Or for the modern English, "There's no disputing taste".

 

As I understand it, that saying has been around for thousands of years. I find it curious that we've has thousands of years to learn it, understand it, practice it... and yet we seem to be aware of it less than ever as a culture.

 

Internet trolls have a history of amusing me far more than they should, but even I've been getting annoyed by the overly emotional 'my tastes are better than yours so you don't count as a human being' tone going on in all different forms of fandom all over the place. It's meant abandoning tv bloggers I used to like because I just can't stand how self-righteous they've gotten about their own emotional opinions to the point of flaming regulars they used to have great conversations with. It means not being able to talk about something I'm happy about because I'll get drowned out by haters, and not being able to be mildly but vocally disappointed in something I was excited about because I'll get flamed by the lovers. (And there is a such thing as middle ground, just for the record.)

 

Personally, I think I kind of blame Oprah. :thinking: She's the embodiment of the modern philosophy that your feelings matter and you the individual are very special and you need to focus on yourself because you're important. Not bad ideas in themselves individually in moderation, but they're quite thoroughly destructive when used together toward others. It leads towards a sort of irrational narcissism in which the personal feelings of the individual are used as the standard by which all other people and things are judged in spite of any evidence, and then the individual gets extra upset when anyone dares to apply their own feelings to the situation and disagree, which everyone is because we're an emotional society now, and tastes differ.

 

It's that emotional irrational partisanship that has destroyed modern American politics. In the health realm, that sort of mentality is deadly- "I don't feel safe about vaccines because people have said things about them so I'm not going to vaccinate my children". It's why a lot of easily prevented but serious childhood diseases are spreading more than they should. Or there's farming, where warm fuzzy feelings about organic salads can lead to deadly e coli outbreaks.

 

 

 

 

But there's very little to be rational about with art. If a movie makes one person happy and one person sad, it means they're interpreting the movie through personal backgrounds and experiences that are not and cannot be shared. So why is it ok to call the happy person an idiot because they're not sad now?

 

I remember ten years ago when the first Lord of the Rings movie was coming out later in the year, everyone was arguing about Legolas' boots among other things. He wears shoes in the books, and many of the fans were saying they would boycott the movies because having him wear boots proved that the filmmakers weren't sufficiently loyal to the source material. This of course made the movie lovers (who were irrationally loyal (and for good reason it turned out) to the movies before they were even released) insanely angry and arguing ensued.

 

It was hilarious to watch at the time. Some of the arguments got so silly. But they were always textual arguments (that I saw), they had some understanding that they were arguing about aesthetics which were subjective, and they didn't make it personal. At the end of the day they could agree that they loved some element of the books and talk about that.

 

Ten years later and every single dispute instantly becomes emotional, personal, and usually profane. It's not funny anymore, and it makes the elf fanboys look like masters of perspective in comparison. (Which is sad, for the record. It's so pathetically sad.)

 

When did this become ok? When did this become the norm? Why can't people act rationally towards each other? Why hasn't this generation learned to respect other's tastes? Will the internet ever grow up?

 

 

 

A thread for people who still love respectful, thoughtful middle ground.

Calm your tits.

^*snerk* :smug2::p

I think that I'd rather be a comma than a full stop

I think your point is, that some people regard themselves as "better" than the others because of their personal tastes/preferences, and those people think that it's okay to point out to those people how bad their tastes are? amiright?

EDIT: lol I think lt's obvious :tongue: tbh l couldn't decipher your whole post at first

 

But I understand that it can be a bit obnoxious that some people over-generalize and actually debate about little things. Perhaps they tend to let their emotions and ego to get in the way when they can't ingrain their opinions to each other(?). Some people have an abysmal way of thinking that you can't really help but to argue. I, for one can't respect the opinion of my former professor that only the courses who have board/bar exams that will gain a 'title' afterwards are the ones which are challenging. Heck, If I were taking a BA degree I would be offended. So the 'arguments/exchanging of ideas' is inevitable but yes, only necessary to a certain extent.