Blogger, and fount of seemingly endless pop culture knowledge, Mark Evanier had a post earlier this month, right before his birthday. It was about getting older and just not caring about… I guess we could call it “irrational umbrage” about certain pop culture things like specific comics or movies or music or whatnot. You can read the post here.
One of my brothers has a habit that I’ve tried to cultivate in myself: when someone expresses adoration for a work you don’t like (e.g. a film, a book, a TV show, etc.) ask them what they like about it. Granted, in order to be a less-than-obnoxious conversationalist, you usually do need to own up to the fact that the work didn’t work for you and then segue into your query. This approach also lends itself to being less snarky, which also tends to help in being a better conversationalist.
People who revel in being brusque — and generally dislike using the words ‘brusque’ and ‘conversationalist’ — will find this crazy talk.
And, of course, maybe you don’t want to have a conversation, you want agreement — or possibly snarky argument. I suppose that’s valid, but as I get older, I’d rather have discussion — especially if it’s a choice between discussion or vapid agreement. And if we’re not going to actually have a discussion about some work, why don’t we get back to our own work? Alluding to the post above, I’d rather work on my own crap as opposed to spending a lot of time talking about how some other work is crap. I guarantee there is someone out there who will deem my work crap when it goes out into the world.
There’s enough crazy and negative stuff in the world besides all the creative work we and others try and produce. In other words, there’s plenty of stuff to drag us down. When it comes to creative works, I’m way more interested in what pulls you up.
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