I Don’t Care What You Like
Endless Lists of What People Like and Dislike Are Boring
Many years ago, I had a friend who worked for Bill Graham’s Filmore West building stage sets for rock and roll bands. At one point, the Rolling Stones were coming to San Francisco and the crew, based on drawings that Mick Jagger had personally approved, spent days building an extravagant set for his upcoming concert. But when Jagger showed up for a preview, he stood on stage, glancing at everything they had done, cocked his hip and said (and you have to imagine his Mick-Jagger-British accent), “I donn laaak it.” And so, the whole thing was torn down and the crew started all over again.
This story was very funny back then because the stagehands ridiculously had to abide by the prince-like dismissal of all their hard work just because Mick Jagger was famous; he’s rich, he’s a star, he gets what he wants. But these days, the whole country seems to be enveloped by endless lists of preferences that every single person carries around in their head. Now, you can’t be around people without hearing what they like or don’t like, everything from food to clothing, every product on earth. We have become walking talking reviews. Worse, people take their lists very seriously.
Just stand at a Starbucks and listen to the line of people telling the beleaguered baristas how they “like soy and not coconut milk” or ask someone over for dinner and hear the litany of what they do or don’t eat based on who knows what. And like Mick, we are expected to pay attention when others announce their preferences, and we are enjoined to respect them as if theses likes and dislikes actually matter. But they don’t; no one really cares what you prefer or abhor. But proffering a list of “likes” (and dislikes) is now as ubiquitous in American conversation as the insertion of the actual word “like” used as a comma in the middle of a sentence. That too is, like, annoying.
We haven’t always lived in like-land. When I was a kid, one of four children in my family, the only concession to what any of us might like was permission to choose one food that we would have not eat. My choice was fish, and I have stuck to it for the rest of my life because I find fish disgusting. But beyond that exclusion, the kids in my family had to eat what was put in front of them, or starve to death, while watching others happily chow down on the rejected item. If anyone pushed a plate away, she then doled it out saying, “Oh good, more for the rest of us.”
Also, in those days, no one ever expressed their likes and dislikes in public or even to friends — that would have been considered rude and self-centered, and dangerously narcissistic. But now, the whole country seems to be pushed around by everyone else’s personal desires which are shoved down our throats, as if they were the most important information to know about a person.
It might be that capitalism and consumerism have brought us to this apex of personal reviews. Since the internet begs for us to comment on goods and services, every person on earth thinks their two cents are worth more than that. And it takes only a millisecond to hit that upturned thumb to express approval, which is just an overused easy plus for the lazy reviewer. Spend an hour really reading the reviews of some new product you might be considering and walk into a minefield of judgments from people you don’t even know. Here, too, we are expected to approve or disprove, follow their lead or reject it, as if they were experts when they are only people with opinions.
Disagreeing with someone’s choices, especially in person, can also start an endless inter-personal culture war with a friend over something as stupid as oat milk. But our passionately held list of likes and dislikes seems critical to one’s identity now as if what we buy or eat is really who we are. The likes also open the possibility of belong to a group of like-minded strangers, welcomed with open arms into some nebulous group that also likes their bagel toasted. That ingroup instinct apparently is compelling people to announce in public that they say, like kombucha in a desperate identity search for others who share their favorite drink, marking them as special and different from others who hate the stuff or have never tried it. To say I like kombucha means I fit with all the other kombuchians, we are one tribe, one identity. And you who don’t like kombucha? Well, you are excluded from our club. That kind of instantaneous group attachment is, of course, superficial, and transient, but it works in a culture that is suffering from vague identities. Apparently, what we like now define us more than our heritage, citizenship, religion, political party, or whatever.
But the truth is, none of this matters. No one cares what you like to eat or drink, if you prefer silk shirts over cotton, if you would rather watch a movie on your computer rather than your T.V., or the million other preferences you are dying to share. Sure, most friends want to know if you enjoyed a book or movie but only if that review comes with a decent explanation of your viewing and reading pleasure. That’s called an intelligent recommendation, not a statement about you and your desire to evaluate everything on earth from your point of view.
All these likes and dislike just point to a culture with too many choices, too much money to spend on our own personal gratification, and a population that is increasingly acting like a bunch of rock stars who expect the world to care what they like.
