Convincing myself I didn't like it
I notice a pattern of convincing myself I didn't like something. It goes like this:
- I watch a movie. (Really it could be any experience — say a video game, a TV show, a book.)
- I like it.
- I read or hear someone talking shit about the movie.
- I start to get tense and convince myself I don't/didn't actually like the movie.
I did this a month or two back, in March, with the Mario movie. I liked the movie. After I watched it, I was looking up a voice actor that sounded familiar on the IMDB page, and while I was there I happened to see the Metacritic score. It was lower than I expected. I clicked on it and got a list of reviews and glimpsed a negative sentence or four out of all that. That was enough to match step 3, so then it was on to 4.
Step 4 is me telling myself a story about how I didn't like the thing I did like. It sounds like: "Oh no, this poster is right, the movie is blah blah blah. How could I have liked something that was blah blah blah? I'm supposed to have taste. I'm not supposed to like things that are blah blah blah. No, I guess I didn't like it. I must have made a mistake." And then afterward I feel vaguely bad about the mistake.
Once I noticed this, I felt less compelled to disavow my liking — even though the movie is blah blah blah.