Take something you don’t like and try to like it
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I appreciate that it’s useful to have an open mind about your tastes and preferences, but each rabbit hole I stumble into is far deeper than the time I have available to explore. So for me, i have to find reasons to dislike things to protect my time and my existing obsessions.
What has kept your interest?
I'm 44 and have had countless hobbies over my adolescent and adult lives. Some I've taken up multiple times, some I've visited multiple variations on a core idea (e.g. aquariums/planted tanks/dwarf shrimp tanks). I've learned (and subseqeuntly forgotten) a tremendous amount, and spent an unholy amount of money. Most things have not stayed with me.
Miniature painting is one thing that I think might last me the rest of my life.
I think it boils down to a few factors:
- miniatures aren't alive; I don't need to care for them, so the worst that can happen is I break or scratch something. This keeps my anxiety/concern/guilt largely out of the equation.
- the feedback cycles are fairly short; I know almost immediately if a paint stroke was good or bad, if my brush is too wet or too dry, etc. A single project is normally just a couple of hours, and then it's done and I can view it as a completed whole.
- the product occupies little space and it's trivial to keep around and compare to work done before and after and see progression and evolution over time. Also, if you're prone to collecting things, just keeping the product on the shelf next to other things becomes an ongoing source of reward.
- if I absolutely fubar something, I can buy or print a new mini for a couple bucks or throw it in some Simple Green overnight and brush the old paint off. Most of the time I can just paint over the issue.
- paint, brushes, a wet palette, minis, airbrush, etc all add up, but you can have an amazing setup for under a thousand bucks, and you can transcend the realm of mortals for $2K. The ongoing costs after that are manageable unless you're into Warhammer. You can get started and do some really fun and cool things with a $50 starter kit.
So there's some higher-dimension graph with effort, frustration, reward, feedback latency, etc, and for me at least painting miniatures tends to sit in a happy area.
Sometimes I use a dry palette and sometimes a wet palette. The dry palettes are plastic and cheap on Amazon. You rinse them off in the sink. If the paint dries, use a greenie or a brush - no problem. The wet palette just needs to be wiped off with a wet napkin before you close it up, and to have the wax paper replaced when it starts to rub through. If you get the sponge dirty, it's a sponge - just fill it up with water, squish it, maybe use a little Mean Green/Simple Green/etc to clean it up.
The airbrush is a little more involved, but I dramatically overestimated how much of a pain in the ass it would be. Most of the time the cleanup for that is 3-5 minutes and not unpleasant. Occasionally it'll need to be broken down a little further, but it's still not a big deal. The mechanism isn't nearly as complex as it may initially seem.
Brushes aren't a big deal to keep clean. You'd destroy a bunch, but you'll learn over time what not to do. Just don't start with the (comparatively expensive and arguably barbaric) sable brushes, start with garbage quality brushes and treat them as disposable. Rinse them, use a little brush soap, and don't brutalize or drown them and they'll last longer and longer and maintain a better quality, then you can upgrade.
Nothing else really comes to mind in terms of labor.
Haha, I have found this to absolutely NOT be the case! Each individual mini only takes up and inch or so, but they multiply and between them and the brushes/airbrush/paint racks and the ever-increasing grey Pile of Shame, it’s not a small amount of space taken up!
It is an extremely rewarding hobby with a low bar to entry, though, and I agree that I will probably never stop.
It took me a long time to accept that following my special interests is what my brain craves and what gives me a sense of fulfillment. It might be unhealthy for a neurotypical person but very healthy for me.
In fact when I am losing the spark and just can't get into anything that is when I know I am burning out and need to make changes.
The trick is to play judo instead of karate with your own drive. Instead of trying to stop your urge and force yourself to do the boring stuff, it can work to take your energy and just slightly redirect it to where you want to go and where it makes sense for you to go. Maybe you have the urge to play a video game and can redirect it to reading a book like homo ludens instead, or maybe you redirect it towards making a game? Even if you never finished it you learned something.
First of all, time management techniques for neurotypical people do NOT work for people with ADHD.
This is why an diagnosis is so important. If you don't know that you have ADHD you will constantly try stuff that won't work for you, you will set up yourself for failure and do more harm that good and it will destroy your self esteem.
Neurotypical people tend to be importance motivated while ADHD people are interest motivated. So the approach needs to be very different. Furthermore time is very different for ADHD people. Most neurotypical people can not cram in the work of 8 hours in 2 hours, I can. But I also can't hyper focus all the time and have times where I am not getting anything done.
With ADHD it is more about managing your level of stimulation. You start the day in a dopamine deficit and need to start with small tasks that gives you quick wins. You can't tackle the important but absolutely boring work head on, you need to do some stimulating activities first to get the ball rolling.
Many ADHD people including myself develop a special interest in ADHD and organizational techniques to manage it so yeah it happens. But you can't fully control what you happen to be interested in.
Though the whole self optimizing thing is also dangerous. Some people can learn to mask their ADHD very well and be super organized but it comes at a cost. It takes tremendous energy and leads to ADHD burnout in the long term. That is often the trigger for adults to get diagnosed in the first place because they just can't keep up the masking anymore.
Sounds like just about every human being.
It is hard for me to even imagine that such a thing can exist but it absolutely is the case.
The difference is how strict the "need" it. Like neurotypical people also benefit from working on something they are interested at but for ADHD people it is not optional but necessary to function.
Also neurotypical people get much more dopamine out of even simple tasks while I can have the best conversation ever with someone and still need some fidget toys to not go crazy from sitting around.
Generally, medication is the most effective treatment for ADHD by far but also does only work for like 80 percent of ADHD people. Some need to cope without it either way.
ADHD meds have been almost a literal lifesaver, and the amount they make work halfway tolerable is… crucial.
I'm now actively trying to cut down on them instead, and accept that I'll have some "boredom" time as a result.
I can "like" just about any hobby. I definitely don't need to explore more of them. They find me on their own, and I really don't need them to.
I understand. Not sure if you’re in the same boat, but for me, it’s a combination of age, energy, time, and becoming jaded. I used to spend late night hours poking at new things to learn about new hobbies and the like. The older I get, the less time and energy I’m willing to excerpt. This has been great for my getting back to reading books, but it’s been a sinkhole for self-learning and new skill development. The dopamine is lacking.
This was me last week. I was looking to buy a new coffee grinder, and I just could not believe the way that people on the Internet talk about these things. One popular coffee YouTuber recommended a $200 hand grinder as an entry level grinder [1]. There's also a widely repeated concept in the community of the "end game" grinder - as if working your way up to a $1000 coffee grinder should be the goal of every coffee drinker rather than just being satisfied with a $200 - $300 grinder (or even a $100 grinder, god forbid).
And I decided not to go down the rabbit hole because I really doubt whether spending more and obsessing more would actually increase my enjoyment of coffee. I currently use a $23 hand grinder [2] that makes a tasty cup of coffee (I am looking for a new grinder not because I am dissatisfied with the results, but rather because grinding by hand can be annoying). Now that I know there are $200 grinders out there, it makes me wonder what I am missing out on. And I'm sure if I had a $200 grinder, I would be wondering what $500 would get me, etc. And how am I ever going to be able to enjoy a cup of coffee at a restaraunt, or at a friend's house, if I allow my standards to get so high?
So I guess to bring this back to the original article: try to find enjoyment in the basic, no-frills version. If you're a coffee snob, can you still enjoy a cup of Nescafe instant coffee? If you're a wine snob, can you enjoy a glass of Yellow Tail? If you're a music snob, can you enjoy listening to Taylor Swift?
I love the basic, and I love the fine.
Believe it or not, expensive grinders (~$500 range) create an unbelievable difference.
But they’re a luxury :)
Lance Hedrick (popular coffee YouTuber) demonstrates time and time again that cheap machines and setups can rival even the most expensive end-game setups.
There's a pretty basic problem that a coffee grinder is a motor, the actual grinding surfaces, and the tubes that connect where the beans come from and grounds go to. Maybe add a scale and a little bit of electronics, but still, what does a $1000 grinder have that a $200 doesn't?
Indeed you have to get a lot of things precisely right to get a desired grind particle size distribution and that takes science and study and precision but the end product is still only a few simple parts that meet a specification. The problem is volume and just charging large amounts of money because that's how you attract customers in the "quality" space where having very good taste for quality is itself quite hard.
Coffee grinders are ripe for disruption with a low cost high quality product, but in order to pay for the engineering time to make one you have to have confidence in pretty high volume so picking a price point is hard.
It sounds like a Chinese company has kind of done this with the D40+, DF54 [1], DF64, and DF83 grinders, available at price points from $200 to $800. They are white label products sold under various brand names like Turin, MiiCoffee, etc all over the world. If reviews are to be believed, they have a good grind quality in addition to nice quality of life features like very little retention, static electricity, replaceable parts, etc.
The $200 - $250 range is still probably too expensive for most homes, but definitely not out of line for a high quality kitchen appliance.
Pro tip: stick your drill/electric screwdriver to it and now you have a $200 motorized grinder. Been doing that for a decade. I use the same drill to roast my own beans in a homemade "wobble disk" roaster (look it up on youtube, if you care). I also use the drill with a whisk, and many other things.
I had been a super picky eater basically my entire life, and getting me to try new foods was like pulling teeth. Then I spent a couple weeks traveling around Japan with some friends. I think it was in part genuinely wanting to immerse myself in the culture and in part not wanting to make myself appear fussy or annoying to a girl we were traveling with, but I forced myself to try things I would never have eaten state side. I found myself by the end of the trip actually pushing myself to try things... Even perhaps a little too far as the Takoyaki triggered my shellfish allergy. Nothing a bunch of Benadryl couldn't solve.
I'd come to Japan a picky eater though and left an adventurous one. I will at least try just about anything once.
This is something which twenty years later my parents still don't accept. "Oh, I thought you didn't eat salad" when I am halfway through my salad.
Mind you there are still things I did not like before that I still do not like. Ketchup tops the list.
I wasn't exposed to any variety of food growing up and I stopped eating meat at a very young age (In my 40s now, still don't eat meat). So before adulthood all I ever ate was pasta, and almost always boxed pasta at that. I also had issues with some texture and flavors being extremely off-putting and making me wanna gag.
I knew I wasn't going to be able to eat that way forever, for a number of reasons (health being a big one) so I forced myself to try new foods, gradually. I fucking hated it, but I kept at it. I now like most non-meat foods, even enjoy mushrooms which have previously made me vomit. The first time I had avocado it was the nastiest thing I ever tasted but I eat (and like) avocado most days now.
I still can't eat fresh tomato and it isn't a matter of being picky or having preferences, it is very obvious that I can taste something in tomatoes that other people just can't and to me that taste is "poison".
Some neurodivergent people have genuine sensory issues that forces them to be selective about their food. They can't just get over it. Especially as exposure therapy does not work for them or at least not as well as for neurotypical people.
So it is always good to remind oneself to be kind and not judge people harshly. You don't know what they are struggling with.
That said, yeah most people absolutely profit from opening up their palate and trying new things.
Most of it smells like it is rotting to me and the taste is overpowering[0]. Trust me, I've tried countless times. Something that my wife will insist has no or little seafood in will taste like I am eating the entire ocean.
People would tell me "Oh you don't know what you are missing out on!" so I would try to get myself to eat it again. I've now learned that the only thing I am missing out on is suffering - I don't like seafood. I'm ok with this.
[0]I have occassionally managed if it's exceptionally mild or watered down, but even then there is usually a sense that something taste a bit "odd" while not being wholly unpaletable.
I can relate, I'm the same with coffee and alcohol. Coffee just tastes like I'm eating/drinking charcoal, and alcohol tastes like bleach.
People always go "oh but you can't taste the alcohol in this cocktail!". No, you can't taste the alcohol, it tastes like lemon-flavored bleach to me.
I've never thought alcohol tastes like bleach, though in some I can now certainly get a taste of "ethanol", same with the charcoal coffee thing -- many flavours I've found in coffee, but never charcoal.
I wouldn't be surprised if we all have some kind of genetic marker/mutation (I'm not a biologist, sorry!) that impacts the way we taste certain foods.
But since spicy foods hurt and pineapple is tingly and that's normal, I suspect a lot of people with mild food allergies just... don't realise they have an allergy.
And yes, this have made me a picky eater, not because I don't want to try new things but because the setting with trying new things is in most cases not the settings where you want to get the bad reactions
and I'm not sure how to find mild food allergies directly, seems to be all food diaries and correlation which feels mostly useless..
There also seems to be a hair test that AFAI can tell is an outright scam.
Food diaries are probably good for those that are more experimental in what they eat, the difficult part come when it is a combination of things that give a reaction. The most important is to learn to listen to your body and not buy into peer pressure when someone urge you to try something new that you are not sure about
For me, it didn't even occur to me that it was normal to have trains/trams inside your city until I was in my twenties, and you don't even need to be NYC! Once I learned about it, my hometown pretty much lost whatever argument they might have had to get me to stay, and as soon as the option presented itself, I was out.
There are non-trivial amount of people who discovered this on their own, got properly addicted and basically live in their western jobs to be able to afford as much travel ie in remote parts of south east Asia as possible. Some skipped that western job part altogether. I recently spent few weeks in remote parts of northern Sulawesi and the only westerners I kept meeting were of this bunch, with exactly same travel bug.
The problem is as you describe - you can't explain all this and much more to folks who stayed home or some variant of that. You can show photos and videos, tell stories but what that experience changed within you, thats your journey only.
Personally, this is by far the best way to spend money (plus gym membership).
I think it's a tricky balance, because the novelty can wear off, and by travelling all the time you do end up trading the other crucial component of life away for that novelty, which is some kind of roots and some kind of community.
Exploration and adventure is amazing, you can learn a lot about other cultures, but by not participating in your own nearly as much, you can end up ironically limiting yourself to shallow transient connections, depending on when and how long you do it for and where.
Atm I have basically zero interest anymore in living abroad for an extended time unless it offered me some unique environment for doing the outdoor stuff or other hobbies I enjoy, such that I'd be compelled away from my adopted home city that I'm quite fond of. But other than that, shorter travels that my outdoor hobbies direct me towards are usually amazing. So something like an extended backcountry hiking or climbing trip would be the type of thing that would excite me.
it isn’t at all the animated aspect, i do love a few anime’s but the good ones don’t do that weird noise huh thing. the stories can be incredible i just wish i could watch them without ripping my hair out every time the characters do that.
Anyway, just keep in mind most anime is aimed at children/teenagers, if you watch it with that in mind or think of English voice acting and vocalizations in western animation, some of these things make more sense.
I applied that lesson to many other things since then and it works far more often than it fails.
For instance music: we tend to like what we know, and what we know is what we hear on the radio/everywhere we go. When people tell me they don't like jazz, I always find a jazz song they like. If they say they don't like rap music, I can always find one they like. Why? Maybe because it's closer to what they already understand (making it more accessible), or maybe it has been very popular and so they've already heard it countless times (in night clubs, on the radio, ...). Most people who dislike a whole music genre generally don't really understand it and haven't put any effort into it.
You don't like churches? Go to Notre-Dame in Paris, and have someone explain to you its architecture. How they built it, how you can date the parts of the church just from its architecture.
Don't get me wrong: it's possible to dislike stuff, and it's alright. But it's worth trying to understand before disliking.
This may also be the only option for disorders for which there is no treatment, e.g. tinnitus.
Seriously, if you actually _believe_ this, consider examining it carefully. It is self-serving nonsense.
You are complaining about imaginary people.
There isn't anything to hate about the architecture that wouldn't also apply to most public buildings built in the last half century.
The churches that have been built since were built by denominations that place less value in visual and architectural art than, for example, the Catholic or Orthodox churches. The single Catholic church in my town does look nicer than the others, although the inside looks just as fake as everything built since the 1950s.
I have visited the church at Rota and the cathedral at Càdiz, and they are beautiful. We do not have churches like these where I live. But it wouldn't matter if we did. It is neither the blandness of my churches or the beauty of yours that cause me to dislike the church, but the way the church is used to spread hate for people who are different than them.
I am not religious at all, but disliking the church because it speads hate is like disliking white persons (or whichever arbitrary criterium you want) because they are criminals: the reality is that only a minority speads hate and only a minority are criminals. A majority of religious people are good and want to do good. And it doesn't require religion to spread hate, far from it.
It differs from church to church, of course, and it says nothing about any particular member of the congregation.
I still can't get my family to get into noise and pigfuck, any advice ?
There's a few classical and jazz pieces that I like, but that doesn’t mean that I like classical music and/or jazz, even though I do get why other people do.
Same for your church architecture example. I can appreciate it on an intellectual level, but in the end I still find it mostly boring and not my kind of aesthetics.
It's not a counterpoint, as I never said that understanding something meant that you would like it.
I just said that it's worth trying to understand before concluding that we dislike something.
My Favorite Things by Coltrane.
But I do know people who dislike jazz because of the unfamiliar rhythms and (wildly flexible) musical conventions, and that can be hard to overcome.
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue is the best selling jazz album of all time but it is still a specific sub genre of cool jazz that might put you to sleep.
Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters I think is the second best seller. I really don't know if I have ever read someone say Head Hunters sucks. It probably isn't what you expect in the same the way Hamilton sounded different to you.
I would go with those two and if you don't like either I wouldn't bother looking for more.
My point is: I find that all the suggestions here are great! They may work differently for different people!
Different people are different, and different things resonate with different people. I find snobbery highly obnoxious, but to be honest my opinion of this kind of dismissal of different people liking different things with a fairly condescending "you have simply not understood it" is not much better.
> but to be honest my opinion of this kind of dismissal of different people liking different things with a fairly condescending "you have simply not understood it" is not much better.
You haven't put too much effort into trying to understand my opinion, have you? :-)
Usually the songs anyone can enjoy tend to be the ones that are the most palatable and are not as genre specific.
To some degree it’s a matter of semantics but to say someone enjoys a genre of music they should be able to enjoy the more esoteric songs in the genre.
It took me longer than it should have to start getting into classical music, because when I heard a piece that sucked I just assumed I didn't understand it and that classical music was too complicated. No, it's just that a lot of classical music sucks and is annoying to listen to. But a lot of it is fantastic.
Listening to any given country song might be lovely. Listening to the genre is painful. Sometimes the aggregate effect of a genre ruins the enjoyment of any given song.
Wait, is liking to fly actually that unusual?
My favorite flight was to Gran Canaria - the pilot did a visual approach as if he was landing a glider. Engines completely idle (very quiet!), plane over the ocean, airport parallel to the right. Turn right a few km after passing the airport, straight for a few seconds, turn right again, glide down.
An exciting one was an aborted takeoff when already pretty fast, but comfortably before decision speed.
I don't feel the need to blast it to the world, though. I have learned that music and art tastes are extremely personal, and that not wearing them on my sleeve, gives me the freedom to just like what I like.
I really enjoy being adventurous; especially in food. It took over twenty years of repeatedly going to Tokyo, to finally land something I Just. Couldn't. Eat. (Undercooked chicken)[0].
I also have learned that "Things are cliché for a reason."[1]
That said, Radio Paradise's web radio channels are a great way to explore a wide range of music.
Thanks for the tip!
Sometimes the people around it are not to you’re liking, and it’s easy for that feeling to spill over into your perception, and you miss out on enjoying something you would have liked otherwise. Some examples with strong cultures: wine snobs, country music, and sci-fi nerds. If you don’t see yourself as one of “those people”, you could miss out on something you might otherwise enjoy.
So I bought a whole bag of it and ate a piece every day or so. After a week, I wasn’t cringing as much. After two or three weeks I started craving it. By the end of the month, I liked it. I don’t love it, but I did buy another bag when that one was done. And yes I know the health risks, but I’m never going to be eating a bag or two a day.
The weirdest, though, was cilantro. I’m in the genetic group that thinks it tastes soapy. And yet, after trying it enough, I love it.
E.g. the odd taste of licorice. Must mean that it was healthy or good right? Turns out licorice really isn't good for you. https://www.heart.org/en/news/2022/10/28/black-licorice-is-a...
The concept of "red licorice" [1] is simply ... foreign. :) It's also fun and interesting as a word/food, since it focuses on the texture of a food and re-uses the word, even though the word is tightly coupled to the flavor.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquorice_(confectionery)#Red_...
Having said that, my favourite is that salty stuff you guys have up there in the North.
It's probably because candy makes my teeth hurt, lol. Likewise, I don't like certain acidic drinks like orange juice or wine, they just don't sit right.
- A few weeks ago I looked up some music from my youth: Korn, Deftones, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, Mudvayne, Slayer, Testament, Iced Earth. I played much of this to death back in the day. And ... I found I don't really care for much for most of it now. I also no longer care much for the "Trash metal classics" I liked at the time such as Testament, Slayer, and Iced Earth.
- I did like Papa Roach's Infest album though. I have no idea why I like that one now and not the other nu-metal type stuff that I liked back then.
- There are many things I "should" like because they're adjacent to things I do like, but that I nonetheless don't like. Sometimes I can find reasons for this. Often I can't. Deep Purple's Made in Japan is one of the best albums ever created and I will punch anyone who says any different into paralysis. Yet I don't care much for most other Deep Purple albums. This makes no sense to me.
- For a while I was really into prog rock. There are still tons of prog rock stuff I like, but also ... tons that I liked ~15 years ago but care much for any more.
- For years I didn't like wine (red or white). I really wanted like wine and I tried many times, but I just didn't like it. Then I didn't try for a few years and a friend brought some wine over for dinner and tried out of politeness, and ... I liked it! I've had tons of (red) wine since, and never had a bottle I strongly disliked.
- When I stayed at a hotel in England years ago I got a few of those little plastic jam containers for toast, which included Marmite. I didn't really know what this "Marmite" thing was. Instant regret ensued, much to the amusement of my girlfriend. Being Dutch I do like salty liquorice, which is similar in a way I suppose. Yet I dislike Marmite (without being aware that it's controversial).
I don't really have a deeper point; just some observations I guess. Cultural and psychological factors absolutely play a role, but I also think it's just a matter of different people being different, and people just changing over the years.x
I also think it's okay to dislike things as long as you're not a dick about it.
I, on the other hand can take it or leave it. I sometimes wonder what that says about me.
Maybe that's the reason? I found that any song or piece of music gets less and less exciting the more you listen to it.
In fact, when I find something really cool I often force myself not to listen to it too much so that it would last longer.
Excessive rigidity is an early death.
I also enjoyed the writing style, and wandered onto another post. First sentence:
> I’ve always seen cathedrals as presenting a kind of implicit argument to atheists. Something like: God must exist, because otherwise it would have been insane for people to build [a cathedral]
This is my new favourite writer
What I find a practical, related advice is “If you want to get good at something, you have to make yourself glad that you’re doing it.”
This involves reminding yourself why it is that you want to get better at it, perceiving the process of learning as an interesting challenge, and in general generating interest.
There is a lot of creativity in how you actually do this. It is a skill in itself, and a very useful one, especially for skills where you find yourself lacking patience and motivation.
The first one, and the only real one, is to get closer to other people. Someone you like, who you want to understand, and maybe more like. Someone it's worth becoming at least a slightly different person for, in terms of how you approach the world.
The second reason is boredom. It's actually just the first reason in disguise.
But this is why recommendation algorithms and culture-related ads can be so viscerally offensive. "Hello kids! Want to be more like Spotify's ideal of the perfect music consumer?" and the answer of actual kids is often yes, because they think other kids will say yes too, and they'd be too lonely only liking things no one else likes.
For example, you could learn to like fermented foods (if you don't) because they are very healthy for you.
Astute!
Like I like going to state fairs, and I like country music in that context, even if I wouldn’t choose to put it on the radio at home. I don’t watch snarky reality tv like the real housewives, but I might enjoy it surrounded by my snarky gay friends or put another way - if people I like like like something I can appreciate it with them.
Cross cultural experiences when traveling fit into this category too. Lots of things I wouldn’t sort of pursue in my own but leave fond memories with strong emotional resonance in retrospect.
What they are saying is that you can make yourself enjoy a field _at all_, in which you can then apply taste. For example I don't like whisky, but that's not a matter of me applying "good taste": I would never claim that whisky is bad in general and if I really tried I'm pretty sure I would start being able to enjoy whisky and separate the good from the bad (at least subjectively).
One time on 4chan I mentioned I liked how users on HN like to pepper their speech with little math words like so: "Love is orthogonal to distance, modulo trust, and the parameters aren’t marginal". People wouldnt believe me this was normal talk. Case in point. Although this was more prevalent on HN about 10 years ago. Or maybe now as well. I dont read comments as much these days.
My favorite thing is to rediscover something I thought in the past was terrible only to now find I love it.
"Cultivating taste" might mean less capacity to tolerate or enjoy things that are fine-but-not-great.
It’s best to be able to tell it’s trash, because if you can’t then it means you’re missing what you need to fully appreciate really good things, which is less than ideal.
But it’s totally fine to like it. Zero shame.
And it doesn’t make people bad who can’t tell the difference between trash and good stuff, they’ve just prioritized different (and, maybe, less, but who cares) stuff than you have. Though when they try to make recommendations it’s fair to totally ignore them. Even if you are looking for a particular kind of trash, you need a critic who can tell good from bad (but appreciates that even bad things have an audience) if you want a good hit-rate. And when those sorts start to opine that actually good things are bad (because they haven’t developed the ability to appreciate them) it’s fine to regard that behavior as boorish, because it is. It’s basically the inverse of snobbery, and yeah, it’s also shitty.
Until then, I would bite something with tomato already anticipating that I wouldn't like it. To teach myself, I would imagine the feeling I had before biting in to something I really liked, and I would think "Yummy! I can't wait to bite this yummy tomato!".
E.g. an "average" tomato in many countries being used in a dish = fine, but wouldn't eat it alone. I just find them sour and flavourless. An Italian/Greek grown tomato however is truly delicious.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Embrace-Suck-Navy-SEAL-Extraordinary/...
Maybe this is involved a bit? asking your son to listen to something could be making it an activity, maybe put it on while you do something else and then ask his thoughts on it after?
1) tell stories of how I came to enjoy something I previously had not
2) don't make anything contentious...respect preferences while insisting they can change those preferences if they want to
3) help them gain competence quickly in anything they may not love at first
4) exposure and enthusiasm about lots of things
5) never trashing things and never ever shitting on other people's likes.
You do also have to restrict plausible substitutes, like if you do this with movies you need to either cut off or do a similar thing with video games.
Worst case, they don’t try the things you presented, but do go outside. Oh no, what a tragedy, lol.
This is how I fell in love with alternative country, power pop, r&B, drum & bass, and so on.
I do this with music, films, and books because I think some things are objectively better than others in ways that don't always line up with my own tastes.
I'm trying to let good art affect my soul and keep bad art from corrupting it.
Also, "liking something intrinsically", what does that even mean?
I've learned that liking things behaves a lot like attraction. It has no reasoning or logic, it happens organically, and when you know, you know. Thus, I would never deign to pretend to like something I've found I don't.
Your mileage seems to vary, but I find that for food and drinks in particular it's the acquired tastes you get the most enjoyment from in the end -- I haven't met many people who enjoyed their first glass of peated whisky, for example. Heck, even my best friends are definitely an "acquired taste", as is obvious to me when I introduce them to other people I know.
Another piece I read on this topic was aimed at foodies. The thrust was basically: "You're trying to broaden your horizons by trying different obscure dishes from other cuisines. Why not revisit the foods you hated as a child? I used to hate eggplant and thought it was slimy and now I love eggplant."
There's something compelling, in matters of taste, about addressing a huge blind spot you have been avoiding tackling instead of hyper-specializing in your chosen niche.
Or like the Russians say, "Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional."
That's spinach
I hate sports, I tried liking it, did not work out (heh pun intended).
I hate cooking, I try it every other day, I will never like it.
Its okay not to like things.
Honestly, for me the joy of life was front-loaded. Childhood was great, lot of stress and alienation since, with joy taken where I can find it but not a typical condition. My almost-six-year-old seems to be loving childhood as well, so I hope that even if things go really pear-shaped for civilization in the next couple decades he'll regard having lived as a net win.
Holy cow dude, cut this one right the fuck out. Absolutely eliminate that portion of your day. Cold turkey straight to zero. Right now. Reading Internet comments that make you angry is like choosing to stick your face in the exhaust of a diesel truck. There's no reason to do it. Just don't.
But here's the secret: If you behave like this, then people will only interact with you when they want something from you, leading to an even more bitterness and unfriendly demeanor, leading to even worse interactions with other people.
Instead fake being nice and friendly and people will be nice and friendly with you and after what might feel like forever you will become genuinely nice and friendly. Giving you the possibility to enjoy better people and the better side of people.
As for getting mad at stupid people on the internet, you're only getting mad because you expect them to be better. Accept internally that most people on the internet are deranged freaks, or just don't amount to much and the tension disappears and you don't have to be mad. Would you be angry at a cow for being simple minded?
One way of becoming nice is to act nice. A nice person is a person who acts nice towards other people.
You can act different than how you feel, and that is not being fake, it's being nice.
If we all acted how we felt, we'd all be dead already.
You know that there are some things you don't like almost for sure. That makes all the difference.
I'm slightly older than you and keep running into things I used to dislike and that I surprisingly dislike less now. And that feels good.
Keeping the door open on disliking less seems critical to me.
edit: read your other comment, good luck, I wish you the best and I hope you can enjoy more things as time passes and find a path that suits you!
But I agree overall with your point. There are some things that I just will never like. I will try new things, but I quickly realize I'm not vibing with it and need to stop pretending.
I think the key here is that you did try, you gave cooking and sports an honest chance, and it turns out that you're not into them. It doesn't feel like many people would put the effort in to really figure out if they _would_ like something that's initially uncomfortable or difficult. I think that's what the article is responding to - I read the overall thesis as "you might actually end up liking something that you don't like initially" rather than "you will like anything given enough effort".
That is about how all these exercises have gone for me over the years. It becomes tolerable at best. Still hate it at worst.
- Ads
- Regulations
- Trump
- The EU
- Social Media
- Musk
- AI
- Venture Capital
- Unions
- Peter Thiel
- China
- Cryptocurrency
- The United States
- Zuck
- Taxes
- Big Tech
- Recommendation Algorithms
- Billionaires
- Google Search
IMO it's a good sign if you can think of something to appreciate in all of these things, even if you can't bring yourself to like them. To appreciate them is to understand them at a deeper level, since it's all too easy to hate things you don't understand.
"All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison."