i hate this
Welcome to the optimist’s newsletter!
Welcome, haters!
Each week, i hate this will feature a curated list of despicable tidbits for your pleasure. Let the schadenfreude commence!
It’s hard to come up with a more enduring concept than hating things. In fact, i hate this follows in a grand tradition of complaints, dating all the way back to 1750 BC, when Nanni, of the city of Ur, filed a complaint tablet with Ea-nāṣir about some shitty copper the latter sold to the former. Time is a flat circle.
Without further ado, see below for i hate this’s meat and potatoes.
Mashed potatoes
I’m going to get some heat on this one, but nothing like a hot take to start us off. Mashed potatoes are the food they give people in a nursing home, and more than that, they SEEM like the food they give people in nursing homes. If aliens landed on Earth and we served them this warm, salty slop, they would (probably) feel super bad for us and leave immediately. It’s the year of our lord, 2026 - we have better food now! Act like it! You mashed potato lovers might as well hop on a penny farthing, listen to a phonograph, and play a game of hoop-stick .
Dental hygiene
Okay, stay with me. I appreciate what the end results of dental hygiene are. I floss, brush, tongue scrape, use mouthwash, regularly visit the dentist—and this is what is irritating me! Even after the anal-retentive (oral-retentive?) routine described, I’ve still had the errant cavity. It’s been said that I have the dental issues commonly found in small purebred dogs. Meanwhile, I know certain people (cough cough it’s a man cough) who hardly remember to brush in the morning and still get squeaky-clean bills of dental health after every once-every-few-years dentist visit. Life’s not fair, and neither are teeth.
Euphoria
I was hating Euphoria before it was cool. Season one read to me like a poorly-written music video created in a Go Ask Alice dreamscape where teens dress insane and act…twist! also insane. Despite it being relatively lauded, I just couldn’t see the appeal. Granted, it gave us some prime TikTok sound bites. NOW, for season three, saying that “reviews are mixed” seems generous. Y’all finally caught up. In particular, there’s a recent crystallization of raised eyebrows at Sam Levinson’s proclivity for scantily clad/not-at-all-clad high schoolers. (Levinson is the creator of Euphoria and looks exactly like someone whose dad is a big time producer, which he is.) Mix that with a bizarro Sydney Sweeney character played by Sydney Sweeney (boo!), rumors of a on-set feud (likely!), and a gigantic time jump during which 75% of the cast has become the new Hollywood A-list (good for them!), and Euphoria should have faded into “ended-too-soon” streaming oblivion. $5 says Sam Levinson is going to have a “allegations” section of his Wikipedia page in the next few years.
An unofficial item #4: conclusions! Tough to write, even tougher to write well. I’ll see you all next week with more.
Happy hating!