… I can recommend really truly clearly and articulately disliking something.
Pulling out the exact thread of your distaste. Being at the ready to defend your hatred to yourself in the shower or when, like, Saltburn or something comes up over drinks. Helps the world feel real.
Disambiguation: not to be confused with a hot take or a rant in the style of a podcaster making content for YouTube shorts (‘send this to someone who hates pickle juice on pizza!’)
Related: self righteous shower arguments
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Do you have one person in your life, a family member, acquaintance, co-worker etc who just rubs you the wrong way?
It’s not even like they’re really that bad of a person. Maybe they subtlety one-up your accomplishments, or always find themself the center of a new and totally-not-their-fault drama.
Maybe they‘re super kind and can’t seem to stop humbly accepting praise. Maybe they’re incredibly attractive but also according to them sooooo out of shape.
Maybe they’re that person from high school who always complained about how hard they had to work for everything despite being born with a silver spoon in their mouth.
Or maybe they’re that person that’s just so weird and quirky, but also can’t seem to take accountability and has absolutely no self awareness on how their actions affect others.
Did someone immediately pop into your mind?
CONGRATULATIONS! That is your Dinkleberg.
They are probably not even that bad of a person and perhaps you may even feel guilty for disliking them so much.
They may not even be in your life anymore- In fact, I haven’t seen mine in six years. But I still think about them far more often than is reasonable for a well adjusted person.
Finding your Dinkleberg is a freeing experience. Humans are so complex, allowing yourself to have one person you detest despite them having no outward character flaws is acknowledging the beauty that is existing as an irrational being.
You don’t have to be mean to them, and you certainly don’t have to tell them that they are your Dinkleberg. Just know in your heart of hearts you are allowed to dislike this person for no reason at all, and nobody can stop you. Give yourself permission to embrace the fact that they yuck your yum, and be at peace with it.
Authors note: if you have multiple Dinklebergs in your life, you may actually just be a hater.
Feb 28, 2025
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I read a one star review of wicked on the letterboxd app on my iPhone that changed my life a little bit. I’ve been taken aback by the ferocity with which I’ve been hating things recently. I feel frustration and anger seeing an advertisement. I am a graphic design major who up to a recent point was content and expecting to follow the pipeline towards creative advertising. I have not yet accepted that We Live In A Society. I am unsure whether this is something everyone must learn, whether it’s something important I’ve missed, or whether I have spent so much time online being a contrarian that it is now just a facet of my personality. I think Chappell Roan is a poser hack. I like to harp about celebrities that I don’t know or enjoy seeing.
I think Chappell Roan is a poser hack! I think she’s playing the gay community, not in a malicious way, but in the way where Chappell Roan as a character was not created by the girl who plays her, it was created by her wide team of incredibly talented and interesting artists and a Pinterest mood board, and we are lifting the girl who plays her up to mythical status. She is a fledgeling star who has been taken in by artists, who will hopefully show her to research and reference. She is a fabulous singer, but I don’t see her as an artist.
The one-star Wicked review made one Large and Good point. The author, who I will have to go back and find as I accidentally cropped his name out of the screenshot, says, “I tend to feel that a piece of entertainment is only worth hating if it actively makes the world a shittier place and/or represents evil of some kind that can’t afford to go unchecked, and as much as I hated sitting through Wicked, at the end of the day there’s no part of me that thinks this film meets that criteria... If I can reverse-engineer a rationale from my reflexive decision not to review it, I think it’s because I feel like we need to be more pointed and emphatic about the things we hate, not less.“
Yeah, yeah, okay. I won’t try to justify my disdain for Chappell Roan with these guidelines. If I was reaching, I’d say she represents the degradation of authenticity. What the fuck do any of us know about authenticity? I changed my mind because of a Letterboxd review. I went into the theater expecting to hate Wicked as much as Twitter hated it. Every day I think about a meme I saw on my Instagram explore page. Nothing of me is original! I don’t know what this means. I‘ll have more to say later I think.
Dec 23, 2024
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for one thing, the critical enterprise is crucial to maintaining the intellectual and spiritual health of the arts, obviously.
but for another thing: let you find pleasure in something i knee-jerkingly disapprove of? you thought! 😹 get that shit out of my sight. i am a marrow-level hater. the fire of sanctimonious disdain burns within me as though divinely ordained. i am not going to sit back and let you clap like a seal every time deadpool breaks the fourth wall. shame on you. oh, you refer to podcasters by their first name, like you know them? did you say dasha? i spit at your feet and laugh maliciously at your parasocial delusions. is that addison rae i hear? i am coming for the wire of your headphones with a pair of scissors. i can do this all day. i live for this. i don’t even need to believe what i’m saying or know what i’m talking about. this is my bread and butter, and i will not stop for as long as i live. mercy is no name i have ever known
Aug 28, 2024
Top Recs from @annakiku
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Just awkwardly nattered away to my barista about the weather in Korean… a language that I speak about three words of.
The beats of the whole convo were older than time, straight from a textbook, but I walked away feeling like we’d been written by Aaron Sorkin (despite both being women).
Mar 16, 2024
Easy to live here but some people will think you’re brave for doing so.
Great fish markets, excellent bars and cafes with commercially brave themes and operating hours, a park every few hundred metres, mountains that look like they’re cut from paper, backstreets for discovery, art scene, trees, big enough to support a Spaland but you’ll never be on a bus for more than 35 minutes.
Mar 3, 2024
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Mar 2, 2024
