Since I am the person who uses that phrase most often, perhaps I should explain it.
When I use it, I am referring to the settled law of Judge John Hodgman. The full phrasing as the following:
People like what they like. You can’t force someone to like something. You can expose them to a piece of work, but if they don’t like it, that’s the way it is. You can’t talk them out of it.
And yeah, I think that is not only a valuable insight, I also believe that if people not only understood it, but tried to apply it, they would find their relationships and lives a lot happier.
At the core is a very simple notion- everyone is not the same. People can have different subjective tastes. If not, we would all have the same hobbies, tastes, and art preferences- for example. More importantly, someone can be really smart, be really knowledgeable about a topic, engage in totally good faith ... and still disagree with you.
If most people think about this for even a second, really really think about this, they know it to be true. Two people who both love movies and film criticism, one who loves Wes Anderson and one who doesn't. Or you can see this in your personal life- maybe you love watching bad horror movies, and your significant other doesn't. Or they love Ornette Coleman, and you don't.
In the end, all you can ask is for someone to try something that you love- to share that experience. And if they don't like it, all the talk in the world isn't going to change their mind. You can't force someone to love what you love.
Hodgman also routinely and hilariously lambasts
many things, including extremely popular. stuff The context from him that you included is useful, but also (imo) gets to the heart of why that sort of point is pointless in practice, if not worse. If used as a response to criticism or analysis (that isn't purely effusive praise) it simultaneously casts those critics/analyzers as meanbad jerks trying to change your mind. It assumes that the point of any discussion is to sway someone to your side, not to explore, to challenge, to see what happens.
We see this all the time with responses to movie critics. In fact, it happened over on the Ghostbusters: Afterlife thread--the usual dismissal of critics, in the context that the only job of a critic is news-you-can-use, a recommendation to see or not to see. Critics, in other words, are just trying to convince you to share their opinion of a work. So when they don't like the popular thing someone likes, they're pushy snobs with an agenda. When they rave (or at least largely praise) the subject of some large-scale fandom, well they've finally hung up their berets and black turtlenecks and realized the true value of popular entertainment.
Do you see how stifling and anti-intellectual that sort of reaction is, to take criticism and analysis that isn't pure celebration as a rhetorical assault, and an attempt to take away other people's toys?
Even if you disagree with that assessment, when have you ever seen "People like what they like" have an impact that isn't awkward or worse? Hodgman will often use it as part of preambles to scathing takedowns of a thing, to establish that it's all in the context of "this isn't for me." But, with that established, he doesn't pull punches. And he doesn't use it as an actual standalone retort or response.
The more I think about People like what they like, the more it haunts me. It's a black hole. It's the end.
You're in a group of people comparing the Justice League movie to the Snyder Cut--what some of them thinks works, what some hate, that some don't like either. You decide to chime in:
"Hey, guys...People like what they like."
People are discussed Moby Dick, whether its innovations and genuine weirdness outweigh how long the damn book is, whether it should still be considered in the canon or not, whether it should ever have been assigned in schools, why one person in the group thinks it's the greatest novel ever written and another despises it." You've waited long enough:
"Have you considered that...People like what they like?"
You're discussing 5e. The discussion is passionate. Some people are praising its big tent appeal. Others are criticizing its mechanics. You brace yourself, and dust it off,
one more time.
"
People like what they like."
No response ever makes sense. Do you ignore it? But it's an accusation that can't be dealt with without sounding suspiciously defensive. You can get mad, but that just feeds it. You can move on, awkwardly, but it'll come up again (as it has here, as it always does). It's such a powerful, inexorable platitude that it can't be engaged with. It's the shimmer from Annihilation. It's Solaris rewiring your mental reality. It can't be resisted or escaped.
I have to go now. I think I hear People like what they like somewhere in the house. It's watching a Hallmark Christmas movie downstairs and really liking that it likes what it likes and liking that if you're so foolish as to say you don't like what it likes you should
really keep in mind that
People like what they like.
”.
