I own a miniseries and its sequel (I haven’t actually seen the latter) starring Paul Gross as a corrupt Canadian prime minister who’s involved in some sort of scandalous deal involving water and US politics. I can’t quite call it a guilty pleasure, because it’s not actually pleasurable to watch, more sort of “death march with a great cast.” Which is why I haven’t watched the sequel. That said, I’m not ashamed of myself for owning them. I don’t do shame, when it comes to bad art.

Guilt? That’s different. For one thing, I don’t like how much I like certain Mel Gibson works, given what we know of him. I haven’t seen Far and Away in a very long time, but even before I was aware of the Tom Cruise thing, I was aware that it was a fairly regressive movie in several ways that, side note, isn’t very good. Guilt, however, is a lighter burden than shame. My definition of “guilty pleasure” is “something you enjoy even though it is, in some way, bad for you.” Films that are the equivalent of cotton candy—light and sweet and cloying, or at least just empty calories. Or, I suppose, the equivalent of one of those terrifying fried shouldn’t-be-fried things from a Midwestern state fair. Greasy and dense and makes you feel kind of sick?

Shame, though. Guilt is about your actions. Shame is about your personality. “I shouldn’t watch The Spirit, because it’s a dumb waste of potential” is one thing. “There’s something wrong with me for being as amused as I am by The Spirit” is quite another. I think you’d have to go a pretty long way for your viewing habits to indicate that there’s something wrong with you. Like, it’s one thing if you’re secretly amused by Wild, Wild West. It’s another if you like watching it because you like seeing someone beat up an amputee.

Then there’s the internet’s apparently constant interest in making you feel bad because of what you haven’t consumed yet. Lists and lists and lists. I like lists, and I like checking things off on lists, but while I’m really looking forward to seeing, say, Yojimbo, I’m not a bad person because I haven’t yet. (Give me a break—I’m midway through “T”!) Heck, I’m not a bad person because I decided, a while back, that I wasn’t going to watch Shoah any time soon. I know it’s both brilliant and important, but I’ve been struggling with depression and an active two-year-old. Watching Shoah would require taking some of my valuable not-depressed time and filling it with the Holocaust, and even if I were so inclined, it’s hard to do that when you’re playing Keep Simon From Decorating With Powered Sugar.

I feel certain that, if everyone stopped making movies right now, I’d still never run out of movies to watch. Sometimes, that’s because I am in the mood to return to a movie that is like an old friend and just settle in with it. I don’t want to take that time and instead watch something that I may or may not even like. Mostly, that’s because there are tens of thousands of movies that I haven’t seen and am not going to get to see, for one reason or another. There’s no point in shaming someone because their viewing list is different than yours.

I guess it’s at least better than those lists that want to shame you for not having traveled to three hundred places around the world. At least a Netflix subscription, three discs at a time or just streaming, is cheaper than plane tickets. You’re also guaranteed not to get mugged or even just pickpocketed when you choose to go slumming through the depths of Amazon Prime, which you can’t say about actual slums.  YouTube comments may break your brain, but they won’t break your ankle like some of the hikes the internet has suggested I attempt.