“It doesn’t interest me” ≠ “It’s shit!”

These two are not the same.

There’s something appealing about a swift judgement. Proudly proclaiming “It’s shit!” at anything that you don’t like, agree with, or care about must have some sort of therapeutic effect. It reassures you that you are right. It preserves the status quo, and saves the trouble of having to think any further.

But even the punkest of the punks, who never shied away from sharing a thought, didn’t inflate his personal opinion into universal judgement. Note “I”;

I hate shit. I hate hippies and what they stand for. I hate long hair. I hate pub bands.

– Johnny Rotten in The Sex Pistols’ first interview, with Sound magazine in 1976.

Now think about how often people broadcast their opinions as if they were objective facts.

“It’s shit” has become one of the laziest phrases in contemporary cultural conversation. Most of the time, people do not mean that something is poorly made, badly thought through, or without value. More often, they mean something much simpler: “It does not interest me”. The distinction matters.

Saying “I’m not interested in this” acknowledges a limit in one’s own taste, attention, or experience. Saying “it’s shit” promotes a personal reaction into a universal judgement. It assumes that what fails to engage me has therefore failed altogether.

That strikes as both lazy and oddly self-centred.

Personally, there are countless things I choose not to engage with.

• Taylor Swift
• The iPhone
• Cinema
• …

I have no particular interest in any of them. But my lack of interest does not make them objectively bad. Nor does it invalidate the fact that millions of other people find pleasure, utility, fascination, or meaning in them.

That is simply what culture looks like. People are various. Experience is uneven. Taste is not universal.

This becomes especially obvious in art. Some works require context, patience, familiarity, or simply the right mood. Some are directed towards audiences other than ourselves. Others pursue aims we may not even recognise at first.

Immediate attraction is not the only measure of value.

That does not mean judgement is impossible. Of course some works are weak, careless, or unsuccessful. Criticism matters, and so do standards. But criticism should involve more than mistaking personal indifference for objective truth.

Very often, this kind of dismissal says more about the viewer than the work. It reveals expectations, habits of attention, and the limits of one’s own appetite.

I am not arguing that everyone must like everything – quite the opposite. Disinterest is perfectly ordinary. Indifference is honest. But there is something healthier, and more intellectually modest, in admitting that a thing simply does not speak to you.

“It’s shit” ends the conversation before it begins. It relieves the speaker of having to explain what exactly is not working, or why. Is it derivative? Superficial? Clumsy? Empty? Or is it simply not for you?

I am not the centre of the universe. My taste is real, but it is local. My opinion is not the final measure of what the world contains. Sometimes the more genuine response is simply: I’m just not interested.