This begs an interesting question for me, actually. Where do I draw the line between "guilty pleasure" and just a regular "thing I like"? I'm a whore for a lot of things that aren't necesscarily typical interests for a 22 year old straight male - bad 90s pop music, John Hughes movies (I have seen Sixteen Candles more times that I would care to admit), PBS kids shows, The Killers, and probably a whole bunch of stuff that would make for a much better list that isn't coming to mind offhand. For that matter, there are a lot of other things that I like to do that could be considered a guily pleasure - buying breakfast on my way to work, indulging my insatiable gadgetlust, etc.
Actually, now that I'm forcing myself to think about it, I suppose my real guilty pleasure is pop culture. Like a lot of geeks, I have a penchant for references. My roommates and another good friend recently put an ad on Craigslist to try to recruit some additional people for their pen and paper roleplaying group. When a couple of respondents to the ad came by our apartment to hang out and get to know everyone better, one of them commented on how it was like my friends and I were speaking a different language, because we communicated so much in references. Which is completely true. We have all known each other since midway through high school and have been hanging out on a regular basis for much of that time. Anyway, a lot of those references are not just to things that happens to us as a group, but things that we have seen or watched together. Rarely does a day go by when somebody doesn't reference Futurama or Avatar: The Last Airbender or some other such thing.
Anyway, I have always felt vaugely guilty about liking things that everyone else likes. After a good few years going through school trying to fit in, I eventually stopped caring and started doing my own thing. A couple of years after that, I ended up with a pretty strong anti-establishment streak. I always have a hard time embracing things that are popular or even mainstream. Example: I recently started listening to The Killers. I had always avoided them because they often got lumped in with groups like The Strokes and Velvent Revolver, which were supposed to bring some kind of new age of rock and roll and completely remake the genere. Which is bullcrap. Particularly The Strokes...they are just terrible. Terrible. So I had always avoided The Killers, but a month or so ago had occasion to listen to Hot Fuss in it's entirety...and to my chagrin, I liked it. I liked it a lot, actually. Which was a good lesson - sometimes, things are popular because they're *good*, not because mainstream society is being stupid (although a lot of the time, it is).
That was a lot of words to come up with this: TL;DR - my guilty pleasure is mainstream popular culture (or at least the parts of it that don't suck).
05 July 2010
(OT) 30 day challenge
My friend Megan was kind enough to post a neat "blogger's challenge" on her blog, which was cool as hell and I've decided to rip off. Basically, how this works is for 30 days I'll post an entry explaining where I stand on each of the items in the list below. I'm not sure how we'll I'll do at remembering to keep up with it, and of course I have Defcon at the end of the month - I don't see myself going to the trouble of doing blog updates by smartphone or Kindle. So I reserve the right to double up if I need to.
Day 1: Guilty pleasure
Day 2: What inspires you
Day 3: 5 songs to take on a desert island and why
Day 4: Your image of paradise
Day 5: A thank you to someone who changed your life
Day 6: Earliest memory
Day 7: Your favorite cover of your favorite song
Day 8: Someone you want to see as President
Day 9: 5 things you want to change
Day 10: Describe a dream you had this week
Day 11: Favorite picture of yourself
Day 12: Favorite musical artist's life story
Day 13: A memory that makes you laugh
Day 14: Best mashup
Day 15: A song that changed your life
Day 16: Something you want to do in the next 5 years
Day 17: What you want to be remembered for
Day 18: A picture that makes you feel _______?
Day 19: A passage from a book that has moved you
Day 20: First song you heard by your favorite band
Day 21: Your favorite medium of art
Day 22: Somebody you would die for
Day 23: Most awkward first impression
Day 24: Most memorable moment of childhood
Day 25: Something you would do if nothing stopped you
Day 26: What is love?
Day 27: The meaning of life
Day 28: A moment you remember being completely happy in and why
Day 29: What do you live for?
Day 30: Ways you've grown over the past thirty days.
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