Pain For Pleasure 1
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008
“What’s your guilty pleasure?”
There are two different answers that aggravate me when someone asks this fateful question. The first, and the less annoying of the two, is when someone says something that doesn’t make them that guilty: “Oh, I like some rap,” one’ll say. “I hate to admit it, but I like the Strokes,” says the holier than thou art school kid. “I like (insert random older pop act that has been heralded by retroactive critics for years – you know, like ABBA or Michael Jackson or the Beach Boys),” says another. It’s a bullshit copout, but it’s also 100% understandable. If we pick something safe or vague, then we give off the appearance that we are above something that others of a similar ilk consider valuable. It’s a savvy bit of social jockeying for position.
The other more common, and more aggravating, answer is some variation of the phrase, “I don’t believe in ‘guilty pleasures.’ I like what I like and I don’t feel guilty about it.” Ugh.