To anyone who wants to try this sort of thing, my suggestion is to not do it halfway. A lot of people do it halfway in that they watch something or read something they otherwise would have thought was lame or stupid, and then they go around saying they “actually enjoyed it”, except they add something like “it was so bad it was good”. This isn’t useful. It’s just arrogance.
The best way to do this sort of thing is choose things that passed the market test for something relevant to you. If you’re a guy in your 30s, reading something with 5,000 reviews on Amazon that’s marketed toward teenage girls is not exactly going to be the most relevant choice. What would be better would be for example trying to learn how to appreciate music you think is “shallow and superficial”, but you see a lot of people similar to you in other ways having a lot of fun with their friends listening to this music.
The goal is to change your mindset so you actually enjoy it, and actually appreciate it as useful and entertaining, rather than ‘appreciate’ it in some fake way, such as the whole ‘it’s so bad it’s good’ thing.
Yes, it seems natural that some things will be inherently polarizing. An extreme example being pornography—any given example is either your thing or it isn’t. Seems pointless to try to fight those cases, and (I agree) better to stick to those that at least seem liked by people like yourself.
A lot of people do it halfway in that they watch something or read something they otherwise would have thought was lame or stupid, and then they go around saying they “actually enjoyed it”, except they add something like “it was so bad it was good”. This isn’t useful.
The consumption of most articles of ‘culture’ is inherently motivated by signalling. There are entire industries and academic departments dedicated to people expressing opinions about which things suck. If someone finds that their desired signal in response to a given cultural article is that of familiarity with condescension rather than familiarity with approval then the same open-mindedness that leads me to tolerate the unappealing-to-me cultural work prompts me to tolerate the various ways of using work in the social dance.
(My own observation is that “it was so bad it was good” tends to be a moderate-to-low status signal except in special cases. Unless there is inherent enjoyment to the task there are likely more socially optimized tactics.)
It’s just arrogance.
Frequent use of declarations of the form “<people doing something I don’t like> is just arrogance” is itself rather arrogant.
The consumption of most articles of ‘culture’ is inherently motivated by signalling. There are entire industries and academic departments dedicated to people expressing opinions about which things suck. If someone finds that their desired signal in response to a given cultural article is that of familiarity with condescension rather than familiarity with approval then the same open-mindedness that leads me to tolerate the unappealing-to-me cultural work prompts me to tolerate the various ways of using work in the social dance.
(My own observation is that “it was so bad it was good” tends to be a moderate-to-low status signal except in special cases. Unless there is inherent enjoyment to the task there are likely more socially optimized tactics.)
Excellent point. I didn’t consider that the emotional stance I was describing could be what the actual market test was designed to optimize for.
Frequent use of declarations of the form “<people doing something I don’t like> is just arrogance” is itself rather arrogant.
You choose to label some people arrogant for executing a given behavior you dislike. I choose to label a different group of behaviours that I dislike. The statement was clear and direct and in response to the actual thing that is being criticised and not in response to some other thing used as an excuse. I hold in utter contempt the attempt to insinuate that there are sinister or otherwise low status motives that should be considered invalid due to your ability to describe them vaguely and with weasel words.
Another epistemically valid response I could make to the same statement is “Not yet. But if I were to create axes to grind this is the sort of thing that would be well worth the effort to stamp out with with a vengeance. Naive moralizing is a toxic influence.”
OK OK, I admit it. My response was extremely lazy, and in no way productive. I’m going to bow out of this discussion at this point, as I no longer consider myself in an adequate position to think clearly on this topic.
To anyone who wants to try this sort of thing, my suggestion is to not do it halfway. A lot of people do it halfway in that they watch something or read something they otherwise would have thought was lame or stupid, and then they go around saying they “actually enjoyed it”, except they add something like “it was so bad it was good”. This isn’t useful. It’s just arrogance.
The best way to do this sort of thing is choose things that passed the market test for something relevant to you. If you’re a guy in your 30s, reading something with 5,000 reviews on Amazon that’s marketed toward teenage girls is not exactly going to be the most relevant choice. What would be better would be for example trying to learn how to appreciate music you think is “shallow and superficial”, but you see a lot of people similar to you in other ways having a lot of fun with their friends listening to this music.
The goal is to change your mindset so you actually enjoy it, and actually appreciate it as useful and entertaining, rather than ‘appreciate’ it in some fake way, such as the whole ‘it’s so bad it’s good’ thing.
Yes, it seems natural that some things will be inherently polarizing. An extreme example being pornography—any given example is either your thing or it isn’t. Seems pointless to try to fight those cases, and (I agree) better to stick to those that at least seem liked by people like yourself.
The consumption of most articles of ‘culture’ is inherently motivated by signalling. There are entire industries and academic departments dedicated to people expressing opinions about which things suck. If someone finds that their desired signal in response to a given cultural article is that of familiarity with condescension rather than familiarity with approval then the same open-mindedness that leads me to tolerate the unappealing-to-me cultural work prompts me to tolerate the various ways of using work in the social dance.
(My own observation is that “it was so bad it was good” tends to be a moderate-to-low status signal except in special cases. Unless there is inherent enjoyment to the task there are likely more socially optimized tactics.)
Frequent use of declarations of the form “<people doing something I don’t like> is just arrogance” is itself rather arrogant.
Excellent point. I didn’t consider that the emotional stance I was describing could be what the actual market test was designed to optimize for.
Sounds like you’ve got an ax to grind here ;)
You choose to label some people arrogant for executing a given behavior you dislike. I choose to label a different group of behaviours that I dislike. The statement was clear and direct and in response to the actual thing that is being criticised and not in response to some other thing used as an excuse. I hold in utter contempt the attempt to insinuate that there are sinister or otherwise low status motives that should be considered invalid due to your ability to describe them vaguely and with weasel words.
Another epistemically valid response I could make to the same statement is “Not yet. But if I were to create axes to grind this is the sort of thing that would be well worth the effort to stamp out with with a vengeance. Naive moralizing is a toxic influence.”
OK OK, I admit it. My response was extremely lazy, and in no way productive. I’m going to bow out of this discussion at this point, as I no longer consider myself in an adequate position to think clearly on this topic.