What's a guilty pleasure?

[http://www.otakunovideo.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/happy-saya-300x170.jpg|300x170px|happy-saya]I've come across a few blog posts and podcast episodes recently--some of them older, but new to me--that address anime classified as "guilty pleasures."

A guilty pleasure is defined in this thread as "a particular series, [even though you know] it´s considered bad or sub-par by the vast majority of the community." That's a helpful starting point.

This starts with my mystification with terms like "bad" and "good" when they're applied to a work of art. The larger artistic world has long since abandoned those terms as subjective at best and meaningless at worst. Who decides what's "good?" The community? The community's been wrong before.

"Sub-par" means that most people think that the work is unworthy of the effort. It's below expectations. Well, many great works of art have been under-appreciated by most people at different times. Citizen Kane languished in relative obscurity for years.

Why don't we just take pleasure in anime? Whatever it is, we can enjoy it. We can enjoy it for what it is. We should certainly be aware of how much time we're spending on anime, and seek balance. But if you're going to watch anime, watch it with joy.