when do you decide to stop liking something?

there is a toy story metaphor in here

is there a specific moment when you decide to stop liking something? is it when you walk past a line outside a store that is wrapped the block? is it when you see a polyester version of what you once loved hanging limply in a zara window? is it when something is included in a “starter pack” meme that makes you question your own perceived individuality? is it when you see an artist’s tickets sell out in under a minute? is it when a reservation is comically hard to get, yet boys with expense accounts have full tables every night? is it when you see a book performatively posted on someone’s story after you’ve already read it? is it when you see a flock of teenagers all wearing the same thing?

what do you do with it? do you throw it in the trash? donate it to someone with less fortunate taste? do you delete it from your playlist? turn off your resy notifications? how quickly do you fill the void with something new? do you tell people that you “used” to like it? do you give them an explanation?

i often think about the music, movies, clothes, books, and restaurants which i once loved that are lying discarded in my brain in a toy-storyian manner. i imagine all of the adidas superstar sneakers, and hot pink ugg boots hanging out amongst each other wondering whether they’ll get picked up again (and hell yeah, i had hot pink ugg boots). this takes up space in my brain partially because the physical waste piling up in landfills due to our impressionable fickleness, partially because i question if anyone truly knows themselves. one of my ~values~ is that i try to hold onto things i like with as much strength as my teeth can bear. admittedly, it can be hard when so much of our personality these days is perceived by the things we wear, read, eat, watch, and listen to which have very little to do with our actual personhood. we all do it to some degree, none of us are above it. we go around dropping the names of books, movies, brands, articles, restaurants etc. to signal how we want to be perceived through our preferences. boys i preliminarily talk to will endlessly speak about how much they loved a movie that just showed at the metrograph or how excited they are about a new pair of dries van noten sneakers, when in reality all i want to know is if they are nice to their mom. i watch people ask each other where they bought a specific clothing item, clinging on to each word as if it was twist in an m. night shyamalan film while their apple pay quivers in the background. i sit back while texts fling around tik toks made by “food influencers” which use phrases like “you HAVEEEE to go here before everyone else does” (and if the girls from the vip list girls are reading this, i want to go to dinner with you).

so much of liking something is tied to our ego, we have convinced ourselves that our interests are opportunities to be “branded” as if we are a DTC natural deodorant that just raised another round of seed funding. it makes sense that during moments of discomfort such as starting a new job/school or going through a friendship/romantic breakup we fall back on the illusion of a “rebrand” but i still find it dangerous to think of ourselves as brands created for consumption as opposed to fleshy human beings. and to level set, i am NOT innocent! i still think about when someone i was chatting with said to me, “well, that’s your brand.” i rolled my eyes and said “that’s not my ‘brand’ that’s just who i am.” he looked at me and said, “and you’re good at communicating that, aren’t you?” point, made.

last night at a party, charli xcx was brought up in conversation with a group of loose acquaintances, the overall tone of the discussion was that it is embarrassing to like brat because of how widely adopted it was by the masses as opposed of just the O.G. charli fans (nobody said this explicitly of course, but it is just my interpretation). now dear readers, i understand that brat summer became saturated and people were annoying about it (i am people), however i still piped up and said, “i still think brat is an incredible work of art.” someone replied, “really? you think so?” i went on to defend the auditory range of charli, how i find it to be one of the only albums to accurately distill the complexities of pary-girldom that span from euphoria to jealousy to all-consuming love to profound grief to existentialism right back to euphoria in this beautiful loop that will go on forever. the conversation ended with someone just simply replying “touché” (most likely just to shut me up, but the point still stands). i deeply admire those who know themselves enough to stick to their opinions to see a trend cycle fully rinsed through, unwrapping perspective as if it was an expensive gift given to those with patience and conviction. it made me think about my aunt, who i have seen unwavering in her proclivities for my entire life. every time i think of her attending bob dylan concerns throughout the course of 30 years my heart swells in admiration for her stickiness.

i try not to cringe or hide parts of my past, the embarrassing clothes i wore, the heavy makeup i would cake on to try to hide as much of myself as possible, my hair which was down to my waist in an attempt to look like the girls with 10,000 reblogs on tumblr, my emo phase in middle school when i would beg my mom to chaperone me at warped tour so i could see trace cyrus live (much to my mother’s chagrin, my love for boys with tattoos has stayed consistent). these phases endear me to the parts of myself that i have plunged deep into my gut. i suppose this could be an act of self-love (god) or self-preservation to quell myself from rashly abandoning things i like out of fictionalized pressure. it is inevitable that we are going to change and evolve as we get older, but i truly believe that the pace at which our preferences fluctuate is contingent upon how comfortable we are with ourselves.

i hope that one day i will be in my 60s at a charli xcx show talking about how much fun i had in the summer of 2024, overflowing with confidence in how heavy my feet are planted. i hope i still like the restaurants i do now even if i have to defend their “over-hypedness.” i hope the “trendy” leather handbags i wear will grow gorgeously supple with use even as i see more and more people carry them in the subway. i hope the people in my life who know me now will always know me even if we never spoke again.

thank you for reading!!!! i had a Bad Week, and from the conversations i’ve had with friends it seems like everyone had a Bad Week (i mean obviously... given Everything Going On...) but writing this made me feel better as it always does, hope it does the same for you by reading it.

i love you!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!