Echo Chamber
by John on Jul.19, 2010, under Main Stuff
Part of the reason why I try to avoid watching certain shows until long after they’re culturally relevant is because, innately and quite unhealthily at times, I have an in-built and deep-seated suspicion of anything that becomes too popular too quickly or too universally. In general I’ve noticed that, averaged out over my lifetime, I’m usually either six to eighteen months ahead of the curve on some things, or three to six years behind it. In short, and put into tropes, I’m susceptible to early-onset memetic mutation, and in cases where the meme doesn’t take hold I instead suffer from acute, prolonged, and chronic hype aversion. Neither of these things are in and of themselves bad. In point of fact it turns out that nine times out of ten this allows me to keep a dispassionate, critical eye while examining media.
But for the love of God, why didn’t people at least try to pressure me into watching The West Wing before this?! I haven’t TV-crushed on a series this hard since Babylon 5 (another one I got into nearly a decade late). Just… yeah. If this means I have to re-subscribe to more than just basic cable so I don’t miss something really good coming out this fall, then so be it.
August 2nd, 2010 on 4:57 pm
Hype aversion or no, it’s usually reasonable to assume that you’re not following a hype train just because you happen to check out a network television show like ‘The West Wing’ when it’s actually ON network television. It’s the sort of thing that you can end up catching snatches of just because the TV is on while you’re decompressing, cooking dinner, or searching for the remote.
It can be applied to stuff that you’d actually need to effort getting at – like Fullmetal Alchemist before it was licensed or Fullmetal Alchemist after it was licensed if you don’t actually have cable… but are you going to tell me you didn’t watch Star Trek: The Next Generation when it was on TV? If you didn’t at all, that would be hype aversion, but if you did – well, we’re talking Star Trek: The Next Generation, which whatever its own merits did get HUGE in its day.