Sorry for Having Taste: The Strange New Shame Around Knowing What You Like

There's a specific kind of dread that sets in when someone asks if you've seen that show — the one every single person in your social circle has been raving about for three months. You haven't. Not because you couldn't find the time, but because you watched the first episode, shrugged, and quietly moved on. Now comes the part where you explain yourself. And somehow, that explanation turns into something that sounds a lot like an apology.

When did having preferences become something you had to defend?

The Invisible Pressure to Consume Everything

We live in an era of cultural abundance. More music, more TV, more art, more content than any human being could ever process in a lifetime. And yet, the expectation isn't to curate — it's to participate. To be conversant in everything, to have an opinion on every album drop, every prestige drama, every viral moment. Opting out, even quietly, even politely, reads as a kind of failure.

This is especially visible in music. Tell someone you've never really connected with a critically worshipped artist — a Kendrick, a Taylor, a Mitski — and watch their face. It's not just surprise. It's something closer to concern. Like maybe you missed a developmental stage somewhere. Like your taste is a symptom.

And here's the thing: most people aren't even being overtly judgmental. The pressure is more ambient than that. It lives in the group chat, in the office Monday morning recap, in the comment section where someone who admits they didn't finish a beloved novel gets ratio'd into oblivion.

Open-Mindedness Went Off the Rails

Somewhere in the cultural conversation around being open-minded, we confused willingness to try things with obligatory enjoyment of all things. These are not the same. Being open-minded means you'll give something a fair shot. It doesn't mean you owe every piece of media a glowing review just because other people loved it.

But that distinction got blurry. Now, saying "I tried it and it wasn't for me" gets treated like a character flaw. You clearly didn't try hard enough. You didn't get it. You need to watch past the third episode, read past the first hundred pages, listen to the whole discography before you're allowed to have a take.

The goalposts for earning your preference keep moving. And the exhausting part? People are internalizing this. They're not just defending their taste to others — they're apologizing to themselves for having it.

The Prestige Trap

Nothing makes this clearer than prestige TV. The golden age of television has been so thoroughly marketed as a cultural landmark that not watching — or worse, not liking — certain shows feels almost anti-intellectual. People sit through entire seasons of things they're not enjoying because stopping feels like giving up. Like admitting they're not the kind of person who gets complex storytelling.

This is a wild thing to happen to entertainment. The whole point of entertainment is that it's supposed to be, at some level, enjoyable. Or at minimum, meaningful to the person consuming it. When we start watching things out of social obligation rather than genuine interest, we've stopped engaging with culture and started performing engagement with it.

And that performance is exhausting. More than that, it's a little dishonest — both to yourself and to the art you're pretending to appreciate.

Taste Is Not a Moral Position

Here's what gets lost in all of this: having specific, developed taste is not the same as being closed-minded. In fact, it's often the opposite. People who know what they like usually know it because they've engaged deeply with enough things to understand what resonates with them and what doesn't. That's not a limitation. That's a sign of genuine attention.

The problem is that in online spaces, nuance collapses. "I don't enjoy this" gets read as "this is bad" which gets read as "you're wrong for liking it" — a game of telephone that ends with someone feeling personally attacked because you skipped an album. The inability to separate personal taste from objective quality, or from personal character, has made every cultural preference feel like a referendum.

Your taste is allowed to be yours. It doesn't need to be universal. It doesn't need to be defensible to a committee.

Reclaiming the Right to Opt Out

The quietly radical act right now might just be saying "that's not really my thing" without the follow-up apology. Without the disclaimer about how you're sure it's great, you just haven't been in the right headspace, maybe you'll revisit it someday.

Boundaries around what you consume are legitimate. Not every critically acclaimed thing deserves your time. Not every beloved artist needs to be in your rotation. Not every cultural phenomenon requires your participation. You are allowed to let things pass you by.

This isn't about being contrarian, or proudly out of touch, or performing some kind of anti-mainstream identity. It's simpler than that. It's about trusting your own reactions enough to honor them without turning them into a public apology.

You liked what you liked. You didn't like what you didn't. That's not a confession. That's just being a person with taste.

And honestly? Knowing what you don't want is just as valuable as knowing what you do.