It Is Okay To Like Things, I Promise.

Lately, I've had a couple of solid opportunities to reflect on something that's rubbed me the wrong way ever since it came up on my radar, negativistic contrarianism, also known as "crapping on other people's joy to seem smarter or more refined than they are."

Science has yet to confirm the origins of this particularly insidious social virus, but I have a theory.

Back in the day, there was a caveman (let's call him Ug), who figured out that he was a fairly deft hand at carving lines on the walls of his cave, in a way that made them recognizable as deer and birds and things.
Ug's work started drawing a crowd, and before long tens of other cave people gathered to check it out. At this moment, he chiseled too deeply into the wrong rock, and released the deadly virus known as "Eh." (We know this, because it likes to take credit for its opinions by announcing its name before one is uttered. Over the years, it has tried to evade capture by changing its identity to aliases such as Well and Actually, but you can still spot it if you know what to look for.)

Anyway, one of the attending cavemen, whom I'll call "A'dik" caught the virus, which immediately went to work, causing its new host to say some load of buzz-killing garbage.

"Eh." the virus announces "They don't really look SO much like birds, do they? I mean...they really should have longer beaks. And the wingspan is way off.  That bird couldn't even fly. See, I only appreciate bird art that's done by the desert tribe. Because they live in the desert, they rarely see birds, so their yearning is so much more pronounced."

Now, A'dik seems pretty sure of themselves, and their opinions. And the fact that they weren't impressed by Ug's pretty birds must surely mean that A'dik has seen, done, and judged more and greater things than this, and their opinion must then be far more valid than that of the crowd.

As if by magic (or through the reproductive cycle of the virus), some of the cavemen nodded and began to agree with A'dik. "Sure, sure." They say. And not wanting to seem uncultured themselves, they begin to add on. "And what about those deer, right? Real deer aren't rock-colored at all. This is totally the wrong medium for the art form. Ug should be using mud pigment, or nothing. He's single-handedly ruining deer for me."

And the virus took hold of them too, and half the crowd left, complaining to each other. And several others in attendance felt too embarrassed about liking Ug's birds to speak up about it or recommend that their friends come and see them, and THEY lost part of their joy.



Okay, it's possible I got Ug's name wrong, but I think the rest is pretty on-point, from what I've seen recently in movies.

- Star Wars: The Last Jedi got glowing reviews from critics, only to get blasted by the Star Wars "fanbase" with pretentious nitpicking about little details and plot holes they're happy to let slide let slide in the original trilogy.

- The Greatest Showman had the opposite reaction. Crowds loved it, but critics can't stop complaining about how the film glorifies the "villainous" Barnum. It floors me that they watched a movie whose entire story was basically "it's a show, who cares if all the details are bullshit if it causes real joy", then walked out to write reviews about how it misrepresented historic fact.

I walked out of both movies feeling great. Enjoyed myself tremendously. Are they flawed? Sure. But some of my favorite things are. The fact is, that you can nitpick a rainbow or a sunset or a hug from grandma if you really want to.


There are a lot of ways to come across as a smart, refined, person of good taste that don't involve stripping the joy out of the room for someone else. If you rant and rave about how much something sucks, the only possible win for you is convincing other people that yes, the thing they once liked is actually bad, and you've stolen that piece of joy from them.
Congratulations, you're now A'dik.

We can all probably benefit from thinking a little before we let anyone else's opinion sway our own. Liking things is fine, even if your friends and coworkers don't, because you'll have that much more joy in your life than they've allowed themselves. You don't have to shout about it from the rooftops, but I say be unapologetic about it, no matter what it is.

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TL;DR - Enjoying life doesn't make someone inferior. Sowing misery to feel superior, does.