Imagine that a new artist, let’s say Jesse Jesseman, comes on the music scene. You hear his songs and think, “eh, they’re ok.” You don’t hate him, you don’t hate the music, but you just think that he’s average. A couple of months later those songs are everywhere, circulating on the radio and every commercial. Jesse Jesseman’s face is plastered everywhere. He performs on every imaginable show. There are tons of Buzzfeed articles called “22 Times Jesse Jesseman Was Perfect.” Now, without knowing it, you are beginning to hate Jesse Jesseman.
It’s a phenomenon that I like to call “The Beyoncé Effect.” It's a widespread hipster mentality that leads you to hate someone that you previously felt indifferent about because of their major exposure in the media. I’ve called it the Beyoncé Effect (although I could call it the Taylor Swift Effect, or the Jennifer Lawrence effect) because, while many people didn’t quite mind Mrs. Carter at first, the “Beyoncé is God” movement has turned many people off from her. The recent rumor that soul singer Adele turned down a duet request from Beyoncé garnered many responses on social media referring to Beyoncé as overrated and not as talented.
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Overexposure dares to turn one’s opinions from passive to aggressive when it comes to a public figure. Jennifer Lawrence, star of the "Hunger Games" movies, won an Oscar at 22 for 2012’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” Many people didn’t mind her in 2012 when she first starred as Katniss Everdeen. However, since then she has covered every magazine, appeared on every talk show, and has garnered a huge fan base. She surprised fans again with her radio hit, despite it’s extremely radio friendly title “The Hanging Tree.”
The constant praise of someone who you don’t get the hype about can be understandably frustrating. The term “hipster” normally refers to someone who rejects mainstream culture for more alternative concepts. The Beyoncé Effect turns everyday people into hipsters. I am a huge fan of sci-fi and of director Christopher Nolan, so I expected “Interstellar” to be one of my favorite movies of the year. It simply wasn’t. I had issues with it, but I didn’t walk away feeling mad or anything.
Imagine my surprise when people walked out of the theater claiming that it was “the best movie they’d ever seen” and attacking people who didn’t like it. Suddenly the little things that I disliked about the movie became major things and they became my main defense against lovers of the movie. I started to hate it so much more because I could not understand what everyone loved about it. The world would probably be a better place if we weren’t so quick to throw shade at things we dislike, but it’s a fact of life that highly praised things will always have their detractors. It doesn’t make us “haters” though. Some people just don’t like Jesse Jesseman and that’s totally OK.
