Haters

 

This essay is my attempt to assess Rings of Power Haters’ behavior. Few things to get out of the way. First, I wasn’t always part of fan groups on social media. I joined those 2-3 months after the show had aired (though I watched the episodes as they came out). Because of this, I haven’t seen everything. I will only talk about what I personally have seen or heard happened from someone in the fandom.
Second, when I say “Haters”, what I mean is inconsiderate assholes who hate and hate only, people who are horrible to the show, those working on it, and those watching it. There are certain behaviors I mean that will be clear as I go into detail about how they act. There are people who are respectful of the show and its fans even if they don’t like it. They are not who I talk about here.
Third, I have taken to referring to these hateful people with “Haters”, as if I was referring to a different species. This is not my intent nor am I trying to dehumanize these people, it is simply a way for me to categorize them clearly and give them a short reference words I can use to describe a group.

Perhaps the easiest, least controversial part of Haters’ behavior to discuss is towards the fans, so let’s start there. Haters hate on fans as much as they hate on the show. If they see a person saying anything positive about Rings of Power, they will attack that person in some way. Speaking as someone who had this happen to them on many occasions, this is a very disturbing experience. You like something, you express your liking towards that thing, and out of nowhere, faceless-nameless people, because it’s usually not just one hater, come at you and start talking about how wrong you are for liking that thing. I have many times had to close social media altogether to be able to recover from that horrid feeling that experience caused me. The best way to describe it is as if people came up to your face and shouted at you.

When the Haters attack, they either bash the show itself or immediately go for the fans. When they attack the fans specifically, they immediately try to invalidate our opinions. To them, Rings of Power is a terrible show that no one is allowed to like, so when someone says they do, Haters will try to find reasons as to why that opinion isn’t valid. There are five major accusations they use to do this. Those are “You’re mentally ill,” “You haven’t read the books/watched the movies,” “You’re dumb,” “You only watch shows/movies with bad writing,” and “Amazon is paying you to promote their trash.” The last one is the only one I personally never got. No matter when I, or somebody else, get directly attacked by a Hater, they say something that boils down to these five. Most of these more subtly, the last one directly, invalidates a fan’s opinion by implying that it is somehow “less”. If you’re dumb/mentally ill/have bad taste/don’t know the source material, you cannot accurately judge this show that is so obviously horrible (note the sarcasm). Even if a fan tries to argue against these accusations, Haters will just argue back, which consists of repeating their accusation with different words. I had an interaction where someone told me to watch the movies or read the books and come back after, expressing how ashamed I feel for loving the show’s portrayal of Galadriel (not making this up). When I expressed that not only had I seen the movies but also read the books, they told me to go back and watch/read them again because I clearly didn’t pay attention. With that sentence, “go back and watch/read them again”, they basically said the same thing they first said, that my opinion doesn’t count because I don’t know the source material. Their first “You didn’t read the books” accusation didn’t work so they tried it again but worded it differently, hoping to get a different outcome.

The fact of the matter is, no one’s opinion is more or lesser. Haters’ attempt to invalidate our opinions by making them seem lesser is wrong and won’t work for anyone who knows their worth.

It is also worth noting that often times when Haters accuse fans of only liking Rings of Power because they don’t know the source material, the “source material” they bring up is Peter Jackson’s LotR trilogy. That trilogy is an adaptation itself, it is not exact either. Haters use an adaptation as their base knowledge which shows in other places too, that I’ll discuss.

Haters’ bashing on the show itself is constant and takes so many forms, I’m not even sure where to start. They will make accusations all day. These accusations are often wrong and born of what I can only describe as surface-level viewing. Accusations of one-dimensional characters or actions that seem out of character are often wrong and can be easily disproven/explained by anyone who actually watched the show and absorbed its contents properly. And then there are the accusations that are just plain wrong. Bad dialogue and poor writing are among these, but of course, there are accusations of bad acting and unfaithfulness to the books as well. Anyone who watched the show can tell you how complex the story and characters are, which is proof that writing is good. I have personally written two separate essays proving how complex Galadriel’s character is, essays people have agreed with, which disproves both the poor writing accusations and the one-dimensional character accusations that Galadriel specifically is getting. Bad acting accusations are disproven by the sheer amount of emotion any viewer can read from the eyes of a character in any given shot. No bad acting can convey the kind of inner world all the characters have.

The best of the inaccurate accusations are the ones that claim Rings of Power deviates from the books when it is actually being faithful to them. Leading examples are Galadriel’s personality and Círdan’s look. But there are others, of course. When Haters make these accusations, they will get fans explaining what is actually in the books. Haters’ “This goes against Tolkien’s work” accusations are more often than not proven wrong. Fans will source and even photograph where they get their information from, too, while often Haters don’t have a source or that source is the movies. Haters will, however, keep going, either by refusing to accept the proof in front of them or by creating elaborate excuses as to why fans are still wrong. For example, when we got the first look at Círdan, book-accurately depicted, Haters immediately attacked it because “Why does he look old?” “Why does he have a beard?” “Why does he have grey hair?”. After many fans showed or quoted Círdan’s physical description, even the part where he does look old, Haters used the excuse of “Elves age differently” to say that Círdan as old is wrong. Now I don’t know much about how elves age, but I know how Tolkien describes things, if he never meant for Círdan to look old by our perceptions, he would not have described him as old.

One thing Haters do, that shows just how much their hate is a choice, is nitpick. Whether that’s costume design details or more reasons fans should not be listened to, they go searching for reasons to hate. The crap they gave the show for the scales on the Númenor costumes and the way they try to invalidate fans by pointing out that they have pronouns or lgbt flag in their bio, require time put into finding these details.

The pronouns/lgbt flag in bio thing loops back to that thing about Haters trying to invalidate fans by making them seem lesser. In their eyes belonging to or supporting lgbt makes a person lesser.

Haters purposefully expose themselves to the very thing they hate just so they can trash-talk it and its fans. Which shows that rather than Rings of Power being something that deserves the hate they give it, it is something they chose to interact with. While obviously, I cannot speak for people I don’t even know, there is a pretty simple answer as to why they do this. They are miserable. This conclusion is easily drawn from the fact that people who are content and happy with their lives don’t go around causing intentional misery and spewing hate. Anyone who knows psychology knows that people who are in pain have a desire to cause pain. Not all act on it, but those who can’t process their pain, often end up, intentionally or unintentionally, hurting others in an attempt to ease their own suffering. Miserable people targeted Rings of Power to hate on, in an attempt to ease their pain. They targeted it because it was at the time new and still is bold, it was easy to target. They convinced themselves that it was inherently bad and deserved their hate. They became steeped in that belief and because the show is so inherently bad, so is everyone that likes it.

Even if the show was as bad as they say, liking it would not be a problem. People have different tastes and even I have movies and shows I love that I could rattle off a long list of things that are wrong with it. Haters hating on us for loving the show will always be wrong. If it makes you happy, it doesn’t have to make sense for anyone else. Haters, of course, can’t comprehend this, so they hate on us too. Which has negative effects for days. I personally started off reacting really badly to Haters, whether they attacked me or the show. But after nearly two years of constant hate on me and what I love, I have grown numb to them, save for a few topics.

The biggest problem with Haters is that they cannot be silenced. They are yelling their hate like children crying out for attention and will not stop. The only thing that seems effective against them is blocking each that shows their heads. That way at least we can have a modicum of peace. Though not for long before another one shows up again. This I have personally despised because ignoring these people never seemed like a solution. Even if I don’t interact with them, someone else will and they can still voice their hateful opinions. One can only hope that Amazon and the showrunners hold out, know they’re doing an amazing job and have fans supporting them.