On the first night of arriving at university, I met one of my best friends. Our introduction was simple but ironclad; built on our hatred of the same person. We had grown up in the same city, and even gone to adjacent schools that often mixed, without once hearing the other’s name.
A friend from home was there that night, helping to move her boyfriend into his accommodation. She ran up to me with a girl behind her and said ‘This is Laura, she’s from London’. Within minutes Laura and I had established our mutual friends (as is often the case when you encounter someone from your city), but more importantly, we discovered a shared loathing for a girl we both knew.
Of course we had more exciting things in common, but the ability to bypass the ‘small-talk’ stage of introducing yourself, meant that we could easily transition into familiar conversation, as if we were recalling shared memories of a years-long friendship. Within days we acted as if we’d come to university as a pair, and often surprised the people around us when revealing we had only met earlier that week. I was so grateful for our common contempt, because I had been anticipating the painfully awkward introductions that accompany the buzz of freshers week. I did not want to ask people what A-Levels they did, nor which events they were going to that night, so the familiarity of my new friend felt like a safety net that I could only have prayed for.
Common enemies are a well-established aspect of social, political, and international identity. Today we see more than ever how the common enemy, manufactured or organic, can unite groups that otherwise have very little in common. But on a smaller scale it creates an identity marker that displays to others ‘I do not approve of the actions or beliefs of this person, view me as a person who thinks that’.
Hatred, in the sense that I am using it, does not encompass prejudice or discrimination. In this context, I take into account only hatred that comes from a logical conclusion, or markers of cultural taste, as my central force for this piece.
As much as liking something can give you a defining trait, not-liking something (or someone) can do so just as effectively. There are many studies that show a significant portion of identity formation can come from a shared negative experience or perception; and though most are conducted through a political or sociological lens, they still provide us with a psychosocial framework for understanding the unifying power of hatred.
In school, you might bond with a classmate over being treated poorly by a peer; perhaps this person is prejudiced or mean, so in that bond you are displaying your personality as one that opposes prejudice or unkindness. Or, perhaps you meet someone who agrees that a favourite musician of yours was far better in his first three albums, and had really gone downhill since switching genres to appeal to a different fanbase. In this instant, you acquire a connection over a shared dislike of this new genre, or the demographic of that fanbase. Essentially, you are able to define yourself in opposition to the thing you hate.
Hatred, as a marker of taste, seems often like a stronger unifier than love. Of course, you can bond with someone over a mutual friend, favourite film, or favourite artist; but you get into the real ‘nitty gritty’ when you finally break the ice with a confession that steers the conversation away from the surface of the topic. All of a sudden, you have opened a new avenue to discuss everything you dislike about something. And picking apart a negative view is a spiral that takes you to the ends of the earth. It feels, sometimes, that loving or liking something requires a complex justification that can split two similar appearing opinions straight down the middle. Whereas two people can often hate the same thing for different reasons, and still be able to come to a mutual understanding of the others’ experience.
None of this is to say that hatred should be universally viewed as a positive vessel for bonding, however, it does not always have to be what pulls a conversation into a spiral of negativity and critique. Criticism is vital, it displays an ability to pick apart a topic and look at it from the underside. Often, when I criticise something, it stems from an understanding of the subject’s implications rather than the subject in itself. Sometimes, a shared hatred for a football team stems from highlighting a pattern of unsportsmanlike behaviour, or unjust use of loopholes from the legal or accounting teams. When I sit with a friend and criticise someone’s behaviour, for example, I am not doing so to write the person off as a villain and dismiss them entirely. Instead, I might do so in order to get to the roots of why they may exhibit certain behaviours, and what that root actually stems from. Whether that be a pattern of dishonesty, ignorance, or prejudice. I will not simply take that pattern and define that person by it, but instead keep it in mind as I go forward and interact with the world around me and the people within it. You can hate the tone which was used in a certain conversation, and note that someone appeared dismissive as a result of it, without classing that person as unworthy of ever being conversed with again.
If anything, expressing a dislike for something ought not to be written off immediately as a negative attitude or an unwillingness to engage with something. Instead, it can often demonstrate a longer train of thought that has brought this person to that conclusion. Obviously this can be taken too far, where people use blind criticism to place themselves intellectually above ‘fans’ of whatever they are critiquing. There is no universally defining code that says hatred is intellectual, love is not, and I have no intention of making an argument against this. However, this simply intends to offer a more nuanced view of informed hatred, as well as its cultural and social benefits within the wider world.
