43: Don't Yuck Other People's Yum

Rowan here, and I have a confession: I love Coldplay. In fact, they’re my favourite band. How do you feel about that?The reaction I get when I tell people varies, but I’m often met with negativity. “I can’t stand their music.” “They’re so overplayed.” “There are tons of indie bands that are way better, you know.”I’m one of those people who likes something popular that is often ridiculed by others. Think of the Twilight fans, Hunger Games stans, or the Swifties (and if you’re Canadian, Nickelback will come to mind, too.) But it’s not just popular things that get that kind of negativity. As humans, we’re quick to dismiss just about anything that doesn’t intrigue or excite us.When you don’t like something that someone else likes, do you tell them? And more importantly: If you do, why do you tell them? Where does that come from?This week, Lara and I talk about yucking other people’s yums and why this is so pervasive in our culture. We remind each other that we don’t all experience the same things the same way, and share some different phrasing we can all use so that we aren’t making someone else feel bad.*Let us know what you think about the judgment we hold for other people’s likes. And now I’m off to listen to Parachutes.(*Exception: Financially supporting JK Rowling. We get into that, too.) Transcript[00:00:00] Lara: you cannot like it, that’s fine, but I will not accept that.You say nobody should like this. Just because you don’t like it.[00:00:33] Rowan: Welcome to this week’s episode of Unboxing It. My name is Rowan.[00:00:36] Lara: And I’m Lara.[00:00:37] Rowan: and this week we’re covering a topic that we have chatted about ourselves just for funsies, and thought we should make this an actual.Episode and that is the concept of, and you’ve all heard this before, probably don’t yuck other people’s. Yum. What does that mean to you, Lara?[00:00:57] Lara: It means that just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it’s bad , or it doesn’t mean somebody else isn’t allowed to like something.[00:01:08] Rowan: Right, right. And then if you take that a step further, you can take that into the kink world, because that’s where I first heard of it. just from the outskirts,as a queer person listening in, when people are describing things like kinks and fetishes, and they’ll say, don’t yuck someone else’s, yum.It just means like everyone’s into different things. Something that you might really, like, somebody else might not really like or vice versa, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or bad. So you can take that from like the fetish side of things all the way to what we have discussed. you know, books that have been really popular, for example?[00:01:48] Lara: Yeah. No, it’s all kinds of things. obviously it can be used everywhere. Kink, not where I’ve heard of it first, which is fine, but I think you know, , it really comes down to, I think in times past it was quite normalized to think that your way is the right way and that telling everybody that, Was a good idea, right? So, nope, we don’t do it like that. We don’t dress like that. You don’t wear white after Labor Day. Like ? Why is that something that I know as a rule? Because who cares what color you wear when but somehow that was like something people would say, enough that I’ve heard it and people would insist this is how you do things.This is how you dress at certain times. This is how you don’t dress. This is how you, Do your hair. there’s a million things where people are like, this is the correct way and therefore it is fine for me to say that your way if it is not that way, is wrong.[00:02:49] Rowan: I first got introduced to this concept, probably a lot earlier than that, back in, elementary school. I remember that people were wearing Converse or, converse all stars back in the eighties. I couldn’t afford Converse. My parents got me Panthers. It was the Zellers version. And if you’re Canadian, you know exactly what I’m talking about when I say the Zellers version of something.Unless you’re a really young Canadian, in which case. I’m sorry you did not get to experience the amazingness. That was Zellers.. but more so when I got into music and it was almost like you had to pick a lane when it came to music. So you had, I was a head banger as we called them in the day.I liked all the,metal bands, everything from, you know, mega death to the hairbands, like Motley Crewe, that sort of thing. And. That was my yum. And somebody else who was really into pop might have been like. That’s awful. I hate that stuff. No, you have to like this stuff.My music’s the best. and then people who say liked rock would say, ah, pop, it’s all fabricated. It’s synth. It’s,just, recorded one track at a time. or these metal bands, they go in and they all play together, which wasn’t necessarily true, but that’s what we believed. And youwould have this, back and forth of, mine is the best, no, yours is the best.And. We see that now, but almost in a different way too. I remember when speaking of kinks, 50 Shades of Gray came out. I think a lot of us of a certain era of a certain age, remember when that book came out and I never read it. I never read it specifically, not because I had an issue at the time with the content, although there’s been much discussion about the content these days and it’s been really analyzed in different ways and made a lot of people think.But at the time it wasn’t because it was, offensive to me somehow. It was more that a friend of mine whose opinion I really respect. Asked me, have you read this book yet? And I said, no. And she said, don’t read it. it’s terribly written. It’s gonna, as a writer, it’s going to drive you crazy.You’re not gonna be able to handle it. And I will admit that first of all, I do not consider myself a fantastic writer. other people have said that they think I’m a good writer. Thank you. I don’t think I’m terrible. I just don’t think I’m like way up there like a lot of people whose writing I really respect.But I wouldn’t say I’m a bad writer either. But again, that’s debatable. I have an issue with. Poorly edited books more than anything. I think a lot of writers,you know, we write our drafts and then we send them to the editor and then the editor sends them back. And if we’re lucky, we have a really good editor who can kind ofpoint out where we can maybe not repeat the same words or phrases all the time.Maybe we can switch things up, use a different word here, use a, different way of describing this there. And. I find sometimes, and this is what she was telling me with this particular book, she said the thing that would drive me crazy was that it repeated itself a lot. There wasn’t a lot of originality in the wording, and so it would be really hard to get into the story.If you take that, you kind of transpose it into a lot of other things. You have people who have said the same thing about Twilight. You’ve had people who said the same things about, I mean, I could just go on, there’s a lot of books - Shopaholic series. a lot of these books that have been huge for some groups of people have also been completely mocked, ridiculed, and dismissed by others.And there’s definitely a psychological phenomenon going on there.[00:06:33] Lara: Yeah, a bunch of the ones that you mentioned, 50 Shades is one, Twilight is another one. I’ve heard it about Hunger Games. Lots and lots of books get this. It’s not well written, criticism in a way that suggests to me they think you should never read or like that book.It’s not even well written. And I would like to say. Then why have millions and millions of people read the books? Loved the books, shared the books, told other people to read the books, right? I think part of it is that it’s a compelling story to many people and whether or not it is exceptionally well written.It obviously didn’t take away from the story that people are loving. Right. Could it have been written better or more grammatically correct, or edited better? All of those things? Sure. But people still liked it, which tells me that it was good regardless. You know?I guess it depends what. Definition of good you’re using, but if people liked it, then stop acting like they shouldn’t like it because it wasn’t written a certain way.I also think the way that I read. I don’t know that I skim everything, but I do skim sections. I skip sections. If I’m like, just take me to the next dialogue, or like,I’ll just take like the feeling of a paragraph instead of reading it carefully. So I’m very happy with the book, There’s no issue that I have with the writing, and when people are like, this is written so poorly, how could you have read it?I’m like, oh. Okay. I think I’m much better now. I don’t really care if people say that now, but there was a time where I’d be like, oh, it makes you feel like, oh, I shouldn’t have liked it. Or maybe I’m not good enough in English to know when something’s badly written. Right? Like there’s a lot that comes with people saying it’s badly written, you should never read it.It’s different to say as somebody who I know really appreciates, literature of a certain kind, I don’t think you will enjoy this book, which is very different than don’t read it. It’s terrible in every way. And it just really gets me when people act like a book that is as popular as Twilight or 50 shades is just being slammed constantly.just don’t read it. Then[00:08:57] Rowan: as a species, we really enjoy being morally superior. I do know this psychological reasoning and I had to research it for, funny enough, my last book and shaming others for something has. A survival element to it. So hear me out. When we all used to live back in cave days and you had a small group of people you relied on for everything, say 15, 20 people, you’re all living together.If one of those people wasn’t doing what the rest of them were doing, if one of those people was not pulling their weight or whatever it might be, you had to figure out either. How to get them to change their ways or how to get them to leave your group, because otherwise everything would probably fall apart and you wouldn’t live very long.So the theory from anthropologists, from what I understand, is that our bodies learned to give us those little hits of dopamine when we would. Publicly gang up on someone.And it makes a lot of sense in those days for survival reasons, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.It doesn’t translate well to our modern culture. And we see that, for example, in all those pile-ons on the internet. Like, you see someone have a bad take or what you think is a bad take, and then you see that 300 people have already told this person all the things you were going to tell them, right?Like you were going to say they were wrong for all of these reasons, you still do it anyway. You still pile on. That’s why it’s a pile on, and it’s because. Usually you’re getting a little reward. Your reward center is sending you something. And I think that translates to even things like books, movies, music, clothing, anything that makes you right in some area and somebody else wrong in that same area.So the other phenomenon that I think happens here is that. The more popular something is, the more eyes are on it. The more scrutiny it gets, the more analysis it gets, the more people have opinions on it, the more people get tired of hearing about it. Maybe the more they might, in some cases, feel morally superior if they never.read it. Never watched it. Never subscribed to it, because. That’s not for them. And then you get kind of that, hipster phenomenon there, right? Where like, I liked it before, it was cool. Or, you know, that artist was great until, they got too big. Or you see it all over the place and it is worth having a look at because a lot of it can come down to our own insecurities like I used to be.That person a hundred percent. I was that person. I will own that. I’m not proud of it, but it would be a disservice to say that I wasn’t that guy. I wasn’t identifying as a guy then, but I wasn’t that person. But it was because deep down, I was really insecure. I was insecure about certain things.So if I could latch onto something that made me feel better, for example, saying, Ugh. I never read 50 Shades. I hear it was badly written or, , I watched Twilight. It was ridiculous. I would never watch it. Why do you like that so much? Or whatever it might be, right? Like I think that gave me that little dopamine hit of.I am somehow better than you. And we see that over and over in a lot of these conversations. Like there’s one thing to have an opinion and go, ah, it wasn’t really for me. you know, , why didn’t you like it? Oh, I just, didn’t like these elements. But you know, like, Hey, to each their own. That’s very different than what is wrong with you for that being your favorite thing.[00:13:04] Lara: Yes, exactly, because it’s fine for you to not like it, but I don’t think it’s fine for you to tell me that. Me liking it makes me somebody who doesn’t understand what a good book is, right? Like those are very different things, and I do think part of it is a confidence thing. I think part of it is, if.I don’t like something other people like, well then what’s wrong with me? Right? There’s so many things that come up and make us feel uncomfortable, but we all get to like different things for different reasons and for sure, this is something I’ve said a million times on this podcast already, but.Everywhere else, we are all different. We all process things differently. We all have different emotions, we have different backgrounds. that sounds really obvious when I say it, but it’s not obvious to many people when they don’t think about it and they just assume everybody thinks like them.They assume everybody. Would want the same things as them, and therefore they put out information in a way that suggests that you should do something different if you want to be correct because they’ve figured out what’s correct for them.[00:14:18] Rowan: I am going to throw a caveat in here. It’s a big one, so get ready. I take a strong stand. Against people supporting Harry Potter.[00:14:30] Lara: Mm-hmm.[00:14:31] Rowan: I think that if you are for trans people, if you are for trans rights, you cannot at the same time support a franchise where the billionaire behind that franchise is using that money openly and proudly to squash trans rights around the world.[00:14:55] Lara: Yes, and I think that’s such a different conversation, right? There’s the part where, I mean, I suppose if people are like, well, my yum are racist, transphobic people. Then I guess I don’t think you should have that. Yum,[00:15:09] Rowan: I’m gonna yuck that one.[00:15:10] Lara: Yeah, yuck. I need to yuck it too. But I think that there’s a difference between we just have a difference of opinion and when somebody is supporting somebody who, I think is terrible, that’s different.JK Rowling is for sure, one for me. Chick-fil-A, which is coming to my neighborhood soon is one for me. There’s another one. there was a book that I read as part of a book club maybe 20 years ago called Enders Game, and it’s by Orson Scott Card. I looked it up to make sure, and I used to tell people like, if you wanna read a science fiction book, I really like this one.But then I found out he’s anti-gay, anti-gay marriage. Like he’s Throws all his money into, supporting causes. . I mean if, is that how you say that? His causes anti-gay anyway. He gives them a lot of money. His[00:15:58] Rowan: causes anti-gay?[00:16:00] Lara: Well, I don’t know.Well, I’ll never see him in my coffee shop, No, but like I don’t tell people about that book anymore. I don’t. Read it. Like I reread books sometimes I’ll be like, I’m not reading that. Like it’s, there’s no financial, impact for him if I don’t reread a book I already own. But like for me, I’m not doing it. I’m not gonna reread Harry Potter again, even though I own all the books.[00:16:25] Lara: end of story. I just, I’m not willing to support or pretend that. The person who created this isn’t terrible, and that’s that, how do you separate the art from the artist conversation? Because it’s certainly a hot topic and people feel different ways about it. But to me, most of the time, if I found out somebody’s terrible, I don’t want to have anything to do with that thing, no matter how much I liked it in the beginning.End of story.[00:16:55] Rowan: Yeah. look, I know a lot of people who grew up on Harry Potter. My kids, among them, one of my kids is trans, so that sucks. not that they’re trans. It sucks that they all grew up on those books and then had to find out that she really doesn’t like people, like one of them and myself.it’s one thing to say, ah, Hogwarts really shaped me. Like that whole world really was a big part of my childhood, and there’s still a part of me that thinks about it sometimes and remembers when I dressed up as. Hermione for Halloween or whatever. Like,I get that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.I’m not saying you should erase all your memories and always remember that this woman is a terrible person that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is time that you purchase anything that is Harry Potter related, you are , directly supporting someone. Who wants to eradicate my rights.[00:17:58] Lara: Yep.[00:17:59] Rowan: And that is a direct attack. on me, so to speak. Like I understand that the person doing it might not be hateful. in fact, I’m sure that most of the time they’re not. Sometimes it’s ignorance. Although, to be honest at this point I feel like it’s almost willful ignorance not to understand what she’s doing because she’s very open about it.She makes it most of her personality right now, you just have to go see for yourself. go to x, go have a look at what she says. Right. It’s very open. but yeah I think that there’s a difference between your reading a book or a series. I might not necessarily like. And you are supporting someone through their work who is trying and succeeding, I might add in causing great harm to others.and I know,there’s a difference between doing it and not being aware of it. And doing it even once you’re aware of it because you’re like, she’s already rich. What’s one more, purchase going to matter at this point? Well, it matters. It matters because it continues to get her licensing somewhere.So you mentioned Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-A is another one that is very anti LGBT. The owners are very prominently anti LGBT and so supporting them directly. Goes to funding things that harm LGBT people, hobby Lobby in the US. there is definitely for me, a big disconnect.That is when I’ll yuck someone’s yum. But what I’m actually yucking or your ethics at that point. Sure. It’s not that you like something, I don’t care if you like Harry Potter or not. I am at that point disappointed by your choices because your choices are telling me who you are as a person, which is someone who is not safe for me to be around.[00:19:49] Lara: Yeah, you can love a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich taste wise and still not buy it because you don’t wanna support people who are doing bad things. Like I think those are different. You know, one of my examples of. Don’t yuck. Someone’s yum. Is I once held this workshop and I had workbook. I had purchased and it was very like big hippie kind of looking women drawings all over.It was really bright colors. And I had somebody at my workshop who could not stop talking about how ugly it was and how who would ever want something like this and why would you ever buy this? And I was like, first of all, I bought it. Second of all. why don’t you try, this is not to my taste, because you cannot like it, that’s fine, but I will not accept that.You say nobody should like this. Just because you don’t like it. And it’s not to my taste. It’s something that I think that was the first day I said it, but like I have said it so much and it makes me happy. Every time I hear one of my children say, oh, this is not to my taste, because yeah, don’t tell me it’s gross if you didn’t like dinner.But you can say, this is not to my taste, and that is fine. Go ahead. But I like it, that’s why I made it. So be quiet.[00:21:12] Rowan: Yeah, I just don’t really have the energy to deal with people who go out of the way to hurt someone else’s feelings because they think their opinion is more important than somebody else’s thing that they really like.Like my response, if somebody says something like, Do you like my shirt? Not that I get asked that very much, but I just, you know, do you like my shirt? My response will honestly be, you know what? It’s not something I would personally wear, but. I can see really love it, and that makes it look great on you.You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing. Because I mean, that’s true. Like I think if somebody really loves something and is proud of it,it brings them joy. why would you go outta your way to hurt their feelings? it’s just not front of mind for me, and it’s not even in my periphery.It’s just not something I want to do. But again. I used to do it, and I used to do it because my feelings of insecurity, my deep down need to feel like I wasn’t worthless, I wish it was exaggerating, but there was a lot going on inside of me before I figured myself out. But that really deep need to feel like I wasn’t awful, that usurped.My kindness sometimes. My kindness now I think is front and center, but also I’m much more confident. the nice thing about working in a coffee shop all day. Is I see a variety of people come in and everyone is so unique, especially when you work in the queer village, like everybody is so unique and brings their own flavor of life in there.And it is really opened my eyes to. How beautiful that is. I already loved diversity. I love it even more now, and I love that I can walk into a bookstore and there are thousands and thousands of books on the shelves, and that each one of them is written for someone. Each one of them is gonna be something that somebody picks up and goes.That’s what I love, like. I love Bigfoot, love Cryptids, but especially Bigfoot’s, my guy. Bigfoot’s my guy a hundred percent. He is real. Don’t care what any of you say. No, don’t care about your science. I did my own research. Bigfoot’s the real deal. Thank you. and sometimes people laugh at me because I love Bigfoot so much.I’ve got stickers all over my laptop. I have a couple shirts, like I love the dude. It’s great. And that I, can I tell you why? No, I could not tell you why. I just know that the idea that there might be some weird creature out there that people have seen, but we’ve never been able to prove and you know, did they really see it?Or was it a bear or, it brings me so much joy. So if I’m gonna be that guy that likes Bigfoot and Dreams about going to a Bigfoot conference but is really scared because a lot of them are in places where they vote for people that would not be, super friendly to me. and so I probably will never go if I can be that guy.Why can’t. You, whoever you might be. Like the Hunger Games, which by the way, I also really liked and read so rapidly on my, I think it was like my 40th birthday. God, I love that series, but I understand that it’s not for everybody. I don’t know, like I just don’t understand why we can’t just all have our things.[00:24:35] Lara: Yeah, I think a lot of people don’t necessarily want. To have other people feel badly when they say they don’t like something, but they don’t realize what their words can do to make other people feel. Sometimes they’re trying to be funny. It’s just a joke. I’m just trying to be funny. I was like, okay, but your joke is not nice.So know that. certainly I used to love to go on a whole bit about how I didn’t like certain kinds of things. But now I say something different. So if you said to me, Lara, I am going on a two week canoe camping trip, I might now say I love that for you because never do I ever want to do that.[00:25:23] Rowan: I love that for you.[00:25:27] Lara: I love that for you. Same with people who wanna walk the Camino oh, I love that for you.Clearly when I say that, I am saying it because I am saying that is not to my taste.[00:25:40] Rowan: I’m gonna be paying attention to that when we talk.[00:25:44] Lara: Yeah, you watch out,[00:25:47] Rowan: it’s great.[00:25:48] Lara: But I love that for you and I truly do. Like, if that is something you like, go do it. Just because I don’t wanna do it doesn’t mean it’s bad. And so I do think some of the way that we communicate. it’s just always been that way. So we’ve never noticed that some of the things we say or some of the ways we react aren’t the nicest.And if we think about it a little bit, we can likemake small tweaks that mean that we are not yucking someone’s yum in a way that is very. I don’t wanna say careless, but like they’re not even noticing they’re doing it. They’re not like intentionally being like, you are stupid for liking that.They’re just like talking without noticing that what they’re doing could make somebody else feel shitty about what they’re saying they like. And I think that it’s a simple thing to change and to start noticing and to realize is worth changing.[00:26:46] Rowan: I think this is where neurodivergents are changing the game, and so thank you to all my neuros spicy friends because special interests Are being talked about more and more. A lot of autistic people will tell you they have special interests and of course the. Stereotypical one would be trains, but there are so many, right?I have a friend who loves like urban planning, that is their thing. They love urban planning. They watch videos on urban planning and they don’t wanna do it as a job. They’re just fascinated by it. Right? to the point where I’ve met so many people like this, that I’m like, it’d be really cool to have a special interest event.At my coffee shop. Like just in the evening. where everybody can present their special interests for like 15 minutes. Everybody gets like a 15 minute window. And I think that’s so cool. And it’s the complete opposite, like the complete 180. Of yucking someone else’s.Yum. because what you’re doing is you’re giving them space to share what brings them joy and you’re learning something at the same time. Maybe you’re learning that, hey, whatever that thing that was that you thought was boring or not so good or whatever might actually be kind to cool, even if it’s not your thing, like you’re actively celebrating.Other people’s interests. That is amazing and we all need to do more of it.[00:28:13] Lara: Have you heard of these PowerPoint parties people are having now?[00:28:16] Rowan: Yeah, that’s where I got the idea from.[00:28:19] Lara: I, think it’s amazing. I love the idea, right? Everybody make a PowerPoint on your favorite thing and talk about it for 10 minutes.I’ve seen them doing it with explain your job ‘cause none of us really understand what you do. what a great thing to say. You know things I don’t know, And I would like to learn from you instead of feeling bad because you don’t know everything. Or like, there’s just so many ways that we can flip the script to being like, this is a good thing.And yeah, I really hope people just realize from this conversation, or maybe they already did and we’re just reinforcing it, that it’s fine for people to like different things than you. In fact it’s good.[00:29:01] Rowan: It’s good.Beautiful words. And the last words of this episode, I think we are going to leave it there. We would love to know what you think about this entire topic. Do you think that we are yucking people’s yum too much? As a general rule, do you think that there are good reasons for it? What did you think about the idea of not supporting problematic artists?I would love to know. I know Lara would love to know. So drop us a line, send us an email, comment on our substack. Subscribe to us anywhere you get your podcast, and we will see you next time. Thanks for joining us.[00:29:39] Lara: Thanks. This is a public episode. 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