I am most definitely a hypocrite. I can be negative at times. I have a song about hating people. But that’s not what I mean.

  But more and more – and I don’t know if this is because I am getting older and noticing it more, or if it is actually increasing – there seems to be more and more hate in the world. People are so caught up in hating things that they lose sight of a) people who like said things; and b) people involved in said things.

  This is my favourite example for this: take the movie Cats from 2019. 2.8/10 on IMDB, 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, 32% on Metacritic. An apparently terrible film. But I liked it. I enjoyed that film. Was it the best stage-to-movie adaptation of the musical Cats? No. Absolutely not. Was the CGI a bit weird? Yeah. Was it really that bad, though? No! But everyone goes on and on about how terrible the movie is whenever it comes up in conversation.

  My question is this: why can’t we just enjoy things? Movies. Songs. Stories. Why does everything have to be measured by good and bad? Why does “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” not apply to movies?

  Obviously, there are exceptions. If a movie poorly represents a marginalised community in an offensive way, that would make sense to be up in arms about something. But in a movie about cats that sing and dance for no particularly reason other than to die and go to cat heaven? Is it really necessary to make such a big deal about how they look?

  Like, in case people hadn’t noticed, the actors aren’t cats. They’re people. And there is no easy way to make people look like cats without getting rid of the people part.

  Anyway. This has all become about the Cats movie when it’s meant to be about the overwhelming hatred people shower onto things that probably don’t deserve it at all.

  I’m tired. Screw four hundred words. We’re stopping here.