The Session #90: Fighting Without Fighting

I don't know what to make of this month's Session, hosted by Hipster Brewfus, who found recent sessions to be "unimaginative, uninspired, and uninteresting".   It's hard to understand just what he is asking for, but doing my best to paraphrase his alternative, it involves opening up a big can of whuppass and angrily vent about some bad beer experience into the Internet.

Gee, no one has ever done that before.

OK, I'll try playing this game.  I didn't like this year's Stone Brewing's Ruinten, despite the fact that lots of people all gushed about it.  It had this enormous sweetness which over powered everything, muting the hop flavors. It came across as lightly hopped sugar syrup and was tough to swallow down. My wife, who's a big hop head, felt the same way.  After we worked through that, we both sort of shrugged and tried something else.

Sorry, I just can't summon a lot of anger and rage over something as inconsequential as a beer I didn't like.

What's motivating this effort to "inject hostility" into beer blogging world?   Conflict can reveal truths, stimulate learning, and develop strength in the course of the struggle, but our Session host doesn't show any interest in that.  It seems he just wants to see us all being angrier.     Or maybe what he really wants is more genuine and honest criticism rather than hostility. Sure, fawning beer blogs can be annoyingly superficial but are pretty harmless.  You can't say the same thing about anger and hostility.

There was a time in my life where I had this pathological need for confrontation and went around angrily shooting off my mouth with a bunch of negative opinions nobody asked for to anyone who would listen.  I was pretty depressed and unhappy, easily angered over some pretty minor stuff.  I have no desire to be "forced out of my comfort zone" to revisit that miserable chapter of my life and don't suggest anyone willingly go there either.