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Guilty Displeasures

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Re: Guilty Displeasures

#21

Post by shermantanktop »

No argument from me about opera. The music is often fabulous but the “acting” is histrionic, the plots are generally overwrought, and the singing is like watching the 400th lap of the Indy 500. First two laps were kind of cool but now we’re in the fourth act and why can’t this tenor stop yelling?

But I don’t have any guilt about my displeasure. I’m a snob about some things, a reverse snob about other things, and some things I just like or dislike for whatever reason.

Some people wrap a lot of their social identity up in passing an invisible bar in the level or type of interests they hold.

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#22

Post by Obscurity4340 »

shermantanktop wrote: post #21

No argument from me about opera. The music is often fabulous but the “acting” is histrionic, the plots are generally overwrought, and the singing is like watching the 400th lap of the Indy 500. First two laps were kind of cool but now we’re in the fourth act and why can’t this tenor stop yelling? But I don’t have any guilt about my displeasure. I’m a snob about some things, a reverse snob about other things, and some…

Its soo relaxing. I fall asleep every time and its not anything to do with interest or bordeom. Also if its in a foreign language. Super deep sleep

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#23

Post by peterldowns »

blargthorwars wrote: post #2

I'm supposed to like They Might Be Giants and Talking Heads, but I just can't. Even after a Terry Gross marathon of Fresh Air.

I listened to TMBG early on in my music life and eventually came to "not particularly enjoy" them. Talking Heads, on the other hand, have only gotten better and better in my opinion.

I mean COME ON https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xphLY5ucIpQ

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#24

Post by tombert »

In theory I'm ok with drugs being legalized, but I will admit that I have a strong distaste for people who routinely use drugs and drug culture.

I'm not talking about people who drink during the holidays or smoked weed in high school, those people don't bother me. I'm talking about the people who need to lecture about how great weed is and feel the need to smoke it every day and make it a vital part of their identity. I find people like that insufferable. I think the people wearing cannabis-leaf t shirts are generally annoying, and I hate how everyone who smokes a joint and watches a Carl Sagan video seems to decide that they're a philosopher.

I'm a pretty boring American liberal, I think drugs should be legal, but I guess that's more in an abstract sense, sort of a NIMBY thing. I'm ok with people doing drugs, as long as I don't have to deal with those people and they do it far away from me.

I acknowledge the hypocrisy in this. Can't help how I feel.

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#25

Post by toast0 »

shermantanktop wrote: post #21

No argument from me about opera. The music is often fabulous but the “acting” is histrionic, the plots are generally overwrought, and the singing is like watching the 400th lap of the Indy 500. First two laps were kind of cool but now we’re in the fourth act and why can’t this tenor stop yelling? But I don’t have any guilt about my displeasure. I’m a snob about some things, a reverse snob about other things, and some…

> and the singing is like watching the 400th lap of the Indy 500. First two laps were kind of cool

Not sure if you know, but the Indy 500 only goes to 200 laps; watching the 400th lap has got to be super boring :P. OTOH, the Wienie 500 [1] ran at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and was only two laps; I guess there's a 100x inflation in the miles number there, but I'm ok with it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMyES63Rgvg

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#26

Post by toast0 »

derefr wrote: post #9
abraxas wrote: post #5

The great outdoors. Hiking, skiing, camping in the wilderness. I always aspired to be a person who genuinely enjoys this shit but at 50 I decided that yeah, this ain't going to happen. All indicators point to me being the kind of person who likes this stuff - locale, income level, fitness level, age etc. I spent decades trying to learn to ignore mosquito bites or frigid cold or vicious rain to no avail. It's just not…

That sounds like you just don’t like the climate + ecology of the place you happen to live / the places people around you enjoy visiting. Ain’t no mosquitoes or cold or rain in Arizona.

Arizona has cold. I used to visit a place where you could see ski lifts; although I was never there when they were operating.

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#27

Post by anon_cow1111 »

Probably the most obvious for this community is being very enthusiastic about technology but loathing anything with "smart" in the name. (I still use a flip phone and 15+ year old appliances)

Similarly I grew up always enjoying video games but it feels like a burned out husk in the modern era. Most of the big dollar "video game" market is now just MTX gambling and even a LAN party probably routes everything through Steam or Epic's servers

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#28

Post by tombert »

blargthorwars wrote: post #2

I'm supposed to like They Might Be Giants and Talking Heads, but I just can't. Even after a Terry Gross marathon of Fresh Air.

I love TMBG, and I tried to get my wife into them, but it never really vibed with her, which is fine.

That said, we went to a TMBG concert in Brooklyn about 11 years ago, and she actually had a really good time, and was even singing along to some of the songs. With music, the context of "how you're listening to the music" is equally important to the music itself.

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#29

Post by strken »

tombert wrote: post #24

In theory I'm ok with drugs being legalized, but I will admit that I have a strong distaste for people who routinely use drugs and drug culture. I'm not talking about people who drink during the holidays or smoked weed in high school, those people don't bother me. I'm talking about the people who need to lecture about how great weed is and feel the need to smoke it every day and make it a vital part of their identity…

This is entirely normal. I think jet skis and French arthouse cinema should be legal, I just don't want either of them anywhere near me.

Re: Guilty Displeasures

#30

Post by markus_zhang »

Oh. That's definitely my ~6 years old kid. I should spend >= 90 minutes of high quality time with him every weekday after he comes back from school, but nowadays I'm only spending 45-60 minutes. And I'm not reading much to him these months. The "good" news is that grandparents will go back next month, so I gotta pick up more time with my kid. Not sure about the quality, though. Sometimes I don't enjoy doing things he enjoys to do, so I fake for about 15 minutes and call a break. I can't wait for the him he reaches 6 -- I'll gift him a RPi loaded with DOSBian, sit with him every Wed evening to code QBASIC games. I'll ask him to do the design and I'll code it before him. He doesn't read yet, but maybe by then he can read some simple words.

The other one is efficiency. I spend a lot of time doing things that have nothing to do with the objectives that I set. If I measure myself using the Carmack productivity metric[1], I probably won't even finish 1 CD every day. My productivity has gone down a lot since I completed my previous learning project at the end of Jan so it really sucks. I feel that I'm wasting my life away.

So anyway, these are the two symptoms that show I'm a bit messy inside.

[1]: Brian Hook once wrote in his blog that John Carmack used to measure his own productivity by playing CD while working. If he stopped working, even for going to the bathroom, he would pause the play. At the end of the day he counted how much time the player played.

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