I’ve read the Daily Kent Stater since my freshman year. Admittedly, I pick it up every day even if I don’t read it. It’s become a habit. I like newspapers and coffee in the mornings; they’re very nostalgic for me, and they get me through the days when things aren’t going quite right. There are old copies of the Stater scattered across my studio desk, sitting on a shelf in my apartment and under my bed at home. I’ve picked favorite columnists and some that I couldn’t stand, but read every week regardless.

I, along with hundreds of other people, have done something that I’m ashamed to admit to: I would read these columns simply to hate them more. It’s like the person on YouTube who listens to music they don’t like just to comment that it is crap. I’m not proud, but I think it’s human nature. This reaction stems from the same place inside of us that causes us to crane our necks to see a car wreck.

A few years ago, there was a columnist who annoyed me to no end. He seemed very confident in his ability to meet and woo women, and maybe in actuality he was, but after reading his column each Friday, all I wanted to do was punch him. Maybe he wrote what he did to ignite frustration in many of the readers, or maybe he was actually a believer of the awful messages he preached. He would advise men to play games and would spout other chauvinistic things, but for whatever reason he said what he did, and he always got a reaction.

Plenty of people would comment on the articles, begging him to quit writing or to rethink his morals. Others stated their amusement that so many people were getting as angry as they were. I never commented, but I did come close to emailing him once because of one column in particular that has been on my mind lately. That week he had spent 480 words pondering why girls’ friends don’t let them go home with certain men at bars.

He seemed to be under the impression that the friend was jealous or just being a bitch when, in reality, he never considered the fact that maybe that particular girl did not want to go home with him. Perhaps she didn’t find him quite as charming as he found himself, and her friends were simply giving her a reason to get away without any further questions. Perhaps she was really drunk and asked her friends to make sure she got home safely. He never considered the fact that it might not be the friend who was scaring her away.

Rereading the article and the comments now, I still feel a twinge of annoyance, but I have to agree with those who were amused. This is one jerk’s opinion, and I didn’t have to read it or agree with it. So I’m finally letting it go and instead looking through articles that I actually enjoy. Here’s to personal growth.