Not Like Anyone Else

I’ve been that person—the one who smirks when someone names Harry Potter as their favorite book or rolls their eyes when someone says they love Taylor Swift. Not because there’s anything inherently wrong with either, but because they’re popular.

So popular that their ubiquity feels like an affront to individuality. And I convinced myself this reaction came from a place of discernment, a sharper understanding of what “good” art should be.

But it wasn’t about quality. It was about power.

There’s a a certain amount of arrogance in dismissing the mainstream. Pierre Bourdieu argued that taste is never just preference—it’s a strategy, a tool for distinction. When we critique the mainstream, we aren’t rejecting its quality; we’re positioning ourselves above it, suggesting that our tastes reflect deeper insight, greater sophistication. But that kind of sophistication is almost always rooted in privilege.

Why do we distrust what’s popular? Not because it lacks meaning, but because its meaning is widely shared. An indie album no one has heard of, an obscure filmmaker, a niche novelist—these things are praised not only for their content but for their exclusivity. Liking them signals access: to time, to resources, to education. The dismissal of accessible art reinforces a hierarchy, where culture becomes a badge of status instead of a means of connection.

I’ve done this. I’ve side-eyed the popular, the easy, the widely loved—not because it wasn’t good, but because it wasn’t obscure. I’ve judged people for loving Coldplay or The Notebook as if their preferences were evidence of a shallow intellect, rather than a different kind of resonance. But those judgments weren’t rooted in truth. They came from a culture that equates exclusivity with value.

What does it say about us that something like Harry Potter, a story that has sparked wonder across generations, can be dismissed as “basic”? The book didn’t change. What changed is the lens through which we view it—a lens warped by the belief that anything universal must be unoriginal. This belief doesn’t come from the work itself; it comes from fear.

Mainstream art, by its nature, threatens the idea that taste can set us apart. If something resonates with

millions, it ceases to act as a marker of distinction. It becomes something shared, something that bridges rather than divides. For those who have built their identity around cultural capital, this can feel destabilizing. The critique of the mainstream isn’t about rejecting the art—it’s about reclaiming a sense of separation, a way of saying, I am not like everyone else.

But to dismiss art because it’s popular is to misunderstand its purpose. The universal doesn’t dilute meaning; it amplifies it. When something reaches millions, it’s not because it lacks depth—it’s because it speaks to something essential. Harry Potter doesn’t lose power because so many people love it. It gains power because it taps into emotions and experiences that are, at their core, human.

Criticizing the mainstream often masquerades as intellectualism, but it’s really just gatekeeping. It’s a way of asserting power, of suggesting that certain art is “better” because it is harder to access. And that gatekeeping is deeply tied to privilege. Loving the obscure requires time, resources, and education—luxuries not everyone has. The person listening to Top 40 on their way to work isn’t less thoughtful than the one searching for rare tracks on vinyl. They’re simply finding joy where they can.

Bourdieu was right: taste is a map of power. It reflects not only what we like but what we’ve been taught to value—and, more importantly, what we’ve been taught to dismiss. Rejecting the mainstream is often less about the work itself and more about protecting those lines of distinction, those carefully drawn boundaries between “us” and “them.” But in doing so, we lose sight of something fundamental: the way art connects us, not through exclusivity, but through shared experience.

I’ve clung to the niche, the obscure, the inaccessible, I'm not sure wether it resonated more with my taste or the perception I wanted people to have of me.