Things that don't look like they should be enjoyed by intelligent people

[Rigamarole]

@kidneyfailure

The one that doesn’t seem like it should be enjoyed by smart people is South Park. I remember it starting out as crude potty-jokes and un-PC humor. Somewhere along the line, though, it morphed into a show that actually had something to say and that wasn’t afraid to use the aforementioned un-PC humor to attack taboo issues in an intelligent fashion.

I dunno about it morphing somewhere along the way. It’s always had crude potty humor, and it still does. But it’s also always been very perceptive and incisive in its criticisms. South Park is a show that really should appeal mostly to intelligent people.

[audit1]

Phineas and Ferb

Aren’t you too intelligent to be watching a kids show?

Yes, Yes I am.

[CalMeacham]

Yes, Sudoku is a logic puzzle, but its popularity comes from its deceptive simplicity. It seems like it should be more difficult to solve than it actually is, giving a solver of average intelligence a heightened sense of accomplishment.

You haven’t done enough Sudoku. After a while, you become extremely good at it, and you think they’re all relatively easy to solve. And that’s when you get hit by a whole new class of difficulty, and It Looks as if it ought to be less difficult to solve than it is.

[Onomatopoeia]

@CalMeacham

Yes, Sudoku is a logic puzzle, but its popularity comes from its deceptive simplicity. It seems like it should be more difficult to solve than it actually is, giving a solver of average intelligence a heightened sense of accomplishment.

You haven’t done enough Sudoku. After a while, you become extremely good at it, and you think they’re all relatively easy to solve. And that’s when you get hit by a whole new class of difficulty, and It Looks as if it ought to be less difficult to solve than it is.

I doubt it, but I’ll concede that you may be right. Once I was able to repeatedly solve every puzzle I attempted with equal ease, I knew I was done, so perhaps I just didn’t stick with it long enough. Who knows? For me, Sudoku, and similar puzzles, are like Rubik’s Cube. Once I figured it out I immediately lost interest.

[kayaker]

@Student_Driver

Touched on by the references to Lady Gaga and country, but pop music in general.

I enjoy some “low brow” music, partly because of just how low the brow is taken. For example, Cow Punk and Rockabilly can be interesting. With CowPunk for instance, musicians wear cowboy hats and denim while doing covers of Tammy Wynette tunes, sprinkling shouted “Fucks” and “Cunts” liberally throughout. And drinking PBR. What’s not to like?

[Dead_Cat]

This contribution will probably be lost on most readers, but my submission is Viz comic (published in the UK but available by mail order in the US). On the face of it, it is just a really smutty adult comic with lots of crude (and many unfunny) jokes. But it often contains quite clever satire - plus, it’s just ironically funny a lot of the time.

[msmith537]

@Gestalt

This hasn’t been my experience. I’ve gotten to know quite a few very successful MDs and science PhDs who are very well respected, etc in their fields and communities, have good social lives, and also have hobbies on the side. They are the sorts of people who don’t really like to ever be not productive or have down time, if that makes sense. Many of them play semi-obscure instruments, or are into woodworking, love attending operas, that kind of thing.

Then again, they are all in academia (although the MDs do see patients), so they’re not the business-world types that msmith is usually talking about.

I’m mostly talking about the “business world” types that I typically work around. Lawyers, consultants, finance people and whatnot. These are people who work 100 hours a week and get Blackberry messages every ten minutes. That doesn’t leave much time for hobbies or other interests.

[CalMeacham]

I doubt it, but I’ll concede that you may be right. Once I was able to repeatedly solve every puzzle I attempted with equal ease, I knew I was done, so perhaps I just didn’t stick with it long enough.

When I first started doing it, that was my experience as well. But even though I’ve been doing them for five years now I encounter ones that do not yield at all easily to application of the usual methods. You can’t go entirely by the ratings they impose – some “Hard” puzzles aren’t really hard by any means. But i still encounter puzzles that UI have been unable to complete, and not by committing thoughtless errors early on or other carelessness, and I am no slouch. But, of course, YMMV.

[salinqmind]

My ex-boss was the Ultimate Poseur. He had a masters degree and an appropriate job, and decided he was going to have The Very Best of Everything in his life. It was comical how he really worked at it. Clothing: Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren. Dining Out: Top of the line steakhouse, rare, please; and checking out the latest little ethnic-food-hole-in-the-wall mentioned in New York magazine. Movies: Bergman, Fellini, and every obscure ‘life of a Yugoslavian goat-herder’ type foreign film recommended by the top critics. Hobbies: golf, of course! He was on cloud nine if some other bigwig invited him to The elite country club. Other hobbies: slumming it at swap meets for antique books on his profession, and iron mechanical banks. Fly fishing on vacation in Montana. Drinks: top shelf scotch on the rocks, of course! Beer? dark imported, of course! Music: the complete works of Frank Sinatra. And I do believe he studied up on jazz, so he could expound on the difference between Chet Baker and whoever. Pretentious twit! I know for a fact he grew up in a middle class family that watched the Flintstones, vacationed at Hershey Park, and he played in Little League just like every other kid on the block. The guy got an education and got lucky - a little money and he pretended he wasn’t Al Nerd any more, but Alexander Goodtaste. I always pictured him going home after work, eating Kraft mac & cheese, a Utica Club to drink, watching Green Acres and the Beverly Hillbillies…relax a little, AL.

[Eutychus]

@ftg

The Simpsons. I’ve met a lot of people who never watched it thinking it was all kiddie/bathroom/stupid jokes, but the show embeds a huge number of really interesting references. You have to be up to speed in a large number of areas to get many of the jokes.

One of my favorites from about 2 years ago: Nelson Muntz made a short film with a closing shot that mimics the one from The 400 Blows.

The also had an episode called “22 Short Films about Springfield” which was based on a fairly obscure films called “32 Short Films about Glenn Gould.”

It’s like a low-brow candy coating with a high-brow creamy nougat inside.