"It's just a fad."
 

I'm getting extremely frustrated with my roommate and a couple of my friends. They've been supporting weak evidence as to 'prove' that Harry Potter is;
A - just a fad
and
B - Not a good book series.

So far they've only come up with few reasons; The first, is that 'when you've read the first one, you've read them all.' My roommate, meanwhile, reads Tom Clancy. Neither of them can tell me why this is true, and one of them has only read the first book anyway, and says "I don't remember anything that happened in it, because it was bad."

No matter what I can do, I keep telling them that, for all it's worth, I don't care if they dont' like the book series, but stop acting like they know better than the rest of the goddamn planet.

Then I started thinking; isn't this the exact same response Pokemon got when it became popular? And virtual pets, too? Just a massive surge of 'I will rebel against the masses because it is popular."

Thoughts?

Well, Harry Potter is extremely popular where I come from and almost everyone reads it, I friend of mine (male, 24) is seeing the movie right now, alone, because he really likes it (and not because he has the hots for Hermione, nooo!). So I wouldn't know what you are talking about.

Some people seem to be unable to understand that the entire world doesn't share their tastes. As such, if something they don't like becomes popular, they write it off as a "fad."

What is the running definition of a fad? How long does something have to be around and popular before it's no longer a fad? Boy bands were considered a fad when backstreet and the others came out, and they seem to have gone away for a while, but that thing was being done even before them - BelBifDevoe and NKOTB in the 80s, and much of the old school R&B were boy bands (Temptations, Four Tops, etc.). Was disco a fad or an era? For a cockroach, having a spine might still be considered a fad.

You should tell your friends: "Blindly hating on things that are currently or were popular is a fad, the most idiotic fad of all."

Honestly, I don't think the HP series is advancing much. But writing it off as a fad when over millions like the series is just...

Meh, what's their opinion worth? They read Clancy like it's cool. HE'S BEEN A FAD FOR THE LAST 20 YEARS! :P

On a lighter note, just leave them to their own devices. You can't change opinions, you can only change yourself.

Well trying to get him to talk about specific reasons rapidly devolves into "It was really bad, so bad I can't remember anything about it."

But I digress, as he's about twelve feet away from me right now.

What I started this topic on is because I'm just frustrated at people who write things that are popular off as "Fads." Pokemon was 'just a fad'.

Um...it was a game. That was popular. And people liked it. Just because it's a fad doesn't mean it's automatically not really worth anything. Especially Pokemon, and Harry Potter, both of which are long-standing chains of both dedicated fans, and a massive swarm of counter-culture haters.

Am I seeing a pattern here? I'm not altogether convinced that the reaction to this vague criticism of Harry Potter books or Pokemon is any more measured than the reaction against the phenomenon themselves.

In any case... I do agree that something being a fad or not doesn't affect the quality of the object itself, and that's why that I think that the quality of the object has little to do with the irritation 'fads' cause in certain people (including me, I say). It's the fad related behaviors that cause the irritation, regardless of if the irritated has read or watched the object of the fad.

Trying to 'bring down' the object of the fad is a shortcut to trying to cope with what is perceived as irritating 'faddists', and perhaps really beside the point in most cases. Same thing goes for most uses of the word 'overrated'.

I just watched the new movie and it was 8 out of 10 in my opinion.

I'm pretty convinced it's not just a fad becuse when I say Harry Potter is "ok", "pretty good", or "does not make me spooge my pants", this one girl comes and strangles me for not worshiping the book like the bible.