Valid Reasons to Hate on Art
There are some folks in my life that believe that if you don't like something, you are not allowed to express your dislike. You are to avoid the conversation altogether, and, if you cannot avoid it, you must state that the given thing is simply "not your cup of tea" and move on.
No time must be given to expressing unsolicited negative opinions. You are not allowed to bond over shared dislike of a thing with another person. You are not to engage in "making fun of" something, lest someone in your midst (who does like the thing) feel that their opinion is belittled.
And most importantly, you are especially not allowed to say a given work of art is "bad", or criticize the taste of the people who enjoy said thing.
Because, after all, all art that you don't like is "not for you".
Anyway, because there are a lot of people who believe this, I will now attempt to disprove something I feel is obviously foolish on its face.
Disclaimer: Making Stuff, and Liking Stuff, is Good
If you are a person who makes art, then, 99% of the time, you should continue making art no matter who criticizes or voices their dislike of your work. Creation in all its varieties should generally be celebrated. It's really cool that you do something, anything, other than mindless consumption.
And to be exceedingly clear, I don't hate (or think think people should hate) anything more than the soul-sucking emptiness of being so cynical that you never create or celebrate anything. In fact, that's called being clinically depressed. So if you're in the position of overwhelming negativity, go make something, or go engage with something you do like.
But, I'm not talking to people who are clinically depressed. Nor am I talking to the emerging artist who needs a warm, positive community to support their growth.
I'm talking to the people who believe that you are always a deranged nihilist if you like making fun of something. I'm talking to the people who believe that every time you express distaste, you are hurting the soul of the artist who made something, and ruining the fun for everyone who does like a work.
Reason No. 1: Giving Feedback
Keeping in mind the disclaimer, note that there actually are a lot of artists who do want to hear what you didn't like about their work. As a critic, it's your responsibility to make sure they know what they also did right, and to temper your criticism such that it's not disheartening, but this is also a fine time to speak honestly about what you didn't engage with, and what you think could make the work better.
This is a common complaint amongst my writer friends--too many of their family members and acquaintances give simple "it was good" or "it's fine" responses. This is terrible for an aspiring artist--they want to see some amount of passion and care reflected back from you. Nothing is more frustrating to many young artists than someone giving one of these non-feedback responses.
In short, if you're trying to give feedback to someone, and you simply tell them that it's "not your cup of tea", expect a flurry of questions about why.
Reason No. 2: The Work is Morally Abhorrent
This is another big one. If you find a work to be diametrically opposed to your beliefs about what is good, and you cannot find a reason to endorse or engage with the work's values, yes, you absolutely should distance yourself from it!
The reasoning applies in both the large and the small. If a work appears to support or encourage people to act in ways that you think make the world worse, then you have a moral responsibility to indicate to others that you do not endorse the work, either implicitly, explicitly, or upon request. At the risk of invoking Godwin's Law so early in the life of this blog, I would actually think it highly suspicious if I saw "Mein Kampf" on someone's nightstand and they didn't purposefully distance themself from it.
In the small, you can simply view a work as promoting a lifestyle or ethic that you don't agree with. I don't care for Disney music on-the-whole because I don't like their corporate practices. I've seen a lot of people who express dislike for rap music for this reason.
However, an important caveat here--expressing your distaste for a work on moral grounds is a great way to spark a discussion with friends and family members. If you are not ready to have that discussion, or wish to avoid it for personal reasons, sure, feel free to not express your distaste, or excuse yourself when such a topic comes up.
Reason No. 3: Bonding Over Shared Taste
Anybody who has had fun watching a bad movie with friends over pizza knows what I'm talking about here. Since I assume that's most of us, I'll move on to the nuance.
The resistance to this reason seems to primarily come from people making fun of things in public forums, i.e. Twitter, YouTube, or--cough, cough--podcasts.
"Why would you attack the creators like that?"
"What are you talking about? I'm just joking around with my friends and like-minded people on the internet."
"But you're posting it where the creators can see it."
This is a nonsense point. Even if you're in a big celebrity's mentions, most of the time, people don't do this stuff to publicly attack and decry artists (though they may claim they are)--they're just joking around with friends and people who feel similarly.
Not to mention, most of us aren't in high school anymore. There's a huge difference between bullying someone who is legitimately disadvantaged and othered, and making fun of multinational corporations and the absurdly rich folks that they contract. As a rule of thumb, just make sure you're punching up.
Reason No. 4: Refining Your Taste
This doesn't necessarily apply to everyone, but there are two categories of people who I think would really benefit from using voiced distaste as a learning tool.
First, if you're a tastemaker of some kind, I think you have an obligation to your audience to be clear about the things that you don't like and why you don't like it. Sure, at the end of the day, you want people to check out the stuff that you do want to promote, but people generally don't trust the aesthetic opinions of the unrelentingly-positive. In fact, one of the primary ways you can gain influence as a tastemaker is by sharing dislike of popular media with people who are also dissatisfied with popular media. Is there anything more satisfying than finding something you do like out of something you don't like?
Second, if you're an aspiring artist yourself, being able to voice your opinion and discuss it with fellow artists can help you figure out what you really do and do not like about a given medium, and can inform your creative decisions as you move forward. A lot of really cool projects have come out of artists deliberately pushing themselves into unfamiliar spaces--and, if they had not done so by labelling it as "not for them" and moving on, these projects would not exist.
(Note: to be fair, a ton of absolutely terrible projects have come from people straying from their comfort zone, but again, the act of actually creating is paramount.)
Reason No. 5: Because You Feel Like It
The world's a scary place. Sometimes it just feels nice to rail on some target that you don't like. Unfortunately, sometimes people do this against other people explicitly. That is bullying, and I do not condone it. However, the reason art is put out into the public sphere is usually so the public can engage with it and talk about it. When you release your work, as an artist, you are tacitly agreeing to those terms.