Hype Aversion Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

Tanto: Sigh...I fear I may have broken the recent-changes page. I really wish people would launch their tropes.

Morgan Wick: I suspect Firefox fans are like this to some IE users, in part because they tend to not-so-subtly insult them and their choice of browser.

Sikon: Anybody stupid enough to willingly use IE (or Windows for that matter) doesn't deserve a better browser anyway.

Solandra: Hey, not only do I have IE and Windows XP, but I use a dial-up connection that requires a 30-minute wait to view a 2-minute online video. <shrug> But as long as I can access TV Tropes and my favorite webpages, it doesn't matter.

Duckluck: What's wrong with Windows? Sure Microsoft is evil, but Macs are way more expensive and OS X really isn't any better. Linux is good, if you can figure out how to use it, but it takes a certain level of knowledge that the less savvy among us lack.

Squeal: If you think Fire Fox fanboys irritate you, think about us Opera users... :) ...now that I think of it, this entry seriously lacks the mention of situations where you dismiss a hype due to hypers' collective lack of knowledge - when the object of said hype seems strikingly similar to earlier works they apparently never heard about. Because, you know, in _those_ cases 9 times out of 10 it turns out you were right to do so.

Tabby: I wish I could remember where I stole this from, but it still makes me laugh: "Firefox users are the ex-smokers of the Internet."

Phartman: I have no loyalties to speak of towards any OS or browser. I use a Mac because it was a free gift, and I use Firefox because Safari wouldn't stop crashing on me and it was the first one I tried to replace it.

Sikon: Duckluck, have you actually ever tried Linux? For "less savvy" users, desktop-tailored distributions like Ubuntu should be no harder to use than Windows (if they need "just a decent text processor" and not specifically "MS Word"). For more savvy users who like to experiment with the Windows registry and advanced settings, yes, it can be somewhat disorienting because their knowledge is pretty much useless in another OS.

OJ: Unfortunately, there is no such thing as decent text processor. Open Office sucks in somewhat similar way as Word, if that is what you want.

Phartman: Alright, I finally sat and watched a few episodes of Firefly. It didn't exactly blow me away, but I admit that, as far as the genre goes, it's not half bad. There, now leave me alone.

Pro-Mole: This entry got me a little confused on the point of how'd I know an example is really valid to the case. It seems pretty personal(except for some blatant cases such as Final Fantasy and many blockbusters per year), specially when you're not into mainstream anyway...
I myself have my own grudge with Saw because of this.

Phartman: Saw still owes me those two hours it stole...

Solandra: It is personal, like The Tetris Effect. The examples given are just backed by a considerably large size of the population (I think). But if you're talking about Saw not living up to the hype instead of putting off Saw because of the hype, check out Hype Backlash.

Pro-Mole: My story with Saw is both Aversion and Backlash. First, all my cousins(and random people I knew) would say: "Oh my gosh, you didn't see it? It's awesome, it's the most intelligent movie ever, the killer is brilliant, etc.", and then all I saw was a good movie("good", as in opposing "awesome").
Saw II, though, just went down the drain along with Cube 2: Hypercube by having a bigger number of shallow characters, among them an idiot big guy with "I must survive" syndrome ends up killing everybody and the Bad Ass guy that's the first to die; and still everyone else says "it rocks". That's why I won't touch Saw III with a 10-feet pole.
And sorry for making you read this bitter snippet of my life.

Sean Tucker: Saw III is far better than the second one, and I personally think it tops the first one. It has a lot more plot than either of the first two, if that tells you anything.

Sikon: One fellow Wookieepedia user, every time I discussed Doctor Who with him, said "Just watch Stargate SG-1 already!" I hesitated due to Hype Aversion, but eventually found that I like it. As for Firefly, he said that it's "a western in space, not for everyone", so I'm not bothering.

Air Of Mystery: Do we have page for the opposite of this, where you watch a show because everybody tells you not to get into it? Because many in the Livejournal community fandom_secrets virtually beg you not to enter the Naruto fandom, simply because of the Fan Dumb, but I watched it anyway and I am now hooked.

Bron Raven: I did a YKTTW a while back on this very thing: when you like something more because of all of the flak it gets. It's like Hype Aversion, except with negative hype. I can think of at least two games comig out in the future I'm going to buy specifically to spite the knee-jerk haters who are bitching about them.

Ununnilium:

This editor has never seen Brokeback Mountain, United 93 and Crash for exactly this reason. Another editor refuses to watch A Beautiful Mind because of an overzealous praiser of said movie in her family.
- The most hype this editor received was a couple of confusing endorsements from friends and a single preview of what it was about that actually made me think it was going to be another depressing Contemplate Our Navels anime.
The same goes for this editor and Bond films. Why wouldn't you like Bond films?!
Real-life example: This editor made up his mind not to vote for Ron Paul in the 2008 US presidential elections based largely on the man's incredibly vocal and abrasive supporters. (Some actual research into his positions led to a more informed decision not to give him a vote, though he was nowhere near as awful as some of his followers would suggest.)

Let's avoid single-editor examples. That's what generally tends to make Subjective Tropes balloon out, and they tend to be the least illustrative examples.

Odd, I got the impression they were relieved that they could be enthusiastic about Pixar again after "Cars" didn't live up to its hype (and all the merchandising).

Very No. That's Hype Backlash anyway.

Ununnilium:

"Ugh. I really haven't been looking forward to this [review]. Last week I accidentally left my copy of this game in a friend's console, and I was genuinely pleased! It meant I could review a game I actually had some interest in instead! I don't even know why I'm reviewing this game. Oh, wait, yes I do! Because you dipshits wouldn't stop crying about it!"

-Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw, on Super Smash Bros Brawl

Oy. This only even touches on the trope with the last line, and the first quote hits it so much better. Plus, "dipshits".

Gundam Wing, which when finally watched turned out to actually be unwatchable garbage, only worth it for its musical score. This does not apply to the majority of the franchise, which is quite underrated in the States.

Complaining About Shows You Dont Like.

KJMackley: I only say this here because it is a personal example and I wanted to avoid discussion on the main page. I had heard a lot about Avatar and I had seen a little of different episodes, but I never put too much effort into it. This was a very strange case of Hype Aversion not because I didn't think it would live up to its hype, but because I knew that I would love it. I have an addictive personality when it comes to this stuff and I know it very well. And of course when I sat down to watch it I did.

Novium: Has this ever bled over into hype backlash for anyone else? And by that I mean, you finally do watch/read/listen to whatever it is, but then end up disliking it out of spite/a reverse-psychology-effect (i.e. sheer obstinacy) ? I'm guilty of this on occasion when actually forced to watch/read/listen to something. I'll hate it until, maybe at a much later date, i'll be bored enough to give it another try, and then i'll have to admit that it wasn't all that bad.

drVox: I have this trope bad. I often buy games that only one person recommends to me (most recent being Viva Pinata), but if I hear constant praise for something I didn't intend to get in the first place, I usually decide not to get it at all. It's especially funny when I often hear people praising a certain music artist, but I write them off because of it, without even listening to them...then one day I hear a song by them, and decide they're my new favorite band. Sheesh.

Tanto: Another wipe of "This Troper"s and "Take That"s has commenced. Don't do it again.

Devils Advocate: I'd like to challenge the inclusion of TV Tropes and Wikipedia on this list. I mean, Hype Backlash, sure, I can see that against either Wiki. But Hype Aversion? Are there people who won't visit and have never visited either of these because of the hype? If not, it's not Hype Aversion.

Grr: Now why didn't I see this before when I was thatotherguy? Well anyways, done and done. I did the Tv Tropes bit, but I have no fracking idea who did Wikipedia.

Joysweeper: We need a Troper Tales for this. I for one stridently resisted reading Harry Potter a few years ago, acting all scornful when my brother liked it, and I don't really remember why. Probably because it was just so popular. Then I read that little mini book, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, and just got too curious to resist. It's not a bad series. Maybe the only way to cure Hype Aversion is to make people curious enough that it overcomes their aversion.

Cliche: It will be done. I would like to add that this page would be so much better if half the examples weren't descriptionless.

Rappas:You know, we should remove all the examples that don't have descriptions.

The Nifty: Cut this:

Fallout 3. Given how everyone was ranting and raving about Fallout 3, this troper was expecting a bit more out of it than the mediocre experienced he left with.

If you played the game, it isn't Hype Aversion now, is it?

Seven Seals: I took out this:

Along with TeX/LaTeX being poorly documented it fits in with the scientific community ideas of programming needs/ideas being quite different from what programmers are taught for business purposes. A programmer may find XML with XSLT a much better fit then the obscure TeX/LaTeX.

To avoid derailing the page with natter, because I started typing a reply and it ended up way too long.

TeX was created first and foremost to typeset mathematics. It's still unrivalled in that area as far as the quality of its output is concerned, though more modern creations have come close. You can use it for general typesetting, but if you do you either do it because you like TeX or because people are making you, and the latter is what people rail against. TeX was written to scratch one programmer's itch, and it scratches it quite well. If it's no good "for business purposes" it's because you're not using heavy mathematics in your business. While that does illustrate the gap between theory and practice (I cannot remember the last time I wrote an equation while programming), it's not specific to TeX and it's not fair to TeX, because TeX is not some pie-in-the-sky academic language — on the contrary, it's one of those macro-infested dinosaur languages that are all too practical. LaTeX adds a layer of macros that's supposed to make TeX easier and more structured, but it doesn't quite succeed at hiding all the gory TeX innards, and comes with its own book of rules, some of them quite obscure.

XML+XSLT is not even in the race for professional typesetting in general or mathematics in particular. You would use XML+XSLT for its possibility of producing multiple document formats from one source document, in particular if one of those formats is HTML. If the Web isn't involved, you might as well type up your stuff in Microsoft Word (if Word wasn't horribly frustrating at editing formatting and layout), the quality will be comparable.

Finally, Donald Knuth must be crying when people call TeX poorly documented. ''The TeXbook" is about as extensive as you could hope for. The problem is that it's more program documentation than user manual — to use TeX fully, you have to understand the program TeX. If you don't already have a typography fetish, this is about as reasonable as asking a Windows programmer to learn Emacs to write his C# programs in because Emacs is the Ultimate Editor. That may be, but Visual Studio allows you to get to work right away, without a manual.

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