Well, I’m the OP. Who did you accuse of that?
I find the obsessiveness a bit creepy, too, at least from adults (and not just in re: HP, but also sports, TV, etc.). I’m a huge music geek, but I never feel like I absolutely have to have a CD the moment it’s released; I don’t mind waiting for things, knowing I’ll get to them eventually, and I hate opening weekends of films. So I find the level of excitement a bit weird, but whatever. It’s fun to get pumped up about shit now and then. I just try not to befriend any of the truly insane fans, thus avoiding hours of boredom listening to them natter on about their pet obsessions.
What I find annoying (and this is a sidetrack to the OP) is the marketing blitz for the HP releases (books and movies), as well as for other huge media events (mostly films, such as LOTR/superhero movies). It seems to me they don’t need to spend millions of dollars promoting something fans already know about anyway; they could have a “Spiderman” website that listed the release date of the film and even if that was the extent of the promotional campaign it would still be #1 at the box office because it’s already got a built-in fan base. Then maybe more cash would be available to promote smaller films/books/whatever that might not have a chance of reaching a wide audience. It doesn’t make much sense to me, but maybe that’s why I’m not in marketing (well, that and the fact that I’m not a huge smarmy asshole).
What I don’t understand is people who will deliberately ruin another’s experience of something. I mean, take anything. Sports, books, movies, whatever. Advanced knowledge of the ending would change the experience. How could it not? If you Tivo the Superbowl, do you want me to tell you the final score before you watch it? Do you want me to tell you the twist to The Sixth Sense? Or do you want to experience it on your own, without my interference?
Ruining something that way for someone else strikes me as very petty and small.
A few comments (from someone who will certainly buy the book this weekend and probably finish it this weekend, but won’t wait in line or go to a release party; but would if my child-aged cousins who are fanatical fans lived here instead of on the east coast):
(1) This phenomenon of people being anti-HP and how they perceive HP fans falls into one of my theories about how people observe things. People see some number of incredibly dangerously ludicrously obsessed fans. And they see a really large number of fans. And they associate those things in their brain and react as though there are a really large number of incredibly dangerously ludicrously obsessed fans. Sure, there might be a few people whose obsession with HP is, honestly, literally, unhealthy. And sure there are tons of people, including many on the straight dope, who are fans of HP to the extent that they intend to buy the book on opening day, intend to discuss it at great lengths, maybe own one or two pieces of HP merchandise. But the first group and the second group are not the same thing at all. (I first made this observation about liberals on the SD. Sure, there are a very small number of Der Trihs types. And sure, the board is more liberal than conservative. But that doesn’t mean that the majority of the board is Der Trihs, and some people act as if it is.)
(2) Something being popular doesn’t make it bad. And anything that is popular is, by definition, going to have a lot of fans. And those lot of fans will (because there’s something they all like) want to talk about it. And that talking about it will, of necessity, intrude itself into your consciousness. And the more they like it, the more they’ll talk about it. That doesn’t make them creeps, and it doesn’t make the work in question unworthy of your attention. I just don’t understand the “oh, well, I might have been interested in Firefly, but the trouble is that lots of dopers, people who I obviously have at least something (love of the SDMB) in common with, really really really love it. So fuck that.”
(3) I think that, within reasonable limits, there’s something good about things being widely popular. It brings people together. For instance, I can’t even bear to talk to Shodan about politics without wanting to throttle him senseless. And yet he and I share a love for Harry Potter. If we met at a dopefest, it would give us something to talk about, something that would be a connection, something that might lead to us realizing that deep down we’re really all the same*, yada yada yada. That has to be a good thing.
[sub]*Except for the part where I’m right and he’s wrong[/sub]
I didn’t accuse anybody of that. I made an announcement of my own personal behavior, and you took that as a personal attack. Sensitive much?
I suppose this is as good of a place as any to mention what I saw on the news last night.
They were talking about the Harry Potter mania and people were bringing up an argument that has been seen throughout this thread: well hey, it gets kids reading. Which, while I’m not interested in the series, I agree is a fantastic point. Anything that gets kids reading isn’t a bad thing.
The reporter went on to say (and this was CNN, though I don’t have a cite) that although it gets kids to reading more while they are in a younger demographic, upon entering the teen years, their reading rates drop just as much as they did before HP.
Of course, that really has no bearing on the initial argument, because it’s still getting kids reading. It just isn’t getting kids to want to read over the long term. Interesting segment (on the program) though.
If you really want to get kids reading, ground them constantly, and only let them have books in their room for distraction. Worked for me!
*Hi Dad!
I have to wonder about the self reporting on this, though. Are they asking the kids, themselves, how much they read? Both my teenage sons (ages 13 and 16) read Harry Potter books, among other titles. I, however, am not allowed to tell anyone they read at all. It would be so not cool if their friends found out they like to read, and to add to the shame, that their step father has a degree in literature and their mother is a librarian. We often discuss all manner of literature at the dinner table. Not suprisingly, they don’t often invite dinner guests to our home. 
Actually, the words I quoted had absolutely nothing to do with your personal behavior, but your condemnation of the behavior of others.
At any rate, this is a stupid, nitpicky, argument. I sort of get what you mean and you sort of get what I mean, and I think that’s good enough.
But that part is so small as to be insignificant. Hail, brother!
Regards,
Shodan
That could backfire if you stack their shelves with Ayn Rand or something, though.
I would like to see a cite on that also. My kids were both early readers, and now my 17 year old just finished *Atlas Shrugged * and my 15 year old daughter has three or four books going at once. She’s on a first name basis with our town librarian and is going at least once or twice a week to request books. She’s currently reading *Gone With the Wind *.
Get them while they’re young, and they’re readers for life.
But this is bullshit, of course. One of the marks of maturity is mastering our emotions in an adult manner, and part of that involves choosing the things that will upset you. If you know you are being irritated by something piddly, you can certainly work to learn to disregard it.
Then your tolerance isn’t that low, is it? I mean, having the BF into this stuff and all. Unless you’re actually intolerant and condescending about his interests to his face? In which case, you must be a treat to date.
The fact is, differrent people are interested by different things. There’s nothing inherently “better” about whatever the hell you choose to read and the SF your BF is perusing. Even if there were – even if you rigorously limited yourself to only the most uplifting of classical literature – you would be missing out on a lot of modern culture, which you are so pleased to dismiss as "nerd culture, by being too high and mighty to explore it.
Yeah, they’re called “grown ups”: people who embrace their own interests and refuse to be embarrassed for them by people like you.
I don’t think that rebuts the article, though. The question isn’t “Do younger kids who read Harry Potter go on to be readers when they’re older kids?” It’s, “Does Harry Potter make readers out of kids who wouldn’t be otherwise?”
Salon just posted a review of the book that, in addition to having a warning from the Editor at the beginning of the article, has an even more obvious warning before you link to the second page of the review, where even more specific details of the story and ending are revealed. Even the link itself that you have to click on to proceed reads OK, you’ve been warned. Spoilers ahead!
You’d think this would be enough for some people, but take a look at the letters responding to the article! Complaint after complaint about how Salon shouldn’t have done this, and should’ve been ashamed to do that, and how pernicious they were for even daring to post such a thing at all! :rolleyes: Give me a break, people! This is what the OP is complaining about. It’s not just a reasonable request to avoid information getting inadvertently or clumsily spoiled. It’s the expectation that everyone take HP as seriously as they do, and that all actions and behavior by everyone must conform to this particularly rigid and uncompromising worldview.
To which I say: Bite Me. I’m not going to utter a peep about it (I don’t even know anyone who reads the damn things), but if I want to find out some more info about the book, I’m certainly entitled to read it without being subjected to Booga-booga-booga hysteria from people who seem to be spoiling to get spoiled. Linky? Don’t click it. Review? Don’t read it. Spoiler Warning? Don’t ignore it.
Maybe it’s just an incredibly small percentage of HP fans that react this way. Fine. But it’s still the squeaky wheel that’s going to get the grease of scorn. They should expect nothing less.
Heh. Sorry. Coming ten minutes after my previous post, that struck me as hilarious.
Good for you and your kids, though! My parents drilled the importance of reading into me before I could even say my ABC’s, and I’m eternally grateful.
er, I didn’t call you pathetic. Heck, I’ve worked tech and customer support for most of my life; one of my better jobs was third shift. I just never found it very personally fulfilling. It strikes me that this may be more your problem than hating reactions to a set of books, but I’m not going to psychoanalyze you, sweetcheeks. Don’t you ever change. 
<snips all the other stuff>
Word.
Look. There’s certainly a level of pathetic where people seriously think of nothing else in their day but how wonderful it would be to frolic with unicorns in the Forbidden Forest and turn beetles into buttons. There are people who put up Emma Watson Turns 18 countdowns. There are people who would fly to wherever (New York I can only assume) to watch Equus because they get to see naked Harry Potter. shudder There is the woman who wore the Harry Potter towel and nothing else and waved to fifteen year old Dan Radcliffe with a sign: “Nothing gets between me and Harry Potter!” There are people who read nothing else, talk about nothing else, who spend every minute they aren’t reading the books writing their own fantasies about the characters.
These people might just have a problem.
But the people who focus on them, who obsess about the obsessive, who not only recognize that they have a problem but stare at that problem, mocking it and pointing at it and ranting about it, putting so much energy toward something as flimsy as another person’s enjoyment of a book, of a fandom… that’s arguably even sadder. You and I both know there’s a number of people who go out specifically to find people to mock and laugh at, poring over their boards, giggling at them… dude, I have better things to do with my time. Things that don’t even involve crouching in front of a computer for hours on end.
I think the problem that people are expressing here (not the angry letters on Salon), and that most of the reasonable people are expressing, is that of those individuals who are going out of their way to try to spoil the ending of the series.
People from SomethingAwful bought banner ads and Google ads with the spoilers in them. They’re selling T-shirts on the web with the spoilers printed on the shirt. People go to book stores and other retailers on release day to literally yell the spoilers to those who are in line to buy the book.
That’s not the same as a link that says ‘This link goes to a spoiler. If you don’t want to know how the book ends, don’t click it.’ The kinds of behavior where someone goes out of their way to deliberately slam people over the head with spoilers they have no interest in hearing or seeing are detestable. The people who buy the banner ads and the Google ads and the T-shirts and show up at retail stores to scream the ending of the book are assholes.
They’re not doing it because they want to know how the book ends, or discuss with other like-minded people how it ends. Their only purpose is to take away some joy from someone else. It’s not even that it’s Harry Potter.
Their attitude is ‘Those people are having fun and taking enjoyment in something, and I am such a shitheel of a human being that I have to go take a piss all over it.’
You’re okay in my book. Your coworker, on the other hand. . .
Possibly he pulled the prank in front of you knowing that you would both get a good laugh and then you would take it down before someone else came along. If so, I got no beef with it.
The first time you read a book is like the first time you do anything: new, exciting, different. I don’t think I’m unreasonable in wanting to preserve the specialness of a first read for myself. And it’s no skin off anyone else’s back! People don’t have to go out of their way to NOT spoil my experience. That’s why your coworker’s behavior ticks me off so much. To be a decent guy, he has to do nothing. That’s right: nothing. To be an asshole, he actually has to invest time and effort. He would prefer WORK in order to wreck someone else’s fun. Wow, he sounds like a real ray of sunshine.
Lots of people take pleasure in silly harmless things. Well good; the world could use a little more happy. As for those few shriveled souls who will walk three miles out of their way to crap in our sandbox, well, this unabashedly-foolish-dressing-up-for-a-book-
release-and-planning-to-enjoy-my-first-ever-read-of-a-completely-unimportant-children’s-book-nerdling (that’s Me) thinks that YOUR lives are sad.
(On preview) What catsix said.
Can any HP-craze apologist in here defend the fact that CS has TWO stickies devoted to just HP? I mean, WTF? That implies that the board itself is equivalent to the ultra-obsessive losers that everyone in here appears to denounce.