But the OP is asking about things that inexplicably manage to generate a HUGE fan community.
Sure, there are lots of small quirky fanbases devoted to minor commercial/cultural phenomena that are basically crap quality or lacking in general appeal.
But what is it that makes it possible for some apparently crappy or esoteric stuff to be immensely popular with LOTS of people?
(Excellent example with the Twilight series, Superhal.)
Oh, yeah, good point. 
John Norman’s Gor novels – they certainly generated a huge fanbase compared to other fantasy fiction. I had known for years that there were people who tried living the “Gorean lifestyle” on Earth, some of whom did so enthusiastically enough to wind up on police blotters. I’d always considered such folks to be, well, disturbed, as Gor clearly is not fit for Real Life.
Then I discover Second Life, and very shortly after that, Second Life Gor. Tens of thousands of players. Over 300 sims devoted to it on Second Life. The largest roleplaying community in Second Life. Most of them smart and funny and well aware that they were just roleplaying a fantasy. You could have knocked me over with a feather! Naturally, I’m one of them now. Best. Surprise. Evah!
I’ve mentioned this before, but I was taking a class on Yougn Adult Fiction right around the time that Breaking Dawn was released and Twilight was one of the required readings. Compared to some of the other “classics” of teen fiction, Twilight is fucking Shakespeare. It’s clear that the people slamming it don’t read much teen fiction, because there is a lot of terrible stuff out there and some of it is considered good by the teen fiction community.
Ghost Hunters and the spin-offs. Some of my friends like these shows, and there is fanfic about them and fan sites and so on. The subject of ghosts is interesting, but the shows themselves are just dull.
However, sometimes I think what makes a show gain cult status, and especially generate a lot of fanfic, if it has an interesting premise that has serious flaws in its execution, so the fans think they can do it better. That’s probably why there isn’t an awful lot of Frasier fanfic considering how big a show it was - well, that and the fact that very few people would fancy Kelsey Grammar.
I’ve read a ton of teen fiction partly because I like it and partly because I mistakenly thought you were supposed to read all the books on my secondary teaching pre=course reading list; everyone else read 3 or 4, I read 230. Twilight is of much lower quality than the vast majority of those books. It’s so bad that the film is actually better.
Really? I read a lot of YA and children’s lit (I’m in the process of becoming a children’s librarian) and I think there’s a lot of really great YA lit out there. Especially now that there’s such a resurgence in young adult literature. What classics did you think were terrible?
I’m pretty sure “Anime” is a genre to most people who aren’t serious Anime [del]fanboys/fangirls[/del] enthusiasts. I’d certainly consider it a genre rather than a format, albeit a genre with several sub-genres.
And like the earlier poster, I’ve yet to find much Anime that I enjoyed. And I know it’s not a cool or trendy thing to say, but most of what I’ve seen has been either largely or a combination of angsty, silly, confusing, somewhat “immature” (I know that’s not quite the right word but I can’t seem to think of a better way to describe it), unrealistic (even within the bounds of the milieu the work is supposed to be set in), or- and bear with me here- just fucking weird.
Yes, there’s some great Anime, but there’s only a few Akira or Nausicaa or Howl’s Moving Castle-s; and uncountable amounts of crap or Weird Japanese Stuff making up (IMHO) the bulk of it.
A large part of the off-putting for me is also the fandom; there seems to be a certain type of person who’s really into Anime (not just a casual fan or likes a certain series or studio/artist; the sort of people who actually learn Japanese so they can watch it without subtitles or dubbing, start getting really, really into Japanese culture, and so on). Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I find it extremely off-putting in a number of ways that I can’t quite put my finger on.
I really doubt that the novels you think were worse sold even half as many copies.
I’ll have to dig up the syllabus, but the one that really stood out as awful was The Chocolate War. I know it was written in the late 70s, but the whole plot felt unreal (the “secret society” that runs the school and even the priests are afraid of totals six kids) to me and the ending was just baffling (the main character is nearly beaten to death and the culprit is caught and given a pat on the head and told “at least you didn’t kill him”).
And while it’s still pretty recent, the highly praised Little Brother is just a complete mess. The plot makes no sense, the whole thing is actually riddled with plot holes, a lot of the computer stuff that Doctorow talks about is wrong and it has such a preachy undercurrent that I could barely finish it.
That said, I did find a lot of YA books that I really enjoyed. But people holding up Twilight as some kind of low point for the printed word just confuse me.
And? That’s my point. For all the whining and gnashing of teeth about how terrible Twilight is, compared to a lot of teen fiction, it’s actually a good book.
And before the mania, it was given a few awards by the teen fiction community (Publishers Weekly’s “Best Children’s Books of 2005” and School Library Journal’s “Best Books of 2005”), so I’m not completely crazy.
It sold a lot of copies. It sucks. That’s the discrepancy, not whether you think there’s worse books out there.
OK, but I was responding to your comment about being surprised it was even published. I’m saying that for as bad (and unpublishable) as you think it is, there is way worse out there. It makes perfect sense when you think of it that way.
And it’s not like this is the first mania related to a teen book series. There have been a ton of huge books (with teens) over the years. Twilight went to another place because their moms loved it too.
How many of the worse books sold even half as many copies?
That’s exactly my point. Twilight is better than a lot of teen fiction so it makes perfect sense that it became a book teens had to read. Like I said, this kind of mania surrounds a lot of teen fiction franchises. Twilight isn’t the first and it won’t be the last (in fact, a few others have since sprung up since the conclusion of the Twilight series).
Taster’s Choice coffee commercials. Seriously. Look it up.
It’s been a while since I read Chocolate War. I do remember thinking plot wise it as out there, but I don’t know that I’d characterize it as awful. Cormier does tend to be a bit heavy handed and bleak but I definitely wouldn’t call him a bad writer.
Do you remember any of the other books on the list?
Several musicals have people so fanatical that “fan” doesn’t begin to cover it. RENTheads are totally into the show, despite the fact that NYC was the only place it had any success. The absolute biggest obsession has to be the Starlight Express “trainvestites,” the most famous being Belle.
Along those lines, going to youtube videos of songs/performances from Cats and reading the comments is always hilarious. People talking about the backgrounds of the various cats and their relationships and all the fanfic–it’s intense.
OMIFUCKING GOD!
Belle, sweetie, let’s get the facts straight:
Barton was NEVER signed to do the Broadway show. The producers went with Crawford for his name. This was the final nail in the coffin for Barton, who had a history of mental illness and commited suicide after being passed over for the role.
Crawford was absolutely dreadful in the role. He was quickly tossed out in favor of Michael Ball, who was brought in from the London production, As one critic put it “The show ran 186 performances, which was about 185 too many.”