"I hate you"

[koganbot]

"I hate you"

Person A says to Person B, "I hate you." Is it more likely that Person A is:

(1) expressing affection?

or

(2) expressing hostility?

Let's posit that A and B are each over twenty years old, and that they're speaking English. This is all we know. "More likely" means "probability of at least 50.1%."

Although "expressing a mixture of affection and hostility" is a reasonable third option, I'm not allowing it. Just pick (1) or (2).

See comments.

Comments

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

3) Expressing humor, which may not reflect the speaker's feeling towards the listener at at all.

As you said, people over twenty have usually gone through social conditioning about the harshness of the word "hate," and so don't use it as a straightforward sincere statement except as a last resort to elicit the maximum emotional impact.

But "I hate you" as a sarcastic response to anything can happen in any sort of casual situation, between two people who may not have any sort like or dislike for each other at all, but are merely going with conversation flow, "I hate you" being the punchline of that discussion thread.

[arbitrary-greay.livejournal.com]

For example, I now find myself in a position to watch "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" during my lunch break, and when a contestant wins fucking $25000 off of a simple question, I instinctively exclaim, "Son of a bitch!" in amused irritation. Sometimes I'll dryly remark, "I hate you so much now," and then forget about them as I go back to work.

[koganbot]

One thing "I hate you" illustrates is how normal and prevalent irony is (I assume this is true even back in the days when cave people were conversing with dinosaurs in the wingnuts' Eden).