Busy days.

So today, instead of hearing me talk about my knitting, you get to hear my two-bit philosophies...

One thing I never understood (I'm using past tense because I noticed it most in college) was the phenomenon of disliking somethig because it got "too popular". I had a lot of friends who liked bands until they went "mainstream" and "sold out". Now, I'm not really a connoiseur of most pop music, but the bands never sounded that much different to me before and after their big contract. Okay, I could see getting tired of a particular song that's played over and over again (like the phenomenon of songs used on commercials: I'd rather there be a stupid, stick-in-your-brain jingle than a song that meant something to me and my friends when we were in high school). But I don't get the "oh, they're successful now, so it's time to ridicule them" philosophy that some of my friends adopted.

You would think they would at least be happy for the band's success.

I think it's a form of snobbery, really. The person is saying that they are so special and so esoteric that they can't possibly like something that the Great Unwashed likes, and so they will reject something they used to at least pretend to care about the minute it gets popular. And I think that's a reprehensible attitude - no better than someone basing their tastes only on what other people like.

I don't really understand that attitude; one of the best pieces of ongoing unspoken advice I received from my mother was "to thine own self be true". If I like something, it is because it has value to me and I see it as a part of who I am. I just can't get the strange Zelig-like attitude that one's enthusiasms need to change with the seasons.

But then I don't "get" fashion either, and that's kind of the same thing...