What defines a ‘Guilty Pleasure’?

Over the past couple of weeks I have been watching ‘Everyday life with Monster Girls’ on Crunchyroll and strangely enough, found myself enjoying the series immensely and getting a good laugh out of it, even though I can clearly see how bad the series is, so I suppose then it would be considered a guilty pleasure for me. This got me thinking however, how does one define a guilty pleasure? If a guilty pleasure is something we watch and enjoy even if we know its bad then what if a piece of media is critically acclaimed with others and yet you can be sitting there watching or reading that piece of media and you find yourself thinking, this is utter crap. Can it still be called a guilty pleasure then? On the flip side of that coin, what if you think something is really good but everyone else thinks its utter crap?

A prime example of this train of thought I can use for myself is the Adult Swim show Mr. Pickles. Over the years I will admit, I have found myself disliking a lot that has come from Adult Swim for a while now but in my late teens I loved a lot of their shows like Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021 and my all time favorite Adult Swim show, The Brak Show. Even back then they had shows I just did not like, Home Movies is one I remember not enjoying but I know the series has garnered a lot of praise and acclaim from other viewers and critics.

I found myself losing interest in Adult Swim around the time a show called Squidbillies started airing and it was at this point I stopped watching a lot of western cartoons aimed at an adult audience, with a few exceptions. That being said I had also been watching anime on Adult Swim and shows like Cowboy Bebop, Trigun and Orphen really did kick start my continuing love in anime as I was not watching Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z and Pokemon as religiously as I had before. Back on the subject of guilty pleasures however, recently a new Adult Swim cartoon caught my attention for what I honestly thought was funny writing and sheer hilarity in it’s blasphemy within it’s humor. I am of course talking about Mr. Pickles, a show I have seen hated by nearly every single critic I have come across that has reviewed the series. I know I have different tastes to a lot of people, I have known this for a long time, but does the fact that I enjoy this show make it a guilty pleasure even if I don’t think it’s bad?