The Nightstar Zoo

Tastes.

Tastes in music. Tastes in clothing.

Choices.

Choice of Coke or Pepsi. Choice of Chocolate or Vanilla.

My question: are these objective or subjective?

I mean, is it all a matter of personal preference? "You enjoy what you like, I'll enjoy what I like."

Or is there some stuff out there that anyone should recognize as crappola?

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Master of Evil

I think a quick Internet search or a look at various Bad/Awful/Gross/Odd Links pages would reveal that human tastes have no bounds whatsofrellingever.

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Scharr, scharr, verscharr das Gebein, grab es tief unten im Keller ein.
Später dann graben es andere aus, und nennen dein Haus das Knochenhaus.
Scharr, scharr, verscharr das Gebein, leg auch ihre weißen Schädel hinein.
Mit Beton gießt du es aus, das Fundament vom Knochenhaus.
Scharr, scharr, verscharr das Gebein, da ist noch Platz, da paßt noch wer rein.
Hier tobte sich der Teufel aus, unten im Keller im Knochenhaus.

I think it could be argued that stuff like that is a definitive deviation from the norm. The norm was set by something.

Is that something objective? Or is that something a wide-spread preference? And why is that preference so wide-spread?

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Master of Evil

To a point it's personal preference. However, there have been studies on this very subject. I'm reminded of one in which people were shown several pictures of human faces (some barely recognizable as such). It found that different people tended to rank the same faces with great regularity in the ordering. In other words, our recognition of human attractiveness is at least partially built in at a genetic level.

Extending the concept, it would seem to fit with the observation that most fetishes (following jer's tangent), if not all of them, are quite possible to trace back to a given causality rooted in genetically-determined psychology. This means that there's an explanation for most or all of them that starts off at a reasonable point and mutates to all hell.

Let's take a simple (or simplified) case example of the oft-commented-on Asian bondage fetish: Society encouraging repression + ever exacerbated overcowding -> deep, serious repression (requires an outlet) -> violent outlet + requisite privacy -> rape -> rape pornography. Add fear of law -> (usually) faked or tamed rape porn -> asian bondage. At least, this has been one explanation put forth to explain the disproportionate popularity of such stuff in Japan and similar.

Yes, Real TV.

Joking aside, I think one criteria would be "does something make us better?". That's why I loath Weakest Link, Survivor, and so on. Games designed to make us value teamwork only as a basis for backstabbing.

Though I suppose there is a good dose of subjectiveness in "better".

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CALL ME MINH DAMMIT.

The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.
Paul Valery (1871 - 1945), 1895