sometimes when I’m experiencing⸸ a new piece of art, I won’t enjoy it, but I also won’t understand why not. like I won’t know what the art could’ve done differently so that I would be more likely to enjoy it. this is confusing to me because I don’t think this has ever happened to me with art that I do enjoy. I might not be able to identify every little factor that went into me enjoying a piece of art, but I can always at least point broadly at which things I’m excited about or especially appreciative of. so why is this only a problem with art that I don’t enjoy?

⸸ for lack of a better term that encompasses “playing”, “watching”, “reading”, “looking at”, “listening to”, etc.

I think the difference between “I’m not enjoying this and I don’t know why” and “I’m not enjoying this and I do know why” is familiarity with similar art that I enjoy. for example when I read a cosmic horror story that I don’t like I’ll often compare it to my favorite cosmic horror stories. from that comparison I can notice differences, and try to identify if those differences make the story better or worse than my favorite stories. and from there I can try to puzzle out why that’s the case, which lets me generalize about my feelings about the whole genre

but on the other hand, if a piece of art is too different from any art that I’ve liked in the past, I can’t make any good comparisons. that’s not a problem if I like the art, because I think it’s fairly easy to identify some reasons why you like a piece of art on its own. but if I don’t like the art then I’m left floundering - I don’t have a good way to understand what I was meant to like about it and why

this all might end up sounding obvious to y’all lol but I wanted to explicitly process these thoughts. I want to be able to recognize this pattern if it happens while I’m experiencing some art in the future. I want to internalize that “I don’t know why I don’t like this” probably means “I don’t like this and I haven’t liked similar art in the past”. it’s really helpful to have mental shortcuts like that

speaking of which, another good mental shortcut is “I’m confused” -> “I’ve probably made an assumption that’s wrong”

@kasdeya You could also be in the midst of experiencing the bad vibes, but without having enough that you feel like you can identify the pattern. Or it can also be something that depends on how it is treated, and you haven't yet seen enough to know how this particular art tends to handle things.

So like, you know you don't like little things about the show, but it's not enough to be sure yet and you are extending some benefit of the doubt (maybe) trying to build a pattern to understand why.

(If that makes sense.)

@kasdeya Something that might also be happening is that it's much harder to fill in a gap than to name things that are there. To fill in a gap, you need to know all the things that could go into the gap, and choose the one that fits best. That requires a *lot* of knowledge and searching. That's what "I don't know why I don't like this" is: something is missing, and searching for it is very hard.

But to know why you like something, it is just a little introspection. If you have the practice, you can follow your feelings to get an answer. There is barely any searching to do.

That also explains why your archetype strategy helps: the archetype gives you things you can put in the gaps of the target art, you don't need to search through all your experience to find what might fit.

This would happen more often with unfamiliar art, because experience gives you the search space. With familiar art (a new horror movie), you know from all the examples what *could* have been different. But with unfamiliar art (like i dunno modern dance) you don't even know what can be a piece to add or take away.