Person: “If you don’t like ____ you’re not a real ____.”
Me: Okay ::feels fraudulent::
And while I continued pursuing my interests, for a long time, I felt like something was wrong with me. Why don’t I like Louis CK or Curb Your Enthusiasm or (insert genius White male comedian’s name)? Why haven’t I watched that one battle war field movie with that one actor was it Brad Pitt idk?
All the while, I knew what I was intrinsically attracted to and consumed it with glory: Spongebob Squarepants, movies with a female director and/or created by people of color, books about diaspora, novels about nerdy renegade girls, cartoons/doodles by various artists, TV shows like The Nanny and ensemble character shows like Parks & Rec, movies based on Jane Austen novels and British series like Downton Abbey.
And these are all the things that make up my taste, and they’re the weird things that influence me and my art. That’s not to say I don’t explore things other people like – I do, it’s part of being a writer is gaining and observing perspectives – or that I don’t watch things that aren’t my taste to study them – I do, quite often. And yes I totally evangelize/chastise people for having not seen Parks & Rec. And we often push things because we want to share our joy and love for them.
Yet it doesn’t make us lesser if we’re just not interested. The world is so weird and broad and people are unique. There’s room for all of us and the proof is in the thousands of TV channels and podcasts and conventions I’ll never attend, but that have their own fans and people who get their life from it.
As comedian Amanda Seales says, I’m not for everyone. I have my own taste and I find the more I embrace it, the more I find and speak from my own artistic voice. And I love it. And I love weird people and the weird things they are interested in like this one German man on the subway who was obsessed with measuring toxicity levels in subway stations.
*stands atop mountain* I watched the #HarryPotter movies 16 years after they came out and I refuse to eat pumpkin anything. So there. *chucks microphone in awkwardly quiet club*