[QUOTE=The Universe Lashes Out]
I find it rather humorous how many posters here feel the need to proudly proclaim their disdain for Scientology in any threads about that.
[/QUOTE]
I find it rather humorous how many posters here feel the need to proclaim their disdain for whatever book they don’t happen to like and make sweeping statements about it, implying that anyone who enjoys it is basically an idiot or has no taste. For instance, whenever Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time is brought up there will be some number of posters who will feel duty bound to come in and state that, having read through half of the first book they found the entire thing to be completely stupid and that anyone who doesn’t agree with them just doesn’t see how stupid and idiotic they are for reading through the other 12 books and anticipating the final one.
Anything written by Ayn Rand is going to fall into the same category…no matter what the actual subject of an OP is about a book by Rand or about Rand herself there will be a large number of posters who come in to drop a load about how they hated the book(s), or think they probably WOULD hate them if they could actually slog through them from beginning to end, how they are morally bankrupt, poorly written and reading them is the equivalent of raping baby kittens or pushing puppies into a meat grinder. That’s fine, but it does get old after a while.
As for Mr. Hubble’s Scientology, I basically don’t make it a point to go into such threads unless they are a debate about the actual philosophy (and I can’t say I remember too many of them lately), since I couldn’t slog through it without dislocating an eye from rolling them so much…which is why I don’t give an opinion about it. Me coming in to say ‘it sucked’ really brings nothing to the thread, since I didn’t even finish the book, and even if I did I thought it was such crap that I basically flushed it from my brain at the first opportunity and have only the vaguest memories of it now…my input would therefore be worthless to any discussion except in a ‘me too!’ sort of way. It’s not my bounden duty to jump into every thread I see on a book, movie, video game (that’s another of my pet peeves), play, article or whatever I disliked to give my two cents worth (and cheap at triple the price), if my two cents worth is merely restating the opinion ‘it sucked’. Now, if I have a bit more to add, then that’s another story.
What it boils down to for me is that different people have different tastes in things, and attempting to assert your tastes as some sort of yardstick is rather silly. I freely acknowledge that many people on this board and in general don’t like Ayn Rand (or Robert Jordan, or Stephen King or any number of other authors, movies, actors, porn stars, TV sitcoms, etc…though if you don’t like the Mythbusters you are obviously ignorant! :p). No problem…different strokes for different folks and all that. Don’t like it, then don’t read it (and certainly don’t watch a movie based on some interpretation of it)…and don’t participate in threads on the subject unless you have something more constructive to say than basically ‘It sucked’. While for a given person that might be true, it really brings nothing to any thread.
-XT