I hate Taylor Swift. God, she makes my blood boil. I read a Vanity Fair article about her recently and couldn’t finish it she annoyed me so much. I don’t really know what it is, or even think I have a rational reason for hating her. But I do. And I’ve met many other believers, who also understand the awfulness that is Tswift. Recently, several believers and I got in a heated argument with a few TayTay fanatics. There was such passion on either side of the argument. I felt invested -- I had to convince them how terrible Taylor is, how could they think she’s wonderful? Afterwards (the argument ended in a stalemate), I thought about the situation again, slightly more rationally, and wondered why some people can’t stand certain celebrities, because everyone has that one celeb who they just hate. Was it jealousy? For a moment I considered that I was simply jealous of Tay’s fame and fortune, but I don’t think that’s it. I’m jealous of Beyonce, I’m not jealous of Tswift.

And so I set out to discover why it is some people hate certain celebrities. We all have those people, athletes, musicians, politicians who we just irrationally hate. I decided to run a short survey on Mechanical Turk. For those of you who don’t know, Mechanical Turk is an Amazon branch that enables businesses or individuals to crowd source Internet users to complete tasks that computers are unable to do. In my case, surveys. I developed a short survey titled “Who do you hate?” and asked participants which celebrities they hated and whether or not they had a reason for the hatred, and if so what?

After two weeks I had my results. I had requested 50 different submissions, however not all of the data was usable. For example, several respondents said that I was the celebrity they hated because “She thinks she can get free work from people. The nerve…” (Amazon’s Mechanical Turk allows for survey creators to pay their participants. I did not offer to pay my participants because poor college student). While flattering that at least four respondents considered me a celebrity, those answers weren’t quite what I was looking for. Of the answers that were helpful, most fell into one of two categories. 1) Hatred backed by solid reason 2) Hatred backed by a “reason” that doesn’t really use sound logic.

A brief overview of the best answers:

**all answers are copied verbatim so excuse grammar and spelling errors

Some answers were well thought out, and made sense.

Celeb: Donald Trump

Reason: His money has put him in a position where he can be hateful and racist and not care about the consequences.

Celeb: Kim Kardashian

Reason: She garnered celebrity status through a porn video. A PORN VIDEO! She shouldn't be a celebrity, she should be looked down upon. There are girls, teens and younger, that look up to her. They idolize her. Think about that. Take a few minutes and just think about that. Take your time; you have no need to rush. She's filth. She's trash. She's "muff-cabbage."

People sometimes used sweeping generalizations to defend their hatred.

Celeb: All of them

Reason: Most are greedy, could give a rat a$% about everyday normal people.

Celeb: Kardashians

Reason: They don’t do anything. and their fashion isn’t even that good.

Celeb: Kim Kardashian, all of her family

Reason: She's pointless. They are too. Unimportant, ignorant people being treated as if their thoughts are important purely because they're celebs.

Still others picked a characteristic or two as the main culprit of their loathing.

Celeb: Eli Manning

Reason: SMUG

Celeb: Bill Paxton

Reason: His face, plus he’s a horrible actor and somehow ends up in great movies.

Celeb: Russell Brand

Reason: He thinks he is a great actor and funny comedian but he is neither. He is also very abnoxious.

Celeb: Rick Ross

Reason: He is a fake; he said he was a cop and he was.

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After analyzing the responses, I couldn’t come to a distinct reason why we spend so much mental energy hating some celebrities. But I did have a hunch. I don’t think it is solely driven by jealousy. I feel like jealousy is certainly a part of the hatred equation. Part of you is jealous of part of them, be it their wealth, good looks, fame, or talent. I hate Taylor Swift and a part of me is jealous she gets to do talk shows, go on SNL, and attend award shows. I wouldn’t want to trade places with her per se -- but there are certain aspects of her life I’d want for my own.

I think the second part of this equation is the fact that many of these celebrities are flawed. When unfortunate situations befall celebrities, whether its a divorce or some other misfortune, it becomes a scandal and both sides are vilified. Heaven forbid any celebrity gets a little too drunk, or says something unintelligent on Twitter. It is almost as though we can’t comprehend why these superstars live perfect lives but aren’t perfect themselves. How could they have reached these levels of fame and success with flaws? Weren’t we taught that if we worked as hard as we could to reach perfection, we’d succeed? Practice makes perfect right? Yet why are people succeeding without being perfect?

To me Taylor Swift is far from perfect. She’s the celebrity that I think doesn’t deserve what she has and so I hate her for it. It’s that need for fairness that I think drives most celebrity hate. Kim Kardashian became famous because she had a sex tape. A sex tape! Isn’t that one of the few things that should ruin a career? And yet despite not coming by her fame the typical “honest” way, Kim has become a multimedia superstar. I will still continue to harbor feelings of loathing towards these celebrities who I just can’t stand, but at least now I have a theory as to why I hate them so much.