I remember reading Twilight in 8th grade just before its massive popularity hit and loving it. Stephanie Meyer had created a world I was completely able to fall into and roll around in. Then, about a year later, it started getting pretty heavy mainstream attention, and so the haters started to crawl out from under their angry rocks, ready to sink their teeth into something freshly beloved. No vampire pun intended.
Twilight hating became, almost overnight, the sport of choice for "intellectuals", all of whom cited its anti-feminist protagonist, its borderline abusive love interest, and its less-than-stellar writing style. While I can offer plenty of arguments debunking those concerns, that's not what's so interesting about the fad of hating Twilight.
What's interesting to me is that it happened to Twilight, and not to one of the hundreds of adult romance novels whose entire genre is essentially subjugating at least one gender for sexual purposes- and I am including men. Yes, Twilight was more popular than many other romance novels, but its haters have almost created an entire social movement around the dislike of one silly book series.
There are many books in this world, and arguably many far worse than Twilight. In fairness, Kristen Stewart hasn't done much to help the negative view of the series, but even before the wildly popular movies premiered, the hatred was almost louder than the love.
I suppose my biggest question about the fad is this, though. With all the things in the world to spend energy hating, why Twilight?
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