Immensely popular things that really are good

Cafe Society
1

The Harry Potter books are good. They are surprisingly well written. Rowling definitely grows in confidence as an author as the books go on, the weakest is probably The Chamber of Secrets–it lacks the novelty of the first one and the dense plotting of the ones after, but they are all good reads.

Angry Birds is a fun game. The characters are charming and it’s insanely additive and has that “Just one more turn–wait is it 3 am?” quality that all games shoot for but few succeed.

What are some others?

2

Pizza.

3

The Fender Telecaster

Apple iPod, iPads and Macs have done pretty well.

4

The Avengers movie.

5

Chocolate.

6

The Internet, and
Cecil Adam’s The Straight Dope
are both mindbogglingly good.

7

Digital watches.

8

Maslow made a list of them.

Seriously though, despite a few counterexamples (well, maybe more than a few), most really popular things are actually pretty good.

9

Casablanca
Beethoven
Hamburgers

10

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series is really amazingly good.

And, sex.

11

Adele

12

Pizza. Tolkien. The Beatles.

13

Which surprised the shit outta me because my expectations regarding popular singers–and their choice of material–is pretty low.

“Who is this? She’s pretty good.”

“Adele.”

“Really? Oh.”

I’m normally that undemonstrative when I have the shit surprised out of me. It comes from having demons for brothers and a devil for a wife. You just can’t show weakness in front of them. That, and I’m a Gemini. We’re hard to surprise. :smiley:

14

This.

15

Yosemite (or insert name of your favorite National Park)

16

They are shoddy at worst and workmanlike at best.

17

So here’s a fun idea: why don’t you tell us what you think is good instead of crapping on something that others like?

18

+1

19

I think this post deserves to be immensely popular.

20

Not just the Harry Potter books (which got my non-reading kid to finally curl up with a big hardcover book), but the movies. I was so sure they were going to suck. But when I gave them a chance I sighed in relief. The casting was wonderful: Harry, Ron and Hagrid, just like I’d pictured them in my mind (Hermione and Malfoy both a little prettier, but excellent).

Wow – we just had to deal with that crappy attitude for a few seconds. Beastly has to live with that bitterness all day.