"I hate everybody"
About this Quote
It lands like a lit match tossed into a crowded room: not a confession so much as a dare. Coming from GG Allin, "I hate everybody" isn’t careful misanthropy or poetic exaggeration. It’s a blunt instrument, designed to cancel the usual contract between performer and audience - the unspoken deal that even “angry” music ultimately wants your approval. Allin’s intent was to make approval impossible.
The line works because it’s totalizing. “Everybody” refuses nuance, refuses the listener’s favorite loophole: I’m different, I get it, I’m on the artist’s side. Allin aims right at that ego and smashes it. The subtext is: you don’t get to be a safe observer. If you’re here, you’re implicated - in the spectacle, in the commerce of rebellion, in the hunger to watch someone self-destruct for a story you can tell later.
Context matters: Allin’s career was built on confrontation and bodily transgression, a punk scene pushed past its own myth of authenticity into something uglier and more literal. By the late 80s and early 90s, “anti-establishment” had become a pose you could monetize. Allin’s response was to turn the pose into a scorched-earth performance. “I hate everybody” is less worldview than method: a way to keep the room unstable, to prevent the crowd from turning violence and chaos into entertainment they can consume cleanly. It’s contempt as stagecraft - a rejection that doubles as a brand, and that contradiction is the point.
The line works because it’s totalizing. “Everybody” refuses nuance, refuses the listener’s favorite loophole: I’m different, I get it, I’m on the artist’s side. Allin aims right at that ego and smashes it. The subtext is: you don’t get to be a safe observer. If you’re here, you’re implicated - in the spectacle, in the commerce of rebellion, in the hunger to watch someone self-destruct for a story you can tell later.
Context matters: Allin’s career was built on confrontation and bodily transgression, a punk scene pushed past its own myth of authenticity into something uglier and more literal. By the late 80s and early 90s, “anti-establishment” had become a pose you could monetize. Allin’s response was to turn the pose into a scorched-earth performance. “I hate everybody” is less worldview than method: a way to keep the room unstable, to prevent the crowd from turning violence and chaos into entertainment they can consume cleanly. It’s contempt as stagecraft - a rejection that doubles as a brand, and that contradiction is the point.
Quote Details
| Topic | Anger |
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