Why, people, why?

Ugh. This semester is a lot more work than I thought it would be. That's why the infrequent postings here.

But here's something that annoys me: Why do some people feel the need to crap all over someone else's enjoyment of something? I mean, there are myriad television shows out there that I think are awful and dumb, but if someone talks about how they love the show and stuff, I just kind of smile and think, "I'm happy you like it." If they ask me about it I just shrug and say I've never watched it.

But I've also had the situation of expressing a liking of something - a show, an author, a food - and having the person I was talking to recoil in something not unlike horror, and respond, "HOW can YOU like THAT?" The implication being, "I thought you were a person of taste and sophistication. Now I am not sure I can remain friends with you."

And I'm not talking about a person doing that in jest, or doing it ironically - I'm talking about someone who is for-real-honest horrified that I like the cartoon "Regular Show," or that I read mystery novels for entertainment, or whatever.

This is, I think, one of the most tiresome things about our modern society - how some people need to set themselves up as arbiters of taste, and have to tell anyone who likes something that they don't how bad and wrong that person is.

And I think it's part of the general hyperbolic tone, and inability to draw distinctions in our society - if you disagree with someone on something that is a matter of taste, it's the same thing to some people as "hating" them, or as confessing that you are a very immoral person.

And I've had people like that...it was as if they were trying to destroy my enjoyment of whatever it was, for whatever reason they had - a need to feel superior, maybe? Or just such a sense of outrage that something like "Regular Show" existed that they couldn't believe it and it was their mission to get rid of it by shaming its viewers one by one, or something. I don't know. I don't understand it.