You know the story about the Emperor’s new clothes? Where people can see that the emperor is naked, but no one speaks up, because of peer pressure?
Or, maybe this is more what I’m getting at: There’s a prank, where someone tells a nonsensical and unfunny joke. The other people in the room laugh, and generally behave like it’s the funniest joke ever. You don’t see why the joke is funny, so you don’t laugh. Only, after a while, you decide that since everyone is cracking up so much, the joke must be amazing, and so, not to be left out, you join in the laughter, and agree that the joke is hilarious. That’s when everyone suddenly goes deadpan, and the jokester says: “There’s nothing funny about the joke. We just wanted to see how long it took before you, too, started laughing.”
Sometimes I feel like the entire world is trying to pull a prank like that on me. Cases in point:
The Usual Suspects. This movie always tops every list of twist endings. People always go on about it: “It’s this AMAZING TWIST! It’ll BLOW YOUR MIND! DUUDE!”
So I watched it, of course filled to the brim with anticipation. But (spoiler alert, sort of) there’s nothing particularly interesting about the twist, and it’s not a very good movie. I have no idea what everyone is on about.
*Star Wars. *People treat this movie like it’s as culturally significant as Shakespeare, Homer and the Bible combined. Now, I’m not saying it’s awful or anything, but look: It’s some random science fiction movie from the late seventies. And yet, people are always geek-gasming over it non-stop like if they’re all in some weird cult. I don’t get it.
Sports fandom: you really care whether the guys in red shirts who you’ve never met beat the guys in blue shirts who you’ve never met and you’ll pay nearly a days wages to get up close to watch them beat them? Suuuuuuuure.
No twist is ever as good when you know it’s coming. I hate people who tell you this crap. It’s a pretty good twist, as far as twists go, but it’s subject to fridge logic: later, on, when you’re looking in the fridge, you start seeing real problems with it.
for me, it’s got to be Breaking Bad. Why do you want to watch so many assholes become even more assholish? Yet the whole world seems to luuuuurve this show. I watched like three episodes and I hated everyone within five minutes.
Cheese. I’m admittedly pickier than most but I have literally (yes, literally) that I know of not met another person who won’t eat it. It’s obvious that the vast majority like it because you can scarcely find a dish that doesn’t have some kind of cheese on it. It’s not only the default on any kind of sandwich, hot or cold, but it shows up on salads, chili and all manner of places it doesn’t belong.
Several of the things that have been mentioned are pretty middle of the road in that, for instance, I’ve heard an even amount of people express like and dislike for sports and piercings. But cheese? Tell someone you won’t eat it and they look at you like you just farted.
I mentioned in another thread that I didn’t care for the music from Hamilton and I was almost scared. No one I know IRL has seen it so I haven’t heard much first hand but the way people were praising it here was almost cult like. I wanted to experience what everyone else did. That did not work out.
The rest of you are, too; you just have this stupid, long-running prank going where you all make sure you’re on the same page, and then snicker behind the backs of everyone who hasn’t caught on yet. And whenever someone announces that he’s color-blind, you all nod seriously but giggle inwardly at the grown man disappointedly declaring that Santa Claus didn’t come to his house this year.
Well, I could say opera - I mean it is a bit difficult for me to believe that some people love that godawful caterwauling - but I just shrug and move on with my life. No one gets everything. There are some things I just do not get and never will, and that’s fine. I acknowledge that it’s good stuff and has artistic merit and that many people genuinely love it, but it is not for me.
I’m really a bit disturbed that some people seem to actually believe that some art that I absolutely love, like the painters Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, are some kind of trick or con and that nobody really likes that stuff and I’m just pretending to love it so that a bunch of strangers on an internet forum think I’m an intellectual. But, there you go, not everyone gets everything. It’s OK to not get something. That doesn’t mean it’s a con.
