"The great thing about the internet is its leveling effect; online all opinions are equally WORTHLESS." --Grant Morrison

Negativity
It strikes me as a commonly held belief (conscious or no) that appreciation is easy and criticism is hard, and that being critical of something shows a greater deal of thought and discrimination. In fact, that's something I've written about before.

I do not know if I agree with that assumption, however. I think, perhaps that negativity is easy, particularly today when there are so many negative tropes that one can grab onto:

"It's not as good as the original."
"It had no plot."
"It's derivative."
"I liked the one I had when I was a kid better."
"It's pandering."
"It's too intellectual."
"It's overrated."
"It was good before it got popular."
"It was so two-dimensional."
"Been there, done that."

It's like there's a big bag of pre-made criticisms out there, and anyone can reach into it and pull one out. It makes being negative extremely easy. Too easy, in my estimation. We're too quick to tear things down.

Perhaps -- just perhaps -- it takes just as much work and thought and intelligence to determine how something is good as opposed to how it falls short. What's more, with so much negativity around us, the occasional positive comment suddenly becomes necessary. With everyone looking for the bad, someone's got to shine the light on the good. Now obviously, not everything is good. Some things deserve criticism, negativity, and derision. They deserve rants.

But the personal conclusion that I've come to is that someone else can handle that job for me. I started the Another Rant column because it's sometimes entertaining when I get hoppin' mad about something. But lately, as I thought about adding content to my website, I found myself looking for things to rant about. I was actually looking for things to get mad about. How stupid is that? What a terrible waste of time. Worse yet, the rants that I was coming up with were becoming less funny, and more just truly negative. When I ranted about corporations, I was referring to actual people losing actual jobs. That's not entertaining. Not even a little.

As I surf the Web and read message boards (or heaven help me, venture into Usenet from time to time) it strikes me like a hammer. The last thing the Internet needs is more negativity.

There are enough rants.

Thus, this is my last formal rant. After this, I'm going to call this column Another Rave. Look for it to contain various recommendations of stuff that I think is good. Any kind of stuff: music, books, movies, websites, laundry detergent. I'll use it to focus on people who are doing a good job, doing something really interesting, or simply being good people.

"A new idea is delicate," a scientist named Charles Brower once said. "It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a joke, or worried to death by a frown on the right person's brow."

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