Of Endings and Abstention

This is marginally about Game of Thrones, but I don't think I need to give spoiler alerts, because I'm not actually going to talk about the finale or anything specific in the final season.  I'm going to talk about the reaction to the show in general. The Twitter and Facebook world that we live in now gives us the "opportunity" to hear about what our friends think about things, which is good... sometimes. 
But the thing is, as we get more and more immersed in this constant stream of tweets and status updates, it seems as though the quality of our "sharing" goes down proportional to its frequency.  Social media "experts" (which are a thing I guess we just have to live with now) tell us that your "presence" needs to be constant and consistent in order to stay on the wave of follows and threads.  Which is why we get daily tweets from the orangutan in chief (sorry that's disparaging to orangutans, forget I said that).
The thing I have noticed over the past month, since the final season of GOT descended upon us, is that posts about the show went in one of three directions:

1. Posts about what might happen, which have been common since the show became something of a cultural phenomenon.  Fan theories, critiques etc. This is what one sort of expects with anything that tickles the collective geek bone of our mass media immersed culture.  Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, various forms of anime, the ubiquitous Marvel Universe and various other superhero stories all generate quite a bit of thinking, talking, hoping and dreaming.  Mostly this is good, relatively normal (at least as normal as geeks get) talk about the world of imagination and how a story effects those who love it.
2. Posts about how what actually happened was wrong, or disappointing or even morally problematic. These people seemed to forget that Westeros, and the Starks, and the Targaryens, and Jon Snow and Danerys, and Tyrion Lannister, are in fact fictional people, and that the narrative told by GOT is a story, not a historical account.  While it does in fact present certain moral lessons and brings us to question certain assumptions, an HBO series should not really carry much authority when it comes to defining right and wrong, justice and tyranny.  This crowd, I suspect, are the micro-aggression police that give Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson such job security. I will maybe go into this phenomenon some other time.
3. The third category are the posts by people who proudly proclaim: I have never watched GOT.  I have never read the books.  I don't give a fruit about your stupid TV show. I get the impulse, especially if you just read one of the posts from category number two, but you do realize that self righteousness is not an admirable quality right?

I guess the reason why this last group of folks annoys me is because I am a natural geek, I get into things and I like to know a lot about the things I like.  I have read the books, I have watched the show, I have paid attention to a lot of category one stuff over the course of the last decade. It doesn't mean I'm obsessed with GOT, I'm not going to sign the petition about a redo of the final season.  I'm not bitter that George R.R. Martin is taking forever to finish the Winds of Winter.  I like stories about dragons and armies of the undead.  I also enjoy space operas with laser swords and will get into theological debates about Yoda.  I can watch the extended versions of The Lord of the Rings pretty much any time I have about 5 hours of down time.

If you don't like those things, fine. I'll bet you like something I could ridicule if I want to, but I'm not going to try and do that, because why?  What does it help?  Are you going to convince a GOT fan to ditch the series finale because you're too cool to have gotten involved? Look, I'm not sure I would recommend the series to everyone, it definitely puts a dark spin on human nature and what power does to people.  The thing I find redeeming in the end is that the numerous and dire abuses of power are not the last word (not going any further, like I said, no spoilers).

But even if you don't feel like putting up with the story, or don't see it's value, why do you have to hate on those who do? There's too much of that going around, and yes, I understand that writing a blog where I just hate on the haters is possibly an example of irony, but I'm not saying you were wrong to avoid GOT, I'm not even saying that there's something wrong with you if you haven't watched Star Wars, but maybe just keep that to yourself.  Someone who loves to knit is not better or worse than someone who loves to play the piano.  Someone who likes Sushi is not better or worse than someone who does not.

I feel like this culture of "haterism" that infects the internet is not doing good things for us. So just like put on the brakes. Watched it? Cool.  Didn't watch it? Cool.  Watched it for a while and then quit? Cool.  Liked it? Cool.  Loved it? Cool.  Hated it? Cool, you have a choice and so does everyone else.  Sometimes we like things, sometimes we don't, people are different that's what makes the world interesting and that's why our stories are important, whether we like them or not.