when everyone loves something you just don't like

17 Jul, 2024

Do you ever get upset when the mainstream tastes are opposed to your own?

For example if everyone is so into game of thrones and it has like a 9.2 on IMDb and the book series has like a 4.4 on Goodreads (which is so high like its higher than Shakespeare) and you’re just like wtf

You’re just like “isn’t this just a soap opera with lord of the rings costumes?”

Whenever that happens I feel a strong need to find at least one person who dislikes it as much as I do, for the same reasons

Whenever everyone loves something that doesn’t even interest me in the slightest I get upset

Like lord of the rings, dune, game of thrones, breaking bad (ok a lot of these are shows or movies or books turned into shows or movies), my brilliant friend

I’m like what conspiracy is this why are you guys all pretending to like this

And it’s almost always these soap opera-like stories with what seems to me to be totally unfashionable, unstylish aesthetics

Stranger things is also a soap opera but it’s aesthetically pleasing so I can see why some shallow people would watch it

Or like when the world falls over and kisses the asses of the likes of Joan Didion or Ottessa Moshfegh

These blatantly cynical negative people who are just purely heavy

Or like really long boring books like infinite jest

It’s a lot like alcohol I think. Almost everyone likes alcohol though it is poison and it seems to bring joy to everyone except me

These instances make me feel I don’t get the world and I wish to get the world

But my mom’s friend keeps reminding me: there is nothing to get. People are just messed up

Yeah. They are. They need caffeine to function and alcohol to have fun.

I find it also upsetting how people act like Italian food is the king of food. Like have you ever had Thai food? Oh, you have? So you don’t like flavor then?

Maybe generic taste is just that. Maybe the more people like something the more we ought to question it

If I were French or a hipster I’d be really proud of not having a commoner’s taste but being rather Anglo-Saxon yet also collectivist in my upbringing, I find it upsetting

This is something I need to overcome

I had an English teacher who thought she was such a special snowflake because she’s never had a cheeseburger. She flaunted that fact about her like it was a phd in molecular biology.

She’s had burgers. And she’s had cheese. But she’s never had them together. Wow! And she refuses to ever eat a cheeseburger because it’s the only thing that makes her special! Aw!

I just am not bred that way

I wasn’t raised to want to be special like that

But I realized why I don’t like these shows and movies I mentioned. It has to do with a Chinese concept called “xiāo sǎ”

The meaning is elusive

But is related to figures like Dionysus (the god of wine and drunkenness, often described in contrast to Apollo, a man of sober intellect and linear thinking and agriculture and society. Dionysus is like the mad happy genius)

Or figures like Lao Tzu or JiGong (the latter was a Buddhist monk who was not very orthodox and would eat meat and drink wine. And he was lazy and would sleep instead of meditating. He was a goddamn bonvivant. But he is like a psychic genius and would get premonitions for disasters for ex and use his cunning wit to save people)

And these characters, as well as the literal characters for that word in Chinese 潇洒 are related in concept to wine. (The word for wine is 酒 which is almost indistinguishable from that second character…)

There is this laissez-faire, lightness, joyful but somehow lucid inebriation. This “not taking seriously” of this world of illusions, that somehow marks a true genius and a spiritually ascended one and has long been a sort of ideal for me

And these shows I mentioned that I do not like just take themselves too damn seriously

They have no sense of humor and take this world of illusions so seriously and can’t see beyond

They have no lightness of being

And that’s why I don’t like them. But most laypeople do not understand this elusive Chinese concept and even the Chinese do not necessarily want to be like this (if Dionysus is to Apollo then Lao Tzu is to Confucius)

The things I enjoy almost always feature this irreverence for “the way of things” and are absurd and silly and so light

So above and beyond
The troubles of man

there are a lot of contemporary whiny girl stuff - if you know what I mean - that I don’t like

Virginia Woolf (ok, nearly contemporary), Joan didion, Clarice Lispector, and idk like maybe zadie smith idk. I’ve never even read most of these people but I just feel like they’re not for me

When I read the premises of their books I feel no pull

I’m actually like annoyed and repulsed

They’re just so soppy and heavy like a wet blanket and they are so boggled down by their lives but have never known any real hardship

(Here some people might say you can’t judge that from the outside, that everyone is going through hardships, and here I want to tell them to go open their eyes and look at the world and see how some people live)

And I just have no sympathy for these whiny white women who are so self involved and self indulgent and lack for me any charm

But then.

A lot of the people I like like them

And I guess out of a desire to understand the people, I want to understand them a little.

Maybe. Idk

I will not force the breaking bad type stuff but I want to give these types of “hot girl mess” writings a chance

I used to be so good at saying no and tossing things out but now I feel somehow obliged to try to understand

Maybe it’s an attempt to get outside of myself by getting into someone who is so self involved.

But I feel quite protective of myself when I read things I deem toxic like that. I read it the way one observes a venomous snake.

But when I read the things I trust, I read them the way I would hug and kiss my cat

I try not to let the evils enter me

(The male version of that self indulgent female whining is actually Bret Easton Ellis and Charles Bukowski. These pseudo edgy guys)

Sometimes I feel I see the world too clearly and it makes me judgy and yet I don’t see it clear enough to have the light of compassion and understanding. I need to keep understanding until I’m no longer annoyed at anyone

Once, I was in a deep spiritual phase. I was studying chakras and Indian and Chinese and Japanese philosophies

I think this spiritual underpinning, this filtering of the world into “good for my spirit” and “others” has become a basic worldview for me. An automatic way of doing things.

I have high standards in that way

I consume books knowing they are not just irrelevant blahblahs but spells powerful enough to transform a soul

And knowing that, I choose books on a different caliber than most people

To be honest not even prestigious book awards choose books with such care and such standards

They are fine with pretty turns of phrases and inventive narrative styles.

Do you know what I mean?

They are not looking for life elixirs the way I am

It’s like I went to hermit monk school and came out assessing the world accordingly

I was looking into spirituality because I needed answers and a new life philosophy, a new approach?

I think I now have it

The philosophers I found then have influenced me and continue to influence me

It’s like I went shopping to find my style and now I just flaunt it

I wear my spirituality and philosophies like lingerie. No one can see it but somehow I walk a little straighter, a little happier

These things I’m saying. If only I could write a book of essays about it and publish it.

Then I can get really mad when it doesn’t get as popular as Joan Didion

I’ll be like “you guys just want to suffer huh? I’m giving you strawberries but you prefer to drink daiquiri. You deserve to be old fat and ugly you ignorant pieces of shit”

But it's true, you can’t force people to take your unsolicited advice.

But that’s the beauty of books. You write them and no one is forced to read them

(Whereas music should be fucking banned in public yo like they’re just blasting anything out there and you have to listen)

You know when people say that certain genius artists are born before their time?

That’s bullshit what they say

They’re always referring to Van Gogh when they say that.

Van Gogh wasn’t born before anything he was just bad at networking

But there are authors who are WELL FUCKING KNOWN authors who write these groundbreaking books

And even with their fame and exposure, nobody gives a shit.

I’m talking about Nietzsche’s ecce homo, Jules Verne’s Paris in the XXth century, EM Forster’s the machine stops

These things go unnoticed forever.

They’re not just “ahead of their time” they’re outside of common human time altogether

They will never be anything in the eye of the mainstream

I am on that caliber, personally, lmao

I say lmao to seem like I’m kidding and that I’m not actually that full of myself but actually I am that full of myself.

I think I’m on that caliber

I’m not a fortune teller like EM Forster or Jules Verne, but I know things that are true and wonderful that people don't see

It’s amazing how people all talk about these authors/thinkers and manage to ignore their best works

They get sucked in by entertainment value and ignore their truth

It would seem that the logical thing to do would be to get so damn happy that everyone can’t help but ask you how you got there. “What drugs are you taking?” they’ll ask

And then your advice will finally be solicited. But by that point you’ll have cultivated yourself so far beyond that you will no longer know how to put it into words that these folks can understand.

But then the other thing is: these contemporary whiny authors who get a lot of love…when they publish their first whiny chronicle, aren’t they also just publishing unsolicited whining?

Isn’t that even worse?

At least unsolicited advice has good intentions.

These people are just venting

I always think that. Whenever they publish their little essay collections

I’m like “who the fuck asked your sad self-indulgent ass for your goddamn opinions. who do you think you are”

And they have these uneducated unsophisticated ideas. These half baked thoughts

And that would be all fine except people out there are eating this shit up and paying so much money for it

And they’re saying so many wonderful things about this shit. This actual defecation of words.

And it makes me wonder if I should stop my own whining and publish my unsolicited advice so I can actually have something to whine about (cuz I can’t exactly say “nobody appreciates my genius” if I don’t put it out there!! But actually lately when I do put in the efforts to put my stuff out there, people do respond well. I’m not famous but I get noticed by some people)

Do you know what I mean?

Speaking of creating stuff though I haven’t been creating anything in a while. I had a little burst of energy and then I felt no urgent need to create anymore.

the desire to create is simply not there until I get this naggy insecure feeling like “you are worthless unless you create!!! It’s been xx many days since you’ve last created!!! You have to create now or else you are a nothing!!!”

And when that pain is strong enough I go into creation mode and you might think only forced garbage will come out of that kind of motivation but far from it. It’s good stuff. It’s like when parents force their kids to train for the Olympics. They actually get results. (I’m reading it back like “this is so good and I know what I’m talking about because I read good stuff on a daily basis”)

But lately I have such a solid sense of self that I just don’t even feel insecure like that. When I feel secure I just wanna talk to my friends. And read books and take naps and learn Japanese and jot down happy memories