Poptimist #32

V is for Virtue (and Vice): Guilty pleasures appeal as a concept because the feeling you oughtn’t to be enjoying something is a really powerful, complicated one. So maybe the real problem isn’t that the idea of “guilty pleasures” promotes guilt but that it cheapens it— reduces the profound impact of cognitive dissonance to the level of a sneaky cream cake. So opponents might try and reframe them as a secret urge, a vice, a kink— which might have the knock-on effect of making normal tastes seem tiresomely virtuous.