Popularity

I was prompted to write this article after a friend of ours said, "you guys just hate everything that's popular and you haven't even tried to appreciate the things that you rip on (read Harry Potter for example)."

Well first off I read Harry Potter back when it was appropriate for my age group and I see no point to as a junior in college read something that is intended for 8th graders. Anywho, I don't want to get started again on Harry Potter seeing as JTR has already devoted enough time to that.

The point I am hoping to make is that yes I hate Dave Matthew's Band (JTR loves them but that's besides the point), Harry Potter, Notre Dame, the Yankees and a bunch of other things that are immensely popular, but not only by virtue of their popularity. I do also admit that I haven't really tried to appreciate many of these things and part of my disdain for them stems from that fact that they are indeed very popular. However, most of my hatred for these things comes from the fact that I pretty much just think they are dumb. I do not enjoy these things and I feel as though everyone else overrates them to astronomical proportions (see ND football or DMB on the whole) and thus my hatred is not simply because they are popular, but because they are so popular in spite of being pretty bad. I do not like these things and I think they are vastly overrated so of course I am going to voice my opinion and say that they suck. I do not think that this is a very hard concept to grasp. I dont' need to fully examine all of the Harry Potter books or listen to every DMB cd or watch every ND football game (which i actually do, but whatever) in order to decide that I don't enjoy them and think they are overrated. I'm also not saying that they don't contribute anything to society (Harry Potter getting younger kids to read is a wonderful thing, for example), I mean they are way more popular than I am; but all I'm saying is that maybe people take this stuff a little too seriously. My best example of this is when I was making fun of Harry Potter and one of JK's wizards got really defensive and said, "you are just immature" to which I replied, "how am I immature, you are reading a children's book."