Nabokov is less popular and more prestigious than JK Rowling, and I prefer reading him, and get more pleasure out of doing so. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that people who say they prefer Beethoven to nightcore are lying to themselves. People’s tastes really do differ quite a lot.
I also think “only listen to/read/watch whatever gives you most units of pleasure per minute” is a meme that discourages people from seeking out a wide range of experiences. It’s suspiciously “wireheady”. If life was just guilty pleasures it would be a lot more boring. Better to take the risk of listening to jazz for a while, before realizing you’ve only been pretending to like it, then to just listen to pop music all the time and miss out on the possibly of having a new kind of experience.
Yeah, the argument “I don’t listen to Beethoven, therefore Beethoven is not that great and people only pretend to like him for social reasons” seems really weak to me.
Nabokov is less popular and more prestigious than JK Rowling, and I prefer reading him, and get more pleasure out of doing so. I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that people who say they prefer Beethoven to nightcore are lying to themselves. People’s tastes really do differ quite a lot.
I also think “only listen to/read/watch whatever gives you most units of pleasure per minute” is a meme that discourages people from seeking out a wide range of experiences. It’s suspiciously “wireheady”. If life was just guilty pleasures it would be a lot more boring. Better to take the risk of listening to jazz for a while, before realizing you’ve only been pretending to like it, then to just listen to pop music all the time and miss out on the possibly of having a new kind of experience.
Yeah, the argument “I don’t listen to Beethoven, therefore Beethoven is not that great and people only pretend to like him for social reasons” seems really weak to me.