You can't like that! I like that!

Cafe Society
81

Your comment:
It’s frustrating that people are buying tickets to see my team and now there’s none left for me.

My points:

  1. It’s just as much their team as it is your team.

  2. People like to attend the games of a winning team. Ticket sales naturally increase as a team does better. It is the nature of sports.

  3. Jacobs Field is considered a “destination stadium” by nearly everyone. So it’s going to bring in a lot more out-of-town fans than the old stadium.

  4. The Indians of the mid-90s had Albert Belle, the king of “You never know what he’s going to do” athletes. Who wouldn’t want to say “I was there when his head lifted off his shoulders like a rocket!”?

But basically my point is that, like the OP, your comments sound like you are entitled to like something that no one else is entitled to like for any reason other than your reason. It’s an attitude that really sticks in my craw.

And my point with the Yankee comment is that it bugged me that people I had known who had zero interest in baseball or the Yankees would suddenly start asking how the Mets were doing and “Hey, look how great the Yankees are!” That’s bandwagon jumping.

82

So, what you’re saying is that you’re frustrated by something that has no impact on you. Again.

I don’t care if the attitude that you think you’re seing sticks in your craw. I really don’t care. I had family traditions come to a halt, and I didn’t like it. Now, my father is dead, so we can never pick it back up again. He and I went to games every year and then we could no longer do so. If you seriously can’t see the frustrating part to that, I can’t help you.

This is my last reply to you, though you can certainly keep going if you’d like.

83

You know, all this cultural navel-gazing is bizarre. If you like some music, listen to it. Buy it so you can listen to it all the time, because it makes you feel good. Because of that, introduce the people you love to it. Because it has some quality that you want to share with those people, so maybe they’ll feel like you do when you listen to it.

The time you spend worrying about whether it’s trendy or hip, or whether it’s cutting edge or at the thin edge of the wedge or whether even now it’s jumping the shark, all that time is wasted missing the point of the art you claim to enjoy. I think very few artists are hoping to produce a sense of self-conscious “where do I sit on the food chain of appreciation?” in the audience.

84

In that vein, Gorgonzola, we just went to see Colin James a couple of weekends ago, and he was fantastic. Part of what made his show so great was that he was playing in a perfect venue for music - a mid-sized concert hall, not a hockey arena. If he gets more popular, we will lose something in going to see him in worse venues, but we’ll still go - we’ll just bitch about it more. :smiley:

And for the record, U2 peaked at “The Joshua Tree.” I consider their Grammy for “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” a lifetime achievement bone tossed to them, just like Peter Jackson’s Academy Award for “Return Of The King” was actually for the series, and we all understood that.

85

ah, I see where you’re coming from, bub. I am a fan of some artists from day one, and with others I’m a johnny-come-lately fanboy. I can dig why diehards would roll their eyes at me if I started jocking their favorite band/sports team/tv show.

F’rinstance, I moved to Boston about 5 years ago, lived here a year before in the 90s. I never watched baseball until I moved up here. I am a Red Sox fan, but not on the level that most hardcore Boston-bred fans are. I was happy to be at the rolling rally after the World Series but I knew it mean so much more to those fans whose parents and grandparents were fans too.

Immature, maybe, but there is something to be said about finding a gem without the help of MTV or Newsweek. And yes, a lot of people like to feel that they discovered the band on their own, when ultimately we just stumbled upon them from other media outlets.

When I was in college I used to read Melody Maker and NME religiously. My friends in England would send me tapes, so I felt I had a special connection to bands like Blur and Oasis (saw the latter at the Liberty Lunch in Austin in '94 - there were about 100 people at the show). So when I saw Blur at the Orpheum in '97 and there were a bunch of kids who just wanted to mosh to “Song 2” (or “Woo Hoo,” as they called it), I felt a little superior. But also glad that the lads were getting a little more recognition and publicity. It’s complicated and perhaps a little childish, but I feel where bubastis is coming from.

But there’s the other side of this issue. I have a friend who swears I haven’t seen Harry Potter because I’m deliberately trying to be “cool” by not seeing it. No, actually, I just have no interest in the genre, I don’t watch many movies, and I can think of a lot of things I’d rather do with two hours. Not trying to make a statement, just not interested.

86

Yeah, I was a Happy Rhodes fan for 18 FRICKIN’ YEARS before she was finally discovered and everybody realized how great she was, and…

Sigh.
How about the frustration when NO ONE else ever picks up on something you know to be brilliant? I resent the OP because I’d give anything to be able to have that “problem.”

87

The one time I’ve really run into this and it’s stuck in my craw was when comicbooks, especially the X-Men, went through their boom cycle back in the 90s.

I started reading them in the early 80s, when I was in sixth grade. I loved them for the stories and characters. I was mocked mercilessly by my classmates because I was foolish enough to read them in front of others. However, if someone else knew what I was reading, it was an instant ice-breaker. Here was someone who had tastes similar to mine, who could discuss things like character development and story arc and speculate on what we thought might happen.

My classmates became relatively more civilized in high school, and I didn’t take nearly as much shit for my tastes in reading or music or what have you. Then, while I was in college and shortly afterwards, the popularity of comic books and graphic novels, especially the X-Men, especially anything with Wolverine, exploded. Everywhere I looked around, kids were wearing the merchandise or talking about just how cool the X-Men were.

These were the exact same kind of kids that had been so cruel to me, because I’d read something that wasn’t on their Approved List of Cool. And now, that same kind of kid was making fun of other kids because they weren’t reading the X-Men when it was on the Approved List of Cool. It was aggravating. And on top of that, the comic industry nearly killed itself catering to what was only a two year long fad, and in doing so, alienated a large chunk of its loyal fanbase. A lot of hasty garbage was published. A lot of good stuff was ignored. And all so those kids, who I held such a grudge against, could spend their money on it and crow about how cool they were.

sigh

I got over it. That is the nature of the beast. I like what I like - including the X-Men - and some of it becomes insanely popular with people I dislike intensely, and some of it is ignored and languishes unrecognized, and some of it hits a happy medium where it gets enough recognition to survive and grow without being poisoned. I just remind myself that I like what I like, and other people like what they like, and it really isn’t worth the energy to get all worked up over it. After all, most of those horrid children grew up to be decent adults, and I have my own moments of shallow stupidity.

88

Oh, two of my favourites are being discussed…!

My 2c:

I was happy when the LOTR movie got out and got everyone’s attention, because it gave me the feeling that “people” finally realised why I was such an LOTR fan as a teenager. “You see?! You get it?! It really was something, right?”
Tried to read it myself again, fifteen–twenty years later, but got bored; Tom Bombadill makes grown ups cry with boredom. Perhaps I just don’t need the escapism anymore.

As for Cash, I’m part of the modern Cash fan minority who primarily listens to his Sun recordings and hasn’t seen the movie. With some luck it makes me cool – but on the other side, nobody will know, so who gives…

Besides, I’m an Elvis fan too, so I’m probably screwed anyhow. – But nobody will know that either.

Nice to be an introvert.

89

bubastis writes:

> I’m sure that ten years ago, Lord of the Rings fans felt the same… The had a
> great respect for the books, and felt part of a society, a clan if you will, of
> people who knew and respected this material. A bit cliquey, but hey. Cut
> forward, one of the biggest movie series of all time, now everyone on the street
> is like, SO the biggest 'rings fan, totally. Oh, you like lord of the rings, eh? Pity
> there was no sign of Tom Bombadil, though, right? Uh, Tom who? What movie
> were you watching, dude? Once things like this really hit the mainstream, I feel
> like I lose part of its appeal in the first place… If something you like is very
> personal to you, and forms part of your personality, then what happens when it
> hits the mainstream BIG TIME? I feel, that you lose part of your personality. And
> believe me, I aint got that much personality to begin with.

This completely misunderstands the attitude of longtime fans of The Lord of the Rings. First of all, Tolkien fans have never felt themselves anytime in the past forty years to be part of some tiny cult. The first big wave of popularity for The Lord of the Rings was in the mid-1960’s, when the book first came out in paperback in the U.S. It was hugely popular at the time, with plenty of articles in magazines about it. I first read the book in 1969 and I have always felt that I came along at the end of the first big boom in Tolkien’s popularity. The only people who could possibly show any pride in reading Tolkien before the book was famous were those who read it between 1954, when it was first published, and 1964, when the first paperback edition came out. I’ve met a few such people, and while they might have felt a certain secret pride in reading the book early, they always seemed to me to be happy that other people were reading the book too.

Second, The Lord of the Rings was in no possible sense an obscure novel with only a minor cult reputation before the book came out. It was the biggest-selling novel of all time (over the entire world for all novels in all languages) well before Jackson even began to think of adapting the book into a film. There have been over 100,000,000 authorized copies of the novel sold around the world. (Incidentally, one copy of The Lord of the Rings is either one one-volume edition or a set of all three of the three-volume edition.) In comparison, the closest competitor is the Harry Potter books, where each book has sold about 50,000,000 copies around the world. If you count unauthorized copies of The Lord of the Rings (most of the Russian editions are unauthorized and there are a lot of unauthorized copies in Asia), it has sold around 150,000,000 copies.

The attitude of pre-2001 Tolkien fans towards the films is basically that it’s a different work. It stands or falls on its own merits regardless of the book, just as the book stands or falls on its own merits regardless of the films. There are some pre-2001 Tolkien fans who like the movies and some (like me) who don’t. Tolkien fans don’t make distinctions according to whether someone read it before the movies came out. If they wanted to make silly distinctions, they could divide themselves up into those who first read it in the 1950’s, the 1960’s, the 1970’s, the 1980’s, the 1990’s, and the 2000’s, but they don’t even think about such absurd distinctions.

Similarly, if Cash fans wanted to create a hierarchy among themselves, they could divided themselves up into 1950’s fans, 1960’s fans, 1970’s fans, 1980’s fans, 1990’s fans, and 2000’s fans. That would make as much sense as dividing themselves up into pre- and post-movie fans. I don’t think Cash fans worry much about such things.

90

What if suddenly The Straight Dope hit the big-time mainstream?

We are all here because we needed an answer to something. Here in Ireland, there is a Dope-esque radio programme on friday mornings, called Fix-It Friday, it runs for about an hour and answers questions like Cecil’s column. I can never listen to it because of work, so I needed all my niggling little questions such as why rubber ducks are yellow answered. So, I hit the net looking for a website to cater for my curious mind, found the Dope, liked it, subscribed, everyones a winner. I’m sure this story is familiar to everyone here.

Suppose tomorrow, The Dope was featured in a movie, or the OC, or whatever. The boards become flooded with newcomers, turning the place into a hell similar to, say, AICN talkbacks (FIRST!! LOL!!!).

Surely then, our enjoyment of the board would be lessened by these Johnny-come-latelies who are just here because they heard this place was like, so rad. Suddenly, its not such an expression of self to be affiliated with this message board. We chose to sign up based on personal taste… Heck, we could have signed up to the forums on Ogrish.com if we wanted to. But we chose to come here. The sudden influx of mainstream influenced bandwagonjumpers would demean our involvement here. Meeting a fellow doper in real life would not, I feel, have the same feeling of cameraderie if the teeming millions really were teeming millions, I feel.

And so, this is how I feel when it comes to popular culture, and likes and dislikes. People who buy into something because its shit-hot, and David Beckham uses it, and I seen it on Desperate Housewives, and it plays on the new Nike ad, etc… dilute the feeling of personal self which one invests in activities and preferences. Because now, you really are just a face in the crowd, and no amount of explaining will convince some people that you really love your chosen preference, and you arent just into it because Jack Bauer had one on 24, or it was covered by Nickleback, or whatever.

Bub

91

Hmm… shouldnt use “I feel” twice in the one sentence… Ah well.

Again, I acknowledge that picking cash and LOTR as my examples was a pretty bad move. My bad. It’s not like they were obscure.

I’m reminded of Richard Lewis on Curb your Enthusiasm, claiming that he was the one who coined the phrase, “The ____ From Hell” and he subsequent ire at how common it is, and how he isnt acknowledged for it. I’m sure I could work that into my argument, and make a good point, but… I’m tired, man.

And hey, before you start, I like Curb because I saw it on late-night tv one time, fell in love with it, bought all the dvds and watched them in marathon sessions. I love that show. I hate Friends. I am cool. Acknowledge me.

92

It would be bad if it affected the board’s functioning, or made the board unreadable. For example, I used to post in usenet, mostly in a little newsgroup that a handful of people used. Suddenly, there was an influx of trolls whose purpose was to make the group unusable. They succeeded. But they changed the nature of the thing, which changed my attitude toward it.

If a band changed in order to become mainstream, then it’s fair not to like them any more. They’re different. But if they didn’t change, they just became popular for some reason and you can still interact with them (or not) the same way, it’s silly to lose affection for them.

93

You want us to acknowledge you’re cool? Okay, list every currently obscure thing that you’re a fan of, and if and when it becomes popular, we’ll know you liked it back before it hit the mainstream. :slight_smile:

94

I like One Page Filler Man. I just want to say that now, before he gets an animated show or something.

95

Wait Richard Lewis? Dude, you are so NOT cool.

If the Dope became mainstream? Well, as long as the servers can handle it, who cares?

96

Not me. I came here because I was a regular over on the AOL Straight Dope board. Unlike most of you newbies.

97

Big difference. If the Straight Dope became so mainstream that the quality of the discussions plummeting, then it would actually have been negatively affected by popularity.

An anlogy would be disliking a band because they used to be good, but when they became popular they decided to ‘cash in’ and just produce pop dreck. But that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about being annoyed simply because something that was your special secret suddenly became well known, because it no longer makes you feel cool and special to like them. Which is a silly attitude to have.

98

The only thing that sucks about liking a band when they aren’t popular yet and then they get popular, is loss of accessibility. Seeing a band you love at a dive club with a handful of people there - you can go up and talk to the band, get to know them, they return your emails with gusto, they KNOW you, etc. But when they get more popular, you often lose that.

That’s it though. I love to see bands I like start to make some damn money doing what they love. And also the ‘fake’ fans that say they like whatever just to seem ‘with it’ but those people are just lame. Forget them.

And my friggin grandma loves Johnny Cash. Anything that grandmothers love is not underground or unknown. Most younger people just rebel against what their grandmas like, come on.

And I am listening to Johnny Cash right now. Go grandma!

99

Okay, you’re cool. I loved “Friends.” I also loved “The Chris Isaak Show.” I’m not cool, however, because I am over thirty and it is now physically impossible.

100

I can’t imagine what this might be, aside from a hacksaw.