21 Guilty Pleasures We Won’t Be Giving Up Anytime Soon

Guilty pleasures can come in many shapes and sizes. For example, you may be prone to spending Sundays cozying up with your cat on the couch to watch all-day reruns of early 2000s reality shows.

Or, you can’t get through the week without eating a container of rocky road ice cream. Perhaps, you have a habit of waiting until the last moment to finish your work or watching sappy movies even though they make you cry every time.

Whatever your guilty pleasure might be, recognizing its existence can help you ensure that a harmless delight doesn’t become a harmful habit.

What Are Guilty Pleasures?

There are many ways that guilty pleasures can be expressed. The commonality they share is that they’re activities, products, or habits that a person participates in because it brings them joy, yet it also makes them feel slight shame.

These behaviors would never be anything so awful that they’ll ruin someone’s life, but you might be hesitant to share your guilty pleasures with others out of embarrassment. While the term feels a little contradictory, almost everyone has guilty pleasures that they occasionally enjoy.

The truth is that these types of little indulgences make life more fun and bearable when you’re bogged down by a stressful work week or want to get out of your head for a while. It’s all about appreciating these guilty pleasures in moderation and not worrying about other people’s perceptions of them.

The Most Common Guilty Pleasures

While you may not want to admit you’d sleep until noon on your perfect day, there are thousands of other people out there who feel the same way. There’s no use in muttering around embarrassed by your guilty pleasures because it’s likely most other people enjoy it as well.

Below are the 21 most common guilty pleasures.

1. Ordering food for delivery. It’s a Thursday night and the idea of spending an hour making dinner with the leftover groceries in your fridge is a nightmare. While you’ve already ordered take-out once this week, you finally give in and pull up the list of local restaurants delivering.

   Despite the hefty delivery fees, you order the food and leave a 20% tip. It’s a situation that’s all too familiar when a delicious meal is only a few clicks away. Many people consider it their most costly guilty pleasure.

2. Procrastinating. It always feels better to get your work done before it’s due. Yet, many people procrastinate the days away and leave the bulk of their work until the last minute. Even though it results in some pre-due-date panic, procrastinating is still one of the most common guilty pleasures around.

3. Binge-watching reality shows. It’s tough to describe the allure of reality shows.

   A bunch of strangers cooped up in a house together for two months being watched by the spying eye of cameras, a low-budget docu-series that captures the drunken misadventures of twenty-somethings, a test of endurance that drops contestants on a remote island and provides the person who stays the longest with a cash prize.

   There’s something about these somewhat laughable concepts with regular people that’s just wildly entertaining. That’s probably why it’s a very popular guilty pleasure among people of all ages.

4. Eating a half-gallon of ice cream. Ice cream has the healing powers to cure all types of sadness, but sometimes this remedy can be taken to the extreme. Indulging in a bunch of ice cream is a popular shameful delight.

5. Snooping through people’s social media. It feels a little devious to turn over the stones of a person’s social media activity, especially if you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of who knows who only to end up on your ex-girlfriend’s cousin’s mom’s page.

   People might feel a little uneasy about partaking in social media snooping, but they continue to do it nonetheless. While making sure that they don’t accidentally like a photo from 2013 on their nosy endeavors.

6. Sleeping in late. While there’s an anxiety that comes with sleeping the whole day away, there’s also a bit of pleasure to it as well. On weekends, sick days, and holidays it’s practically a requirement to spend most of the morning in bed.

7. Scrolling on Tik Tok. The latest in addictive social media networking services is that of Tik Tok. The easy-to-use interface and targeted algorithm have made it a popular app among many different types of people. While many users can spend hours scrolling on Tik Tok, fewer are proud of this feat.

8. Watching your favorite children’s movies as an adult. Although children’s movies are made for that particular demographic, sometimes these films end up being even more popular with the adults who watched them in their formative years.

   While many people can enjoy a good run of Peter Pan or The Lion King well into their adulthood, it’s still considered a guilty pleasure among most of these people.

9. Watching sappy romantic films. In the same vein as children’s movies are sappy romantic films. These types of movies either make tears well up in viewers or initiate a powerful eye roll.

   No matter the reaction that these rom-com movies inspire, many viewers continue to watch these films over and over again even though they’re slightly embarrassed to admit it.

10. Listening to a catchy song on repeat. Sometimes a catchy song just grabs hold of your soul and compels you to play it over and over again until you’ve memorized every beat. While listening to an enjoyable song on repeat can feel good at the moment, it’s not a behavior that most listeners are keen to share with others.

11. A glass of wine on a weeknight after work. After a long and draining shift at work, many employees get home and succumb to a popular guilty pleasure – a glass of alcohol. But, whether it’s a wine or a beer, there’s a twinge of penitence that comes along with taking a few satisfying sips on a weeknight.

12. Reading the latest celebrity drama. It might not be the most inspiring form of media, but some of us can’t help indulging in a little celebrity drama. There’s a relaxing element to reading about how a reality television star got into a heated argument on Twitter or how a fan-favorite podcast got cancelled due to a whirlwind of dramatic events.

    Many people use the guilty pleasure of celebrity drama as a distraction from their own lives, and it works as a necessary escape.

13. Belting tunes in your car on the way to work. The drive to the office can feel like a drag when you’ve got eight hours of work ahead of you. One way of handling this reality is by belting your favorite tunes on the way to work. This coping mechanism is a guilty pleasure that many employees are happy to partake in.

14. Taking selfies. The age of selfies has turned lots of people into walking versions of Narcissus staring at their reflection in the pools of their phone screen. While it’s recognizably a little self-absorbed to take a million selfies on end, it’s sort of satisfying as well.

15. Conspiracy videos on YouTube. There is an endless stream of rabbit holes to get lost in on the internet. One of the most popular and entertaining of those is conspiracy videos on YouTube.

    Depending on your content preference, there are conspiracies about every nook and cranny of the seemingly clear world, from mattress stores to Spongebob Squarepants. It’s easy to spend hours watching outlandish theories, but not quite as simple to explain these hobbies to your loved ones.

16. Eating cookie dough batter. We’ve all been warned against it since we were little kids, and yet, we all continue to sneak a taste. Despite the risks, eating raw cookie dough batter is still one of the tastiest guilty pleasures.

17. Spending all Saturday at home in pajamas. It can feel like you’re giving in to laziness when you spend all day at home on Saturday in your pajamas, but it gives you the chance to recharge your battery.

    While you may be reluctant to admit that you had a relaxing weekend at home instead of catching up on errands or going out, it’s actually one of the healthiest guilty pleasures you can have. As long as it’s practiced with the self-discipline to drag yourself out of bed and get together with friends sometimes too.

18. Overpriced lattes in the morning. While it’s constantly preached that the secret path to wealth is avoiding frivolous purchases like overpriced lattes in the morning, most people continue to give in to this temptation. No matter the cost, lots of coffee-drinkers are unwilling to compromise when it comes to their caffeine.

19. Greasy fast food. Another food guilty pleasure that plagues many folks is eating fast food. These products are often greasy and borderline gross, but we as a society continue to purchase millions of burgers and fries per year. It’s a guilty pleasure that’s given way to the billion-dollar fast food industry.

20. An impromptu shopping spree. Even when the bank account’s funds are low, many of us fall prey to the clutches of a good impromptu shopping spree. It may not help fix stressful situations in life, but it sure can provide momentary relief. That could be the reason why many people rely on this guilty, yet gratifying, activity.

21. Gossiping with friends. The bigger person never speaks about other people to gossip, but sometimes that’s a risk you’re willing to take when it comes to getting satisfaction from a guilty pleasure.

    Giggling with friends over mindless gossip isn’t something that most of us are proud of, but it’s an entertaining task that is sometimes exactly what you need.

Author

Sky Ariella

Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.