I’ve totally lost interest in the Star Wars movies and the novels of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein. I believe that they were the first three science fiction authors I ever read, and that I started reading them before I had a critical mind for books. Returning back to them ten years later, after having been exposed to great fiction (speculative and otherwise) I see only mediocre writing and very little plot and character development.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Some funny bits, but most of it seems needlessly random, especially the last few.
I used to read comics pretty voraciously, but I stopped in my late twenties. Sometimes I’ll take a peek at a graphic novel, but there’s no way I want to get into the whole DC/Marvel universe again.
Sadly, music is much less important to me than it was in my youth. I still really like good music, but I don’t obsess about it like I used to. I hardly know any new bands.
Oddly I read more science fiction than I used to. I find a lot of new authors entertaining, and a lot of classic stuff unreadable.
Way back in the sixties I avidly read what Marvel comics made their way to a small English coastal village and the british comics that carried stuff like the X-men. Recently picked up volume 2 of the original x-men comics and boy are they embarrassingly poor.
Every action, (which we can happily see happening thanks) is commented on by each character doing an action. It’s like they were written for kids and not fifty-something men or something. :eek:
TV sitcoms. They always were dumb and predictable but when I was younger I got a few laughs out of them. Now they seem hopelessly lame.
To be fair, that was a very unique way the Marvel Comics were written. Usually the writer (Stan Lee) would come up with a very vague outline of a story, then the artists (Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko) would draw the entire comic, and Lee would go back and write in dialogue and captions. That’s why those '60s Marvel books really seem so simplistic, like you’re seeing something and reading a description of the very same thing. That was Marvel’s “house style,” and continued that way into the '80s.
They Might Be Giants. Loved them in high school, but now I find them obnoxious and annoying.
Yeah, this is exactly how I feel about Monty Python’s Flying Circus along with the movies. They used to crack me up when I was a kid. but nowadays, it’s like “Meh”. It’s a shame, too, because I still think they’re somewhat funny, and I would have loved to watch the complete DVD set if it had been available fifteen or twenty years ago.
I’m genuinely sad to have outgrown John Woo’s Hong Kong action films. I still love Chow Yun Fat, but the gunfights are just flashy and kind of silly now.
Movies about basic training which pit the easy-going sloppy sympathetic character against the uptight, tough-as-nails drill instructor. I loved Stripes and Biloxi Blues when they first came out, but twenty years and a stint in the army later, Bill Murray and Matthew Broderick’s characters come off as self-centered punks, while the drills were actually quite a bit cooler than anything I ran into in basic (although to be fair, Sergeant Hulka ended up doing pretty well for himself at the end of Stripes.).
Warner Bros. cartoons, especially of the 1940s and 1950s. (Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, et al.) I bought videos of them, I bought related books, I bought CDs of the music. The interest was an active adulthood hobby.
And then, for no apparent reason, my interest simply fizzled out.
Amonst my friends, when we discover that something we remember from long ago as being excellent is far less entertaining then we recall, it is said to have suffered from the “ALF Effect”
My experience is similar, although I have taken to calling it the Golf Effect. For some reason, you develop an interest/enthusiasm/passion for a hobby for exactly as long as you don’t make a major investment. As soon as you do - meh. I guess its stems from the idea that the passion is partly driven by the fact that there are frustrating limitations on how often you can indulge, but when you actually cure that, the passion goes off the boil. For me it was golf. Loved it, loved the idea of it, blah blah. But the moment I invested in an expensive set of clubs - one or two uses, then expensive dust collectors.
For that reason I refuse to buy videos. When I can watch whenever I want, I’ll never watch. But when I have to wait for a show to come back on TV/cable, I’m excited as all get out.
I’ll second Harry Potter. When I first started reading it, it was the certifiable Best Thing Ever, and the third book was one of my all-time favorites for a long while. Now I, too, am more eager to read the last book to be done with it than anything else. I haven’t even re-read the sixth book. I think I stopped liking it around the time that Harry himself became utterly dislikeable. I know teenagers are angsty, but Harry was TOO angsty for his own good.
Interestingly, this has had no effect on my love of the fantasy genre, especially those books probably directed at people 8 to 10 years younger than me. I’m still consistently discovering new authors/books I love.
Anyway, one thing I’ve grown out of big-time is the Muppets. When I was younger, I loved the Muppets and adored anything almost tangentially Muppets-related. Now, I couldn’t care for most of it. (I still enjoy YouTubing the occasional Muppets Show clip, though. Mahna mahna.)
I’ve got to agree with this repeated sentiment. Just the sheer quantity of derivative dribble has drained my interest in anime and manga. I’m sure there’s good stuff coming out, but it’s not worth my time to filter through the acres of trash to find the gems.
The two most recent that I’ve really liked are Monster and Death Note; so maybe I only like anime and manga about morally complicated situations…
Sure. But I’d just read a Frank Miller X Man compilation straight before that for the first time.
Now I’m on Spiderman Volume 1. 
Kevin Smith movies. When I was 20 they seemed relevant and witty, but now, not so much.
Star Trek - doesn’t matter if it’s TOS, TNG, DS9, whatever - B5, then Firefly, spoiled me for good.
Harvey Comics - I used to love them as a kid, now, they leave me cold.
60s/70s Sci Fi Novels Asimov, Heinlein, Dick no longer do it for me. I can still appreciate the significance, but Gibson/Brin/Banks etc. are more to my tastes now. I still like Dune, though.
Things I still like, which haven’t gotten old - Archie comics & Galaxy/Astounding-era short SF
This is an interesting one. I used to watched ST:TNG and Babylon 5 avidly. ST:TNG is still repeated ad nauseum and for the most part is unwatchable now. It seems more dated than TOS but I’ve watched a few Babylon 5s and although there are flaws and it has dated somewhat the storytelling, characterisation and the baddies are all more interesting and still hold my attention for the most part.
As someone who has never had more than a fleeting exposure to anything mentioned in this thread, I think it’s fascinating that so many of you are having the same experiences with the exact same media.
Star Wars? I watched the original when it came out and I may have seen the second one. No futher interest.
Comic books? Read one or two when I was a small kid, but never collected.
Anime? I wouldn’t know it if I stepped in it.
SciFi/Fantasy Lit? Read the LotR Trilogy during a summer during middle school and never picked it up again. That’s the extent of my exposure to the entire genre with exception of some Steven King novels. Again, read them, tossed them.
The commonality of your experience is interesting.
Musicians and bands.
I still love music as much as ever, but now I don’t give a rat’s ass about the people making the music, or promoting the band image with posters or stickers. For example, I used to want to know everything about the members…name, age, hobbies, fashion, appearances in pop culture, the usual idolatry and fan-following.
Now I think the only new musician’s name I even know this century is Jack White, and that’s because his name is part of the band’s name (White Stripes). I listen to all of his music, but don’t care in the slightest about anything except what comes out of my speakers when I push play.
I have probably 2000 songs on my iPod of new artists and new music of the last few years, but turn a blind eye to any of the artist trivia. Someone pointed out to me that Damon Alburn was in both Blur and Gorillaz. Huh. Go figure, I have all of the cd’s and never even new the guy’s name 
(shamefacedly admitting in the 80’s that I had all of the members of Van Halen’s birthdays memorized, and could recite the band-member chronology of all of the Jethro Tull incarnations of their career).
When I was younger, I digested Agatha Christie books at an alarming rate. Kinda like if you had access to a continual, intravenous source of Reese’s. I’m not sure when that reading desire changed, but trying to go back now is akin to watching Sesame Street through cotton. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 
Additionally, I was a HUGE movie trivia buff as a teenager. Some bit part actor in a B feature could set me off to jumping up in a theatre and screaming “I know so and so!” Today though, there’s so many that look alike, end up in the same films and even have the same basic biography, that I haven’t tried to keep up in years. Same goes for new releases. In the days of yore, come a Friday I could tell you any and everything coming down the pike. Now, there’s whole sub-sections of genres that I didn’t know even existed until I stumble across 7 bazillion movies I’d never heard of.
Music that I missed the first go 'round. As a fundamentalist during my informative period, even the humongous hits escaped my (very limited, all Christian) repertoire. I didn’t purchase Karma Chameleon because it was a catchy, submersive tune that would somehow lead me to hell. Needless to say, after the fact, I ate up all sorts of popular music that everyone else was already loathing. Then I ate it up some more. And more. Finally, it annoys me as much as the rest of humanity.
Last, but not so much in the context of the OP, was some of my crushes. Hell, until about 8 years ago, I would’ve sacrificed a lung or two (and definitely any happy parts!) for a conversation with John Cusack. I had every moment he’d ever committed to celluloid, all sorts of clippings and also knew when he was born, who he was and wasn’t dating, projects on the horizon and what he’d last had for a meal. Until the restraining order, that is. 
But inexplicably, all that just stopped. I see him as vaguely creepy now and if he wasn’t in the upcoming 1408, I probably haven’t paid for the privilege in years. He’s just not all that anymore (despite my still perpetual love for Say Anything). I call it the “They Must’ve Removed The Bigger Slide” syndrome. As we grow older, all the playground equipment grows tiny. Or we have less tolerance for ALF, or golf. 