Hatred Reborn

There was a time, when 'hate' was an extreme word, when it was only used to mean what it meant.  To hate something truly meant to truly hate.  Today hate and dislike have become synonymous.  I blame this for the extremities in our world.  When did we become so extreme that anything we disliked it was socially acceptable to say we hated it?  Has real hatred become acceptable in society because we have forgotten how to define the difference between things we dislike and things we hate?

Spend 10 minutes on any forum or social network or a site like youtube open to comments and you quickly see that negative moderation seems to have died. I say negative as positive moderation still exists, for that I blame or I guess I should say thank, facebook.  Through the popularisation of the word 'like' facebook has managed to keep the word like in our vocabulary and in such a way that it makes it true to its definition.  The valuation of a "like" on facebook is negligible.  It means nothing more than what it states, that someone has a moderately positive view of whatever it is they "liked" - it doesn't mean they love it, and it doesn't really signify any deep rooted emotional attachment to a brand - although if you follow social marketing spiel you'd believe "likes" were the holy grail of marketing.

No.  'like' on facebook is a moderate indicator of positive opinion.  It means "I don't mind XX" - as a result like, and love, still exist in our vocabulary as distinct entities.  They still exist as differentiable levels of positive accord.  Dislike and hate however have melded into one common meaning, that now acts as a catch-all to the point where expressing the sentiment "I don't like XX" is by many viewed as a remark of hate. For this I could arguably turn to facebook again, this time unquestionably the correct term would be 'blame' - they are to blame for this, they contributed to this wholeheartedly.  Facebook has never had a "dislike" button, despite the multitude of efforts by members over the years urging the network to create one.

As a result it is my view that 3 levels exist today:

I like this
I love this
I hate this

People have forgotten how to say "I don't like this" without it having to mean anything at all other than a simple statement of whether or not you feel positive or negative about something.

Where's the line between dislike and hatred?  Or rather where was it?  Well that's rather easy to answer, again it comes down to the role of active and passive emotion.  Disliking something was a passive emotion, "I don't like this, but meh I don't care" whereas hatred was an active emotion "I hate this, and I am gonna make sure the whole world knows" - the latter is the problem we find ourselves with.  There is no moderate negative emotion anymore, it is always extreme.

There will of course be people who read this and disagree, and I welcome that, I would argue that you are in a minority however, and I would even go so far as to say that this is self evident as you will likely already know this.  You may be moderate, but you will surely know from experience that your moderation is rare online.  "We do exist" is something that becomes increasingly harder to convince people to believe.