Monday 21 May 2012

Haters Be Hating!

This blog has had almost two thousand hits, I have had numerous positive comments, it has been featured on BleedingCool.com and has been extremely cathartic for me as I get a few personal things off of my chest. All in all it has been a very positive outlet for my thoughts and I will endeavour to continue sharing my personal feelings and experiences for as long as there is interest in it.



But...

On Saturday I decided to have a look at the comments that had been posted on the Bleeding Cool forum in regards to the article and I came across the following post;

"That store in Kettering was doomed before it even opened.

When I first noticed the store I couldn't believe that someone was deluded enough to think that it could ever have succeeded - the town's way too small to support a small niche store like that, never mind that it was tucked away in a side street on the periphery of the town centre. Absolutely no surprise whatsoever that it closed down.


I'm not going to lie, I did go in there once and wasn't impressed - it seemed pretty cliquey to me, just the guy and his mates ignoring the only potential customer they had until I walked out again! Regardless, it could never have suceeded - up the road in Northampton maybe, but a town like Kettering's way too small" 


At first I was taken aback. I'm Italian and have a quick temper and I felt insulted that someone would post this comment. Then I noticed this guys post count and it read "1". Whoever this person was, they had deemed it necessary to sign up to an online forum with the single purpose of making their feelings for Apocalypse Comics heard. I stopped feeling angry and began to ponder this notion. What had I done to make this person so angry with me? Were we cliquey? I didn't think so, I used to pride myself in my customer service, but at the same time, we used to have large groups of friends in the shop and that may have been intimidating to new potential customers. Maybe I wasn't in that particular day, maybe I could push the blame onto someone else? But to be fair, Danny, with all of his faults, had great customer service skills and if Brendon ever seemed like he was ignoring someone, it would have been because he was snowed under with work.

So I re-read the post and realised that I was so pissed off with the "cliquey" comment, that I had overlooked his initial statement and the proceeding paragraph. This Mr Know-it-all seemed bitter or angry and was straight up just being mean for the sake of his own superiority complex. This immediately made me feel better. For that moment before, whoever this person was had succeeded in their mission to make me feel like shit, but that moment had subsided and was replaced with pity. My recent downfall and subsequent misery was a victory for this enigmatic rogue who obviously couldn't wait for the perfect opportunity to tell the world how right they were that a comic shop couldn't last in Kettering and how deluded I must have been to even try, and here was the forum for him to get up on that soapbox and declare his victory to mankind!!!



Unfortunately, this master of stating the apparently obvious did not leave his name so that I could send him his prize for outwitting me. I have a package with my dignity in it, just send me your name and address and I'll wing it straight over to you.

How sad. Seriously though, how sad and bitter and lonely and pathetic must you be to anonymously pass judgement over someone when you obviously don't have the guts to get out there and try to make something of your own life. I feel sorry for you as a human being and flattered that you would go out of your way to sign up to the forum just to talk about me and my shop.

Don't worry, this isn't a pity party. I'm not attempting to garner sympathy for this post, I just wonder why people feel the need to hide behind their computers and talk shit about other people just to make themselves feel superior. And its not just other people they feel the need to critisise. As a self confessed and proud badge wearing geek, I am very opinionated. I have opinions on everything I do and consume, from comics, to movies, to music, you name it, I'll give you my opinion on it. But I like to think that my opinions are somewhat educated and come with an ounce of common sense. Recently, I saw numerous posts on Facebook regarding Hawkeye in the Avengers movie and how he wasn't shooting his bow correctly. Apparently a group of archers had taken it upon themselves to analyse the actor Jeremy Renner's arm positioning and lambaste him for not doing it properly, claiming that most of his shots were off! SERIOUSLY?!?!?!? We are talking about the same movie that features a green giant, alien gods and a man who has been frozen in time for seventy years, but your gripe was that the bow shooting wasn't accurate?!?!?!? Have you people nothing better to do?



The success of The Avengers has also brought out the Batman haters who are claiming the Avengers as a victory for Marvel and the demise of the Nolan Batman universe. I have read multiple comments online stating that The Dark Knight Rises will be pants. I just don't understand this. A couple of years ago this series of movies was hailed by most as being the best of the super hero big screen outings and now certain members of the same group of people are blasting a film that they haven't even seen yet? I would love nothing more than for DKR to be a brilliant film that finishes off a brilliant series of movies. I want my £15 that I give to the cinema to be worth it and for me to come out of the pictures with a smile on my face. But most importantly, I want this movie to be so good that it motivates a few movie goers to pop into their nearest comic book shop and pick up a copy of Batman.



Then there is Before Watchmen, the new series' of comics that will tell prequel stories of the main cast of characters from the classic comics Watchmen. This controversial project has literally split the comic book fan base in half with one side excited at the prospect of new Watchmen comics and the other side angered that DC would even contemplate publishing them. Everyone has their opinions why, either for or against and most opinions seem reasonable and fair to their respective sides. The thing that I can't abide though are the people whose only argument/justification for the publication of these comics is that Alan Moore, the genius creator behind the original series who is vehemently against this new series, is weird. That's their argument. That he isn't normal. He is a recluse. He's eccentric. Fuck Off!!! We as geeks are the ultimate outsiders. The "norms", the people that watch Football or spend their time at the pub or those that read "proper" books, some of them think that we, as comic book fans, are a bit weird and eccentric. Before the Big Bang Theory made it cool, I had to justify myself and my hobby to those that didn't understand it. Who are we to make judgement on a man, a man who has given us some of the greatest stories in the history of the medium, just for not living the way we expect him to. That's just crap and bullying and not the point of the argument.



We all live in a virtual society where it is very easy to hide behind our screens and keyboards and be shitty to one another, but that doesn't make it right. Maybe if we all spent a little more time being positive and constructive with our critique of one another, the world would be a better place to hang out.

M X


2 comments:

  1. All I can say is that I was sorry to see the shop go as it helped open my eyes to titles other than Batman or Hellboy such as The Boys, the brilliant Irredeemable, Preacher and many others. Books that apart from my beloved Watchmen, showed other ways to do comics.

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  2. I made a bee line for the Shop when I first moved to K-town, I miss it tons - I made my first Kettering friend in there ;-)) It's better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all.

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