Floccinaucinihilipilificators, or “Haters” for short, or “h8rs” for shorter, are people who engage in excessive floccinaucinihilipilification. If you’re not familiar with this word, it’s probably because you have a life, and I’ll get to explaining how to pronounce it farther down. For now just accept that string of 28 characters as what this random thought is about. : )
We’ve all met the type. You pop your favorite CD into the player and they immediately begin with the flood of criticisms about it. They’re the ones who wipe the smile off your face after enjoying a movie by explaining to you a million reasons why the film sucked and only an inbred mutant would enjoy such trite.
Not wanting to reveal that you are an inbred trite-enjoying mutant, you tone down your enthusiasm. You feel belittled, but chalk it up to the person’s insensitivity. In reality, they are secretly reveling in smug satisfaction at how they have belittled you.
There are many metaphors for this behavior. “Seeing the gray cloud inside every silver lining.” “Peeing on the parade.” “Taking a doodie in the sandbox.” Principa Discordia coined the term “grayfaces” for these individuals.
They are pompous, but they are more than that. They are cynical and and hypercritical as well. They are smug in their self-righteous ability to suck all enjoyment out of life. They are floccinaucinihilipilificators.
It’s not motivated by jealousy. Criticism motivated by envy suggests the critic desires to be like the person they are criticizing. Floccis are not jealous; they merely derive enjoyment from bringing down others.
These Nihilis are easy to recognize in gaming environments. They are the person who, when prevented from winning, seeks to ruin the other gamer’s enjoyment. They will go chaotic; begin “Hate Playing,” trying to become kingmaker, not just to ruin the fun for the losers, but to reduce the winner’s accomplishments as well.
On the web there are specific gatherings of Pilis. Running a search on google for “hater” will turn up hundreds of clubs and organizations of people united around their common dislike of celebrities, sports teams, politicians, and so on. The amount of personal time spent on these websites and organizational constructs is mind-boggling to the emotionally mature individual.
These groups should not be confused with groups whose dislike stems from ideological or value differences. Grayfaces lack sufficient substance to their dislikes to garner respect. They are almost wholly consumed with superficial justifications for their dislikes. The team, group, or celebrity simply “sucks,” and the Naucci believes that the mere virtue of their personal opinion means everyone should adopt that opinion, lest they suck too.
They cannot be defeated in disputation because of their circular reasoning. This is the impenetrable bubble of insulation that protects the Naucci from the outside world. It is also the most infuriating attribute of their character to the rest of us.
How should we deal with the floccinauccinihilipilificators who work so hard to ruin our personal happiness? The answer sounds easy in hypotheses, but not in practice. We must smile. We must laugh. We must shrug off the slings and arrows and wrap ourselves in a bubble of logic.
That logic is remembering the opinions of floccinauccinihilipilificators are worthless. They live in their own universe where they are king, and it’s all right to leave them there. Standing outside of their bland, spiteful world we know how small it is, and we are big enough to let them live in it.
Our personal happiness is far too precious. : )
Since we’re further down, the best way to tackle this excessively long and pretentious word is to break it down like so:
flocci – nauci – nihili – pili – fication
There are four latin words here, each directly meaning or equivalent to the word worthless:
A quick Latin lesson: flocci is derived from floccus, literally a tuft of wool and the source of English words like flocculate, but figuratively in Latin something trivial; pili is likewise the plural of pilus, a hair, which we have inherited in words like depilatory, but which in Latin could meant a whit, jot, trifle or generally something insignificant; nihili is from nihil, nothing, as in words like nihilism and annihilate; nauci just means worthless. (source)
One day I’ll get around to another pedantic essay about
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.