Why is it so in to be out?

I often said that the most annoying part of being an English major is dealing with your fellow students. Inevitably in every class you'll run into a handful of students who love to tear down the work you're analyzing, and in some way, it's part of being a critic. They'll always end up saying the same types of things "the author is constantly contradicting him/herself" or my favorite "I just didn't find his argument convincing." I know that I've said these things, and I'm sure to some of my former classmates I've inhabited this "annoying english major" persona. But why? Why do we constantly feel the need to rip on those around us? Why is it so much cooler to tear something down than to build it up?

I think that this propensity towards criticality stems from an insecurity about attaching ourselves to something that could get us made fun of. By saying that you actually like something, or in my English class example, enjoyed a certain author's point or work you are risking your credibility. For as soon as someone shoots down the text you defended, in a way you feel like they are shooting you down as well. A good friend of mine at school, majoring in fine arts, said the key to getting a good grade on an art critique was to take an incredibly negative angle. All the professors would be way more impressed by your attention to what didn't work in the piece that what did. What an interesting thought.

This idea extends out from the world of academia into our critiques on pop culture, or those who inhabit it. How much more often do we "hate that movie" or "hate that song" than love them? There is something very attractive about this negativity. Apart from sounding or seeming more analytical, it is also much safer. We never have to attach ourselves to something that others may end up deeming lame.

Another friend up mine told me about his experience writing for the ultra-critical music reviewing website pitchforkmedia.com. A Harvard grad, and now a writer for the Wall Street Journal, my friend was fired from pitchfork for not being critical enough. The website portrays itself as the site for music conoissuers, those who know the difference between good music and bad music. As a frequenter of this site, it's hard not to be swayed by the confident, overly vocabularistic (not a wrd) writing of its critics. I think, "yeah they're right, those rifts all sound the same . . . this band is tired", instead of realizing how incredible it is that someone is able to create art worth listening to, putting themselves out there in a way a critic never could. I say in my blog description that critics are only critics because they're not creative enough to create, and I think this is where they get their start. The safe, intellectual-sounding world of negativity.