You Call That a Guilty Pleasure? Try Buggering the Couch. Here's a Pair of Scissors.

February is long gone, thank god. The Oscars and all that, come and gone. If one more person told me that watching this or that awards show is a "guilty pleasure" of theirs, I was going to say it to their face: that's a fucking pitiable excuse for a guilty pleasure.

Three--no less than three people have "confessed" to me that they love watching the Oscars.

Maybe that’s a coincidence, but it is certainly, at heart, part of a larger, obnoxious trend of playfully confessing to things we’re not really ashamed of.

Everybody has such benign guilty pleasures: a friend of mine half-whispers to me that he "kind of likes the Bee-Gees."

For shame! Is this what lurks in the darkest depths of the human heart? Speak up, so everybody can hear–because you know you’re not really ashamed of liking the Bee-Gees. And if you are, then, yes, there is something very, very wrong with you.
I wish I could yell back at my friend to find a better (i.e., worse) way to squander his spirit than listening to the Bee-Gees–I would suggest masturbating gloomily all weekend, every weekend, but I secretly know he already does this. I was his roommate in college. But I don’t expect he’s going to confess to that particular "guilty pleasure" anytime soon.

A coworker admits to me, with fake solemnity–like I’m a priest or something–that she "actually hates talking to payroll on the phone" and that, though she sounds friendly, she’s "only faking it."

Oh, how horrible! Guess what? Payroll is only faking it, too. What’s more, you know they are, and they know you are. And you know that I know that. Our social world, each of our daily lives, is premised on fake friendliness... and most six-year-olds are aware of this. To pretend that I am not, that you’re letting me in on a secret, is a little demeaning.

I do this, too, but I truly feel it’s time we stop: I will never again tell people that one of my "guilty pleasures" is watching every film version ever made of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol each December. Because I know in my heart that this is perfectly wholesome. In return, please do not tell me that your "guilty pleasures" include eating half a pack of Fig Newtons in the bathtub. Tell me that you enjoy making fun of the deaf. Or that you like to start vicious rumors from scratch, just to watch them grow and grow until they devour innocent people’s lives. Tell me that you beat up old people for fun. These are the kind of unspeakably sick, depraved things that make for true guilty pleasures; these things inspire contempt, and make others feel good about themselves.

Don’t tell me that you secretly like eating straight from the jar of peanut butter–tell me that you secretly pay somebody to smear it onto your face while saying hurtful things to you. Because if you can’t come up with an unsightly paraphilia, or some such true disgrace to admit to, I’m going to just feel awful about myself in comparison. And you know what? I suspect everybody really knows that already...

Most people will say I’m making too big a deal out of this. But it’s such a riddle, nearly an unfathomable mystery to me that we live in this age of bogus confessions. Everywhere, the frenzied voices of friends, family, and coworkers are "confessing" to things they aren’t really ashamed of.

Well, here’s my own, last contribution to the din: don’t tell anybody this, but I did not really read all of the assigned reading that earned me my college degrees. For instance, I did not really read the French sociologist Michel Foucault. Not a word... but, from class discussion and secondary sources, I get the gist of what he was saying, and it goes like this: our notions of pleasure, shame, and depravity are hopelessly bound up with social relations of power. And we all like to feel powerful. (Admit it.)

Thank you, Foucault, my second-hand, adulterated, oversimplified imaginary friend! You not only faked your way so convincingly into my final examination essays, you have (I think) artfully explained the mystery of the bogus confession: we just like to make each other feel guilty, because that makes us feel strong. Tell a human being that, deep down in the darkest shadows of your soul, you secretly long to... eat two whole pints of ice cream, and you’re pretty much going to make him or her feel awful. Honestly, I think we use this light-hearted hush just to make others feel unconsciously depraved by comparison, even as they are forced to laugh and make-believe at being outraged by our obviously wholesome "bad-habits." We all know that every human being has far, far darker secrets than liking the Bee-Gees, or hating the girl in payroll.
The fake "guilty pleasure," and all such bogus confessions, are really aimed at making other people feel awful in comparison to you–and this is essentially an exercise in power. The same Puritanical power that held, and still holds, together the fabrics of whole, wild, mighty, otherwise untamable societies is miniaturized, and given a friendlier face in the bogus confession. At heart, though, it is just about power, plain and simple.

So stop yourself, next time you feel like telling a friend "You know what? Sometimes I like to watch Days of Our Lives... but don’t you tell anybody that!" Do you really need that smiling sleight-of-hand, do you really have to heap all that guilt onto others, just to feel powerful? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!

P.S. I fucking read Michel Foucault! Saying I didn't just helped make my point. ...Shame on me, I fibbed, and I confess! Tee hee. Hoo hoo. (Fucking kill me, please.)