I don’t like any of the following:

• Harry Potter
• Good Omens
• American Gods
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
• Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail
• The Dark Tower (or anything else by Stephen King)
• The Sword of Truth series

It’s okay if you like these things. My liking or disliking them doesn’t invalidate your own enjoyment. In fact, the things that I dislike about a book or a movie might be the exact thing that you love. This is what we call a difference of opinion.

So why do people feel the need to fight over them? I regularly get insulted and belittled if I dare to suggest that I don’t like the same thing as other people. People half-jokingly tell me that they will take away my “geek card” for not obsessing over Hitchhiker as much as them. They demand to know how I can read/write YA Fantasy and not bow down at the altar of J. K. Rowling.

It’s not for me. It might be for you. It’s clearly appealed to millions of people. Arguing with me, insulting me, isn’t going to change my opinion about any of this media.

Nothing is going to have universal appeal to every single person on the planet. We’re all different people who like different things. Every book, movie, TV show, etc. gets one-star reviews on sites like Amazon. These negative reviews don’t mean that a piece of media is necessarily bad, and people who leave negative reviews aren’t always trolls, haters, or “not smart enough to appreciate good art.” Sometimes, we just don’t like something.

Is there a popular book, series, or something else that you don’t like?