Let People Like Things
Good afterevenmorn!
Once again, there appears to be a lot of talk on the various socials about what is and isn’t good ‘art’ (writing, music and actual art) and who is “cringe” for liking what. Of course, for every declarative “cringe” thing, there is a considerable amount of pushback from the folks who like that thing. Heavens, it’s all so very tiresome.
I know I’ve ranted about this, but the proliferation of this nonsense in the past couple of weeks has inspired to repeat myself. Yet again.
I have variously seen angry rants about Sleep Token (a genre-defying band that enjoyed a meteoric rise in the past couple of years), romance novels, fantasy novels, science fiction novels, horror novels, literary fiction, anything in the Warhammer universe, My Little Pony nonsense (yes, even after all this time), and even someone who decided that it’s cliché, boring and stupid for young women to love horses.
Good lord.
Just let people like things.
I can’t believe I have to say this again in the year two thousand and twenty-five.
While this is covering a broad list of things that I saw this week, it is especially pertinent for speculative fiction. So many people in speculative fiction try to make themselves feel better about their preferred genre by being absolutely horrendous to other folks for no other reason than their own enjoyment of a different genre. It’s the dumbest thing I have ever personally witnessed.
Listen, everyone is perhaps a little wound-up at present. Perhaps that’s why some folks are overblowing small, personal tastes and attempting to shame or belittle anyone who happens to think differently. I get it. I’m pretty irritable at present, too. Things are less than fun for most people at the moment. If you find yourself getting irrationally irate at a particular take, I’m going to offer you a plan of action.
Ready? Let’s begin.
So, someone likes something you don’t
Before posting your rebuttal, go through this short checklist:
1. Does their liking something you do not materially affect your life at all?
If their obsession with Warhammer 40K intrudes only on your timeline and not in any other part of your life, your best course of action is to simply scroll past and leave them alone.
Now if it is doing some material, genuine harm to you and your life, then yes, feel free to discuss that. It’s rare, but I absolutely do agree that it does happen, and it should be brought to light. But if the only thing wrong with the thing is that you don’t personally like it, just scroll on.
2. Are you perhaps a little hungry?
Suffering from caffeine or nicotine withdrawal? Hold off publicly berating someone for their tastes in science fiction novels or for enjoying romance. Oh, they’re 20 years late to The Lord of the Rings, and you’re so over it? Go eat something. Have a nap. It’s alright. Everything will be a little better when you wake up.
Baby.
3. Did anyone actually ask you?
Was your opinion requested, or were they just sharing something that was giving them joy? If you were asked, by all means tell them your thoughts. Otherwise, hush. No one asked you. Believe it or not, most people couldn’t care less that you believe Sleep Token “isn’t real metal” and “is so overrated,” for example. I doubt anyone who loves fantasy as a genre cares whether or not you find it “irrelevant” and “without intellectual merit.” No need to reply to that tweet of theirs. Just scroll on. And just like that, you’ve not crushed anyone, or ruined a joyous moment, or put something unnecessarily negative out in the world for no reason but to soothe your own misplaced ire.
I know, I know. You think that it’s just so dorky. And? I don’t agree, but let’s pretend it’s objectively so very nerdy in the worst possible way. So what? Let them be a dork. Even publicly. You needn’t bother yourself with correcting them. After all, if it’s true, they’ll just be ignored, and all sad and alone. You’ll be vindicated without so much as lifting a finger. How lovely. And if they’re not ignored, but find a community 0f like-minded folks, even better. Now you’ll be spared from having to deal with all those dorks. They’ll take care of themselves in their own little corner. Go you.
Are you struggling to contain your rebuttal? That’s alright. We’ve all been there. Here’s a possible solution: Write it out. Write in your journal. Or on a blog post (waves). Hell, even make it a Twitter thread. Just don’t @ the person who inspired your tirade, or do it as a linked reply or quote. That way you can vent your weaselly black guts out without ruining anyone else’s day. You’ll feel better, and they’ll be blissfully unaware.
We all need to vent sometimes. That’s alright. Do that.
But I do not, never have, and never will understand the impulse to be horrid to someone sharing a thing that brings them joy just because they shared the thing that brought them joy and it doesn’t bring you joy. Let people like things. Even things you don’t like. The world won’t end. I promise.
When S.M. Carrière isn’t brutally killing your favorite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, and cuddling her cat. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills, and a cuddling furry murderer. Her most recent titles include Daughters of Britain, Skylark and Human. Her serial The New Haven Incident is free and goes up every Friday on her blog.
I worked in one of those awful hipper-than-thou college town record stores back in the day. One of those stores (video stores being the other prime example) where you would linger off to the side with your merchandise until that one particular, insufferable dick sales person left the cash register so you could make your purchase without the obligatory eyeroll, snarky comment out loud to no one in particular, or sometimes even the attempt to talk you out of your purchase and into something cooler you didn’t have the slightest interest in. The kind of place where new hires, when introduced to coworkers, were instantly quizzed about what music they liked before even a single social pleasantry was exchanged. I long ago had any trace of pretense and dissatisfaction with other people’s taste thoroughly purged from me.
I get where you’re coming from and in fact it’s why I’ve avoided people who shared any similar interests my entire adult life and why I’ve stayed at the farthest fringe of fandom as Star Trek, Star Wars, etc., etc. fans engage in infantile gladitorial bitchfesting to an endless death. And yes, the internet and all subsequent social media have only made things far, far worse.
That said, the same social media has been creating increasingly insular niche bubbles in which more and more people seem to be self-medicating themselves with increasingly formulaic content with a single-minded intensity that seems genuinely infantilizing. To some degree this isn’t a new phenomena (see classical music snobs and jazz nazis) but it does seem to be spreading and I do genuinely worry that the growth of obessive fandom is curtailing people’s ability and opportunity to broaden and mature their taste.
I say this as a very vocal champion of guilty pleasures but we do owe it to ourselves to not criticize each other (because that never works) but to perhaps gently offer other options and intelligent commentary. Most importantly we owe it to ourselves to thoughtfully challenge and be challenged. I came of age reading a lot of film, music and TV writing during the heights of withering criticism and I personally benefitted from questioning , sometimes changing, other times reaffirming, my own tastes.
Again, I agree with you and I think we’d all benefit from a little chilling out and that includes our own reactions to other’s overreactions. By all means lets call out the bullshitters while also encouraging everyone keep an open mind, open, critical eyes and a healthy appetite for a broader menu.
Best wishes.
Music is a great example. While I have friends whose tastes have “progressed”, mine stay firmly in the 70’s AM genre (Paper Lace, Sweet, Dr. Hook) and early 80’s popular music (Styx, Kansas, Alan Parsons). On the bright side, while they’re paying big dollar for Jazz rarities or Beatles clean pressings, I’m finding gems in the cutout bins and dollar boxes. Although, to be honest, most of my friends don’t look down on my “pedestrian” tastes – to each his/her own.
The best thing about the Kingdom of Reading is that it’s a realm in which you are an absolute monarch. Only you can confer the Order of the Garter; only you can say, “Off with their heads!” You have despotic authority over your own – and only your own – bookshelf.
My kindom tends to be fairly snobbish – Checkov, Tolstoy, George Eliot etc. But around here, we also love old low-rent “men’s adventure” paperbacks (The Destroyer) and Valley of the Dolls.
Wanna fight about it?
X) That had me going back to research if Reading, in Berkshire, England, ever actually was an independent kingdom. I hadn’t thought so, but it would be justice if…
(No, it wasn’t. Alas.)
Gotta love a shout out for The Destroyer books (and a fun movie adaptation in the ’80s). I read a few back in the day. Crazy action and fun dialogue. Sometimes you just wanna eat popcorn.
So true and I do have to catch myself sometimes, but yes, I agree. Let people like what they like.
I’ve even stopped revieiwing books I didn’t like. While I do think negetive critism, as long as it done intellegently and without blantend bias, is a neccessary thing. I just don’t want to be the one to trash someone else’s dream anymore.
Right or wrong, two things, that stick in my craw and I always will rant about:
A. Using AI to directly create art. I can deal with AI used like a generic tool for things more like graphic art instead of illustrative. However, when publishers start using it because it’s cheap instead of paying a real, flesh and blood artist to do it – and they will if they haven’t already. It won’t be long before art loses it’s unigueness and soul.
B. Purist vs. fans, and for me; I see this mostly with Robert E. Howard fans.
It’s absolutely fine if you choose to be a purist and refuse to accept any pastiche or anything that even remotely strays from the cannon put down by the original. But being a purist does not make for the appointed gatekeeper.
Face it, the only reason we still enjoy beloved fictional characters, like Conan, Sherlock Homes, Tarzan, and even to a point, Frankenstein and Dracula, is because of pastiche, movies, comics, or adaptions made by others than the original author. If we were all gatekeeping purists, these characters would have faded away a long time ago. Most of us, some being these purists themselves, would never have even heard of them.
And this goes for music too.
It’s been far worse in recent years but to a point we’ve always had this, especially with the illusion of anonymity of the internet. Byron’s talk reminded me of a forum where we talked about YES and some of their collective ones (Keys to ascencsion) somehow offended the purists. Got literally “You should DIE!” type of language and all I’d done being a newbie to Yes since their prime days I wasn’t born or were in tye died diapers listening to analog folk music with my parents in various communes. And politics – I miss the days when I could have fiery heated debate with people of all sorts of spectrums of viewponts but still be friends. There used to be this book series “Opposing Viewponts” showing lots of differeng essays on topics casual and controversial. Looking these up today some scream like they are toxic radioactive waste just because they give the other guy a stage also.
The cultism is a bit toxic and most is divide and conquer by a handful of big media companies that just chew up and regurgitate things again and again – so the harassers and trolls are bots to create argument when people notice how the re-re-remakes SUCK compared to earlier versions. Another part is legit gatekeeping as fans of some genres loathe how the hobbies they’ve loved all their lives are being turned into chowder with snowflake ideals justifying it. If a product is so “Problematic” why fix it, why not make NEW stuff along the same lines without the baggage? Kind of admits they can’t do anything new and just want to own existing things. The TTRPG genre was forged in the fires of the Satanic Panic so the corporate pigs are surprised there’s so much opposition now when they got in easier. That is of course because we were the most progressive by far of all the pop culture items being butchered.
I’ve got a big solution to a major poo spray; Aiart (and generative Ai writing to a lesser extent) – have a “Human Only” league where art HAS to be 70% outside the computer. That 30% remaining is like science ficiton to anyone up to the late 1990s – scanning, correcting, color correcting, preparing for print, transmitting… But we’ve been using “AIArt” for professional work since the late 90s – it’s the “Generative” issue that’s causing the controversy while snotty piercing face kids do other people’s characters on a cintiq with software that’s picking the colors and helping them align things. And taking 5 tries to do a single line again and again -try that with pen and ink you piercing factory. So it’d be pencils, pens, inks – likely colors done outside so there’s a piece of paper/canvas. Not saying it’s the ONLY option but if you allow one of these people to claim no AI because they just Googled something to trace vs using Midjourney and correcting the hands it’s going to an old school cab vs a modern ride share thing. BOTH suck, IMO, as I found out a few days back trying to get a ride to the hospital…so I had to DRIVE with my HEART going crazy and fighting not to black out.. The same people insulting AI now used to harass and stalk artists for “Panel Swiping” where they were very blatant tracing an easy to Google image. They’ll be harassing people who dare complain the corporate official art is nothing but AI and there’s no other options in a few years, they just want to harass people.
The best thing would be – well remember the Undergrounds and Early Direct Market for comics and early TTRPG art? It was clunky and amateur but had its own magic and then some really unique styles appeared. Real media artists were forced out by big companies, championed by the piercefaced kids who then got stabbed by 3rd world hacks. It’s now just (at best) traced over 3D sketchup using computers and softwares with tons of AI tools and IMO if GenAi was something you had to be a ‘pro’ to know about absolutely they’d use it…! Most of these people would pass out with a pencil/brush tossed in their hands and certainly NOT be able to make anything like even a mid range analog artist can do with real world tools.