I am a libertarian, which means I’m used to being a political minority and drawing puzzlement from others. I am also a fan of heavy metal music, which means I’m used to being a musical minority and drawing puzzlement from others. The latter is often in the form “how can you listen to that noise?” and “that stinks.” I laugh it all off, comfortable in the fact that my taste and preferences need not conform to those of others. I also revel in the fraternal “outsider” essence of metal, and bask in the semi-secret knowledge that metalheads are among the happiest, most open and most tolerant people I’ve met. In other words, the more you harsh on my musical tastes, the more you affirm them.
From time to time, though, I do get annoyed at the solipsistic attitude of those who say “that stinks.” While I think that very few who utter that form of opinion realize it, saying “that stinks” is far, far different from saying “I hate that.” The latter is a personal preference, the former is an assertion of objective quality, or more specifically a lack of quality. In simpler terms, when you say “that stinks,” you’re declaring that no one should like it, and you’re casting aspersions on me because I like it. In contrast to “he stinks,” which is most readily interpreted as “he has no skill,” “that stinks” is a global declaration of a personal preference. It’s, at its core, a demonstration of narcissism. Lest anyone try to dodge this point, it is beyond doubt that much heavy metal music requires enormous technical proficiency, so anyone who tries to say that the genre is for the unskilled and talentless is, at best, speaking from ignorance.
No, when someone says “that stinks,” they’re belittling others’ tastes and preferences. “Metal stinks” or “rap stinks” or “country music stinks” or “pop music stinks” or “boy bands stink” is arrogant self-absorption. While I accept that most people don’t mean it that way, that they’re simply using the stronger “X stinks” instead of the more polite but less forceful “I don’t like X,” I take issue with the degradation of language that it represents. We’d do better, for ourselves and for our interactions with others, if we were more accurate in our word choice. Since language is how we form, process, and convey our beliefs and ideas, we’d also think better.
If, in matters of personal taste, we say “I don’t like X” instead of “X stinks,” we automatically inform our thoughts with the notion of equality and respect for our fellow humans. If we are to get along better with each other, we should use language that acknowledges that others are fully-formed humans, with their own fully-formed tastes and preferences. We can differ in taste without belittling each other. We can argue our tastes from positions of mutual respect instead of antagonism. And, if we are not so forceful in our original opinions, we might be less reluctant to reconsider them if exposed to things we might actually like.
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