Last week HBO hosted a huge party for the television show Girls at the American Museum of Natural History. Apparently there was no more room at the ball for entitlement, as I was told I couldn't attend due to everyone else in NYC media already being on the list. So there I was, Sabrina Fairchild sitting in the tree overlooking David Larrabee's party. Or rather, at home in bed, looking in via friends' Instagram posts.

IT'S COOL, I kind of prefer pajamas and being alone, and they had sent a screener over to me with the first 5 episodes. As I began watching I started wondering why people hate this fictional television show with such passionate yet unspecific conviction—this is a hate that's about to resurface starting now, with its return to air last night.

I refuse to watch Girls because I hate Lena Dunham — Toria. (@ToriGolightly16) January 8, 2015

In the new season, there are points where Hannah is surrounded by her classmates in Iowa, all still basically strangers to her, forced to quietly absorb their criticisms about her work. She delivers her defense in outbursts throughout a few early episodes:

"It's just a story! We're all just here to express ourselves, to censor each other, we're no better than George W. Bush. I don't get why we're so judgy about popular writing... I write one story with a blowjob in it and suddenly I'm Fifty Shades of Grey girl. Being pigeon-holed isn't fun."

She then turns the table on each of her fellow writers, one-by-one, pigeon-holing them with an equal measure of exactness and clumsiness. Just as Hannah's classmates criticize her on the show for injecting herself into her works of fiction, it's hard to separate Dunham from these scenes, who seems to use her on-screen bizarro self to voice her IRL opinion from time to time. Many writers criticizing her online are simply lexical archers shooting at a very easy target... and hating Girls and writing about it is clickier than liking Girls and writing about it.

So last week I decided to wade through some of this hate and take a poll on Facebook. And then, like a sucker, spent three hours defending the show. The thing is, people never seem to have a good reason to back up their criticisms—a good portion of it just seems founded in jealousy, blind-hatred, and bandwagon-jumping.

i get it, Lena, this is what real girls look like. it just would be nice to see Marnie and Jessa naked sometimes too, y'know? #girlsseason2 — Quark Henares (@quarkhenares) January 15, 2013

The ugliest and one of the most unfortunate reactions comes from those who focus on Dunham's body—one person in my poll brought up "the ping pong table episode" and I immediately sighed. I've found that many men bring this one up, and every time it seems as though they are doing this because they're uncomfortable with Dunham being so comfortable with her body. This person wrote, in part, that "the ping-pong table scene really did it for me... the scene served her personal politics/feminist/beauty-standards-are-bullshit stance. It was pathetically transparent... I don't like any art that has a social or political motivation." Well then! This seems to say more about the critic than the show, and I for one am glad there's some sort of counterpoint to the deluge of body-shaming the world showers us with.

Do I speak for all male watchers of #girls that get pissed that we see Hannah naked all the time but Marnie is always covered? — Omar Serrano (@oserrano22) January 14, 2013

Perhaps I'm biased on the other side of the spectrum—as someone who went through a decades-worth of emotional and sexual abuse by an extended family member, which triggered a long-term eating disorder and lifetime battle with my body, I find these scenes that celebrate honest, awkward moments and real bodies one of the most refreshing things in our pop culture landscape. Maybe that's TMI, but part of what makes Girls so compelling is how Dunham shatters that scolding straightjacket of "too much information."

Now, onward with the haterade...

hop on the Lena Dunham hate train!! quick before it becomes old news that suddenly won't matter when season 4 of Girls comes out!!! — sophia (@sofamck) November 4, 2014

My co-worker Rebecca Fishbein—a twenty-something born and raised on the Upper West Side and currently living in Bushwick—hates this show. She tells me, "I think the characters are selfish and annoying, and not in a funny Seinfeld sort of way. And while I understand it's a fictional representation of what it's like to be a young Brooklynite, it's frustrating to have these women who play out the worst of the entitled millennial stereotype get this kind of airplay."

Through my non-millennial bifocals, I can see how these women can seem grating or ridiculous or like not very good people at times, but they certainly aren't fictional—I've seen worse versions of these women out at bars in Brooklyn, and they're not reading from scripts. The millennials do seem to take issue with this show more than anyone, however...

@jenist So many people I know worked exceptionally hard, and didn't sit around being aimless, so I resent the idea that it's "so true" — UneducatedDoom (@DaveCoIon) January 6, 2015

As a Gen-Xer, I don't recall being offended at the on-screen portrayals of twenty-somethings of my time as slackers or stoners or absolutely aimless, sarcastic, flannel-wearing longhairs. (See: Reality Bites, Singles... Slacker.) But back then there wasn't Twitter, or blogs, or internet... at least not internet like there is now. There was no online beast to feed with our negativity, there was no going viral with a cutting takedown of Daria or Angela Chase or Lelaina Pierce... and yes, I'm comparing Hannah to every one of those beloved fictional on-screen characters. Would the internet have trashed them, too?

There was no online pulse keeping any criticism there may have even been alive, no mutated takes on takes or minute-to-minute micro-criticism breeding hatred—any of it would have lived and died in the air around a coffee shop table in Seattle, or wherever.

Our own non-millennial managing editor John Del Signore told me this when I asked him about Girls: "Some of it makes me laugh, but I have a hard time with its view of NYC as seen from a vantage point of petulant privilege." The same could be said for Jerry, Elaine, and George, no? Let's look back at Seinfeld for a second—this was a show centered around a group of white, wealthy Manhattanites often complaining about little non-issues in a way only the privileged can. It was famously marketed as "a show about nothing," and its characters were literally found "guilty of selfishness, self-absorption and greed." Yet it has been logged into the pop culture library as iconic, important, and clever.

Sure, Seinfeld and Girls are completely different shows which probably shouldn't even be compared to each other, but here we are. If you don't want to place them side-by-side, place either next to your friends' Twitter and Instagram feeds. Look at what we're all outputting into the world—surely you'll find nuggets of importance, but you'll probably also find brunch photos and grousing about trivial matters.

As a fan of both programs, I will say I get way more reality (and therefore way more) from Girls, which has brought up everything from emotionally abusive relationships to body image to weird sex to OCD. I am happy that life's awkward moments and struggles and terrible things and feelings are being presented in the way they are on the show—it's even therapeutic at times. And if you are going to play the often drawn Nepotism Card when discussing Dunham, I would just say that if she did have a leg up in her creative pursuits, I am sure as fucking hell happy that this is what she did with it... aren't you?

But I also get that it's not for everyone...

Tara Ariano of Previously.tv, whose taste I trust implicitly, commented on my Facebook poll: "I wouldn't say I hate it, but I've tried a couple of times, a season apart, and decided in the end that it's just not for me. I think I'm too old." This is a totally reasonable stance, with zero vitriol behind it—maybe now that it's in its fourth season, we can all just silently like it or not?

Stay tuned for a regular recap of the show every Monday, by my coworker who hates it :(