true. i’m likely looking at it from a completely different place
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Anyone dishing hate usually has some sort of insecurity they’re compensating for IMO. Perhaps individuals who have not “made it” yet feel they need to step on other peoples heads in order to get to the top. People make a living from being controversial today.
Additionally, maybe they don’t have the knowledge or experience to understand the nuances of vintage, or the humility to admit they’re still learning (like everyone else) and it manifests in false confidence and hate.
Edit: I’ve also noticed a lot of people attach their persona and confidence to a particular group; us vs you, red vs blue, modern vs vintage etc. When their team “loses” or the other team “wins” it becomes the equivalent of a personal attack on them and they will lash out in defense.
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They are just copying what they see, because that’s what all kids do. We were equally impressionable but it manifested in different ways. You would just want the cards your friends wanted. You’d value a card because it’s shiny and has a star in the corner and because it was a Vaporeon or something.
The difference is today there’s a metric that is available that is a proxy for desirability. I don’t think kids are going around being little entrepreneur flippers. They are just using the value as a way to determine the cards that their peers would deem desirable.
The kids will be fine. Eventually they will grow up and be capable of more complex thinking and a portion of them will come to appreciate the more adult aspects of collecting cards.
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"Hate” towards any segment of Pokemon trading cards is seems to be due to a lack of perspective and experience. If you’ve only been around since 2020, anything before then (and after WOTC for a lot of people) might seem like some awkward in-between time that the company had to produce cards just to keep the franchise going.
This is overcome by growth and exposure. There is no bad or dead or uninteresting time in Pokemon. It’s cool to have an era or type of card that’s your favorite, but there are things to appreciate about every era of Pokemon cards, and it takes time to be exposed to them if you’re coming into collecting. I didn’t play in Japan, or collect in Japan, but I have a huge appreciation for Japanese releases from every point in time from exposure to Japanese cards.
Access for a lot of people is restricted to what’s current, and everybody wants to feel good about what they own and could own, and one aspect of the fun of ownership is speculation. A lot of vintage can be inaccessible due to how optimized it can appear to be, and for speculators, optimized = boring. You can’t speculate on a PSA 8 Base Set Charizard the same way you can with a Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat or prize pack promos or Chilling Reign boxes.
Overall I try to be patient and forgiving with people who hate on a side of collecting. Nobody who’s been around for 10+ years has that tendency.
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i can confirm personally that this is inaccurate. I got in with playing Blue and opening base set, and I still find myself casting shade towards vintage because it doesn’t interest me.
i don’t think it’s overly complex, but moreso just a matter of people’s bullying tendencies coming out similar to what Rattlesnake said here
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Agreed. 
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Having hate anywhere in this hobby is kind of dumb in my opinion i mean let us enjoy what we enjoy. Thats why i pretty much only use e4.
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Honestly, I’ve just seen a mixed toxicity based on what influencer/posts you’re seeing:
For Modern: I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone not say the artwork isn’t superb. On the flipside, I’ve seen posts/influencers criticizing how overprinted it is and how it’ll be worthless
For Vintage: I’ve seen other influencers say how boring the artworks are and prices are going to continue to crash as all the money is going towards “cooler” modern artworks/chase cards.
I personally got brought back into collecting from Evolutions during 2016. I bought the next handfuls of modern sets and was loving opening packs again. During the WOTC vintage run up in 2021-2022, I thought I would be priced out of vintage. Now with prices down a bit, I’m having so much fun picking up vintage.
Although I gave examples of counterpoints for both sides, I personally believe the overall hype/excitement of the greater Pokémon community is modern at the moment. The availability of modern packs mixed with the growing gambling mindset I think has people trying to stonk/quick flip these modern chase cards. I don’t know why though either side needs to take shots at each other. Doesnt make sense to me on that front. Collect/buy what makes you happy. I would think people just like to believe whatever they’re doing is the smartest/best…while trying to put down people who think otherwise.
Edit: I think this quote has a lot of merit to it. Divided and picking sides…“us vs. them” I think is kind of the cultural norm for today.
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It’s not really that they hate vintage, they just aren’t interested in Pokémon at all. They are interested in gambling. And the more stable vintage market is much less “fun” for them.
Before I ‘found’ E4, I had a look at reddit and other social media, and the discussions/discourses I saw there were quite underwhelming and dull (put diplomatically). I do not use Instagram, and I was not aware of such a hate thing. Vintage has its own rules and I am happy about it.
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Plus the fact that back then, we didn’t have social media as kids. The Internet was still in its infancy stages.
Now, everyone has access to YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc. Kids are seeing all of the pack openings with the content creators posting the dollar value on the bottom corner whenever they get a pull.
If we had all of that stuff in the late '90s and early 2000s, the same thing would have happened. We would have been equally as enamored with the price tag of every card.
It’s also important to note that Pokemon cards simply weren’t as valuable back in 1999. I remember Charizard being $50 back then, and that was considered a ton of money for a card. But even that was something that any 10-year-old who saved money from their allowance could eventually buy.
Taking those factors into consideration, it’s no surprise that kids may be more aware of how much cards are worth nowadays.
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We live in a social ecosystem that is set on splitting us into groups of increasing purity. These groups also build an identity based on 100% rejection of the opposing group.
This is not a healthy opinion. This is someone who collects pokemon cards outright rejecting the idea of even collecting pokemon just to dunk on the other “side”. This is the radicalization of our hobby. You can see equally extremist takes when it comes to grading companies too.
It’s not unique to Pokemon at all. You’ll see the same unnecessary polarization on basically any topic.
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The beauty of the internet is that you get to decide where your attention goes. I’ve begun requesting these types of videos don’t pop up on my YouTube which makes for a much more pleasant experience.
This form of content is unlikely to disappear as people search for ways to increase income and the younger generation is hyper focused on becoming “ballers”.
My assumption is most of the content creators that popped up since/during the COVID boom are probably over-invested in modern and that’s why it’s pushed so heavily.
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I think a lot of the problem is we want to think this statement is true but it absolutely is far from the truth.
A recent study found that young users of TikTok/Instagram would be willing to take about $50 to deactivate their account for 4 weeks but would pay money to deactivate the account the account of all their friends and themselves.
Our main results reveal a ‘product market trap,’ where a large share of consumers continue to use social media platforms despite deriving negative welfare from them. On average, users would need to be paid $59 to deactivate TikTok and $47 to deactivate Instagram. At the same time, users would be willing to pay $28 and $10 to have others, including themselves, deactivate TikTok and Instagram, respectively. Sixty-four percent of active TikTok users and 48% of active Instagram users experience negative welfare from the products’ existence; they find it individually optimal to use the product even if they would prefer it not exist.
The implication is that many people would choose for these products to not be in their lives but are trapped in using them because there is social consequences for not.
I feel it too. I don’t like when I watch YouTube shorts. If I had the true freedom to chose I would remove it from my life forever. But I find a lot of other utility in the YouTube app. And you can’t turn off shorts in the app. So now I’m stuck in a position where I end up consuming something I don’t want to because it preys on human psychology. I even moved the app off my home screen and into a folder to minimize my use of it (which I also did for Instagram and that has definitely worked)
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I think most, and this is definitely a sweeping generalisation, hate towards vintage is due to lack of access to the cards due to there being a finite number in existence which is always shrinking, and the lack of understanding. There is so much detail you can uncover in vintage, and new research is ever-changing our understanding as information is re-uncovered and shared. Whereas Modern is just there and contemporary to us today and much more accessible to everyone.
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I’m most likely an outlier in that I don’t use social media and still send emails to frens. However I do think it’s objectively true you have control over what you watch, and what you watch has a huge influence on what is recommended to you. It’s certainly much harder for the younger kids due to shorter attention spans and social pressure to avoid the noise.
I don’t think the companies that create the algorithms do so with any kind of care for the negative impact they have on developing brains, but I think people are far too quick to find excuses for why social media is “toxic” removing any responsibility from the end user.
I never would’ve found e4 or SM’s videos if it wasn’t for the algorithm recommending them and his videos would no longer be on my timeline if I didn’t choose to watch them.
The study you cited is very interesting! Would love to see the results of how many that said they’d deactivate for $50 would follow through if given the chance as I would’ve expected it would cost much more for a kid to stop using those apps.
I disagree with how much control we actually have. A tobacco user or gambling addict (or to a lesser extent, a meth user) has “control” over their ability to stop only in the sense that it would take extremely deliberate, difficult and intentional intervention of behavior to do it. I think it’s similar for a modern day social media user, and the emerging academic evidence supports that.
That’s not to say that social media is exclusively bad. But while it provided you with an smpratte video, I’d argue that the phenomenon being discussed in this thread is driven by social media radicalization.
To swerve back onto topic, I don’t think the modern loving vintage haters are that way because of their inability to buy vintage. I’ve known some people who fall into this category and they genuinely have little interest in vintage.
I think the root of it is because many people end up conflating their collection with their identity. If you see yourself as a “modern collector” then anything that threatens the legitimacy or status of modern cards is experienced as a direct assult on you as a person. The response ends up extremely aggressive and defensive. And then if you perceive that there is a group of people whose existence is a threat to the legitimacy of your collection (aka your existence), then you will hate these people. And when you have the same thing happening on both sides you have the creation of two polarizing groups that just hate each other. And then the two groups retreat to their own corners of the internet, never interacting. But when they do, it becomes extremely vitriolic.
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Criticism of anything gets views
Social platforms monetise viewership
Neurons activate
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Did you just tldr me 
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I don’t disagree that the literature seems to suggest the chemical release is similar to more established ‘addictions’ and so it’s difficult for those that find themselves in that position to stop or change their ways. But I’m of the opinion that the onus does lie on the individual. I think it becomes a very slippery slope when the product (social media, crack, cigarettes, fast food) are blamed for an individuals choices.
I fully sympathize with people who find themselves in these spots, and social media may well be the most addictive thing for humans ever discovered, however, anyone has the ability to control their actions/reactions and should take responsibility for any personal choices that are negatively effecting themselves. Might be a callous view, but was the thinking that helped many people I know get past negative behavioral patterns.
Sorry for slightly hijacking the thread.