My second attempt.

My first attempt.

Pop Aversion Theory™

That’s why.

Let me tell you about a new theory that is blowing the minds of scientists and philosophizers ’round the globe. It’s called Pop Aversion Theory™ (PAT™) and it was discovered by the same great mind that brought us Reference Burst Theory™. Mine.

I recently took a movie compatibility quiz on Facebook because I was sick of getting requests from friends to see if we had the same taste in movies. As an aside, I can already tell you we aren’t going to have the same taste in movies if one of your favorite “films” is Pirates of the Caribbean, which sadly includes more than one of my Facebook friends.

While taking the quiz I noticed the first film I was supposed to rate was Titanic, and I proceeded to rate it 5 out of 5 stars without thinking twice. It wasn’t until after I finished the quiz, while I was reviewing my friends’ results, that I found out I’m in a very small minority of Titanic-lovers. I thought this was strange because I remember everyone liking it when it first came out. In fact, after reviewing 25 of my friends’ results (50% male, 50% female), I noticed there was only one person who rated Titanic above 3 stars besides me.

What’s infinitely more disturbing is that there was only one person who rated Pirates of the Caribbean BELOW 3 stars.

Ahem.

WHAT THE F**K??!!!??

About every other Tuesday or so, it seems, something happens that makes me lose faith in humanity. This is one of those Tuesdays.

So, what unstoppable force of nature is causing the immovable object of bad opinion to favor the superficial shiny-but-empty summer blockbuster Pirates over the truly epic and one-of-a-kind love/drama that is Titanic? I have discovered that it actually doesn’t have much to do with the quality of film-making present in either film, believe it or not.

I know all of this because in my research I’ve performed a few experiments. I make it a point to mentally record the reactions people have when the movie Titanic comes up. Most of the time it is just a dismissing grunt or sound that indicates the film is much too trivial to take up any of their time talking about. That’s when I usually hit them with it. After ensuring I am in fact in the presence of a Titanic-hater, I proceed to tell them “Oh I thought it was great. It’s one of my favorite movies.” Usually this statement is met with shock and awe. How could I, a 26 year old football-watching beer-drinking chest-hair-having manly manly guy speak such blasphemy? It’s almost as if I just told them The Hills is my favorite TV show.

Compare that to another experiment I do with the opposite angle but the same outcome. I have specifically singled out Pirates of the Caribbean, not because I mean to pick on the film (it’s directed by the same guy that directed The Weatherman - one of my favorite movies), but because it’s such a good example of a film that people just inherently think they’re supposed to like without actually evaluating. When this movie comes up in conversation, most people claim to at least like it, if not love it, and after hearing that I do not share their sentiment, go through the same shock and awe as experiment #1.

Here comes the proof. When we get down to the heart of the matter, which happens when I ask these people why they loved Pirates and hated Titanic, we finally see the effects of PAT™ hard at work and can prove it’s existence. Here are common explanations I’ve heard for the “greatness” of Pirates:

“Johnny Depp.”
“Orlando Bloom.”
“Kiera Knightly.”
“The ride at Disney World is sweet!”
“It’s awesome.”
“The FX are stunning.”
“It’s such a fun movie!”
“Johnny Depp.”
“How can you not like it?”
“Johnny Depp’s face and body.”

Which one of those explanations should be the basis for rating a movie 5 out of 5 stars? If just once someone would describe it using phrases like “amazing acting”, “awesome plot”, “so realistic”, “unlike any other movie”, “invokes strong emotion”, or “has David Bowie in the cast” I would shut up and publicly discredit my precious PAT™.

Conversely, here are some common explanations for the popular aversion to Titanic:

“Played out.”
“Stupid.”
“Girl movie.”
“Some people saw it 17 times at the theaters. That’s sick.”
“Just a love story.”
“Way too long.”
“Just a sad excuse for a really long love story.”
“I hate Leonardo DiCaprio.”
“Most of it is boring.”
“It has that stupid Celine Dion song in it.”
“It’s way way way too long.”

First of all, none of these responses warrant a 1 star rating. If you think about it, you can use some of these same phrases to describe universally-hailed films such as Braveheart, The Departed, and The Green Mile. I have yet to hear a concrete example of why Titanic is such a bad film.

And now we come to it. The reason I’ve not heard a concrete example is because the reason is not consciously known to the person with the opinion, and consequently can’t be put into words. The reason is that people were so bombarded by how insanely popular Titanic was - how mainstream it became, how much money it made (highest grossing film of all time), how much girls loved it, how it spawned a sappy #1 radio hit - that they decided they hated it, not because it was a bad movie, but because everyone else loved it so much. Pop Aversion Theory™ at it’s finest.

Titanic made more money by a LONG shot than any other movie in history. That means A LOT of people REALLY liked it. What happened to all these people? The film did well with critics, too - although even critics are not immune to PAT™. The reason they tend to get it right more often than the rest of us (in general) is because they usually submit their reviews before the film is released, and therefore before the public has had a chance to create the aversion needed to spawn a PAT™ attack.

You don’t have to like Titanic. I’m sure you are going to spout off your much more sophisticated reasons for not liking Titanic in the comments. I, however, do love Titanic, despite the sour taste its “titanic” popularity left in my mouth, because of the acting (superb cast), the realism, the immense scope, the one-of-a-kind nature, the director (Terminator series), the cinematography & visually-immersing style, the story, the FX, the music (James Horner’s soundtrack is beautifully haunting), and the emotions it evoked in me (dread, love, sadness, terror) - I was on the edge of my seat for the entire last hour and a half of the movie.

The moral of the story is, make your own opinions. If you hated Titanic that’s perfectly fine, I just hope you can support your opinion with good examples.

More examples of things affected by PAT™ are Coldplay, The Matrix 2 & 3, Survivor, Dave Matthews Band, and American Idol. Believe it or not, I’ve talked to a number of people that haven’t even seen Survivor or listened to Dave and yet have somehow developed an immense hatred for them. I know I’m missing some really good examples that I had previously thought of, but my mind just went blank.

One more thing. I have cleverly phrased my new theory in a manner that will make its acronym form easy to remember. It obviously has a very bad connotation - you do not want to be associated with PAT™. You also don’t want to be associated with the New England Patriots. If you are a PATs fan, you probably also fall victim to the allure of PAT™ quite often because you obviously have a small brain. PAT™ = Pats.

I fail because each day I find out about a new thing that I could’ve come up with if I wasn’t too busy wishing I could come up with new stuff. Man that’s recursive.

We all know about LOLcats. Duh. They will always be funny no matter what.

Then someone came up with FAIL and it was hysterical.

Things started getting a little wacky with the emergence of Total Looks Like.

Oh by the way LOLdogs are not funny:

So that’s a bad example. But here’s a good example: Office Graphs. It’s so simple. This is the crux of my blog post. The reason I say that I FAIL in life is because I can’t come up with this stuff. I’ve never come up with a joke either.

Think about it. You’ve heard hilarious and clever jokes your whole life. Who comes up with them? Do you know anyone who has ever told a great joke and then said “I wrote that joke.” No, they always hear it from a coworker or something.

Enough of my whining. Here are some funny Office Graphs.

What’s even more mind-blowing is the fact that all these funny blogs are part of the same network. And they’re hiring a .NET developer. Which I am. How great would it be to get paid as a web developer for the LOLcats blog? It would be almost as cool as working for Blizzard.

I spent all last week in a cabin in the woods stuck using someone else’s Macbook Pro. I have never been a Mac user. I know some of the differences in the OS, but I’ve never learned how to really use one. I have sported a PC since I was 10.

Having to suddenly switch from PC to Mac for a week is probably like being thrown into a country where no one speaks English. It’s really hard to discipline yourself to learn another language if you can just go back to English whenever you need, but if you are immersed in it you will find that you are much more capable of picking it up than you once thought.

It’s the same with learning to use a Mac. In the past, when I got frustrated trying to complete a task, I just went and did it on my super-beefy Dell XPS gen 2 (don’t laugh, I know it’s 5 1/2 years old). Then I’d knife a few counter-terrorists as a victory celebration.

Last week I didn’t have that option, so I was literally forced to learn the basics of OSX or Puma or Liger or Bumblebee or whatever operating system Apple just released. Yes it was frustrating at times, but that frustration forced me to figure things out. And once I started to figure things out, I … liked it.

Know why? Because stuff JUST WORKED. I’m serious, the computer would never just hang up on me. It always told me what was happening. All the programs worked together, blissfully unaware that they were drinking from the same memory pool and using the same resources that 10 others were. And I was on a dial-up connection to boot.

At this point, 3 out of the 3 total people reading this article are hovering their mouses over the “close tab” button in their browsers. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t even read an article with this title, so that was your first mistake.

You know what doesn’t JUST WORK? My PC. I tried backing up my music from my laptop to my external HD to my desktop, and when I pasted the My Music folder into the “Brian\Users\” folder in Vista, it made a duplicate folder instead of copying over the old one. Only then did I realize I wasn’t looking at an actual directory structure even though I was using Windows Explorer.

I know, right. WTF? I had to give up because it wouldn’t let me rename the folders because I didn’t have admin permission even though I am the sole proprietor of my own computer (i.e. I am an admin dangit).

I’m not saying a Mac doesn’t crash - the Mac I was using did crash once. I’m not saying Macs are good for everyone - some people like to play games, and if they have a Mac they’re obviously limiting themselves. And I’m not saying you will like a Mac when you use it. Some people just don’t appreciate user interface. These are usually the same people that have messy houses, disorganized sock drawers, and 5 year-old wardrobes.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Mac is more of an accessory and tool for your lifestyle, and PC is more of an accessory and tool for your work life. That is exactly what Mac has been telling me for the past 5 years, I just haven’t been listening.

When I got home from my week of slim, sleek, bright, colorful, gay Mac using and fired up Vista on the old Dell XPS frag-box beast of a mainframe, I found myself having much less fun and much more frustration*. Is using a computer supposed to be fun? Here’s my quick answer: yes, if you’re using it at home. And yes, even if you’re using it at work, but sadly this is just not possible when you are a Microsoft web developer.

In summary, I want to point out that while dealing with media files on an OS I had only used for a week, I was able to get tasks done much more quickly with fewer errors than I was able to get done with the exact same media files on an OS I had used my whole life. I don’t care what facts and figures you throw at me, that right there is proof that Macs are not all bad.

If you have the money and you don’t care about ever ever evAR customizing anything on your computer, a Mac is for you. Finally, please don’t tell me you don’t buy into the whole “lifestyle” thing. Consumer electronics are all about lifestyle. This isn’t 1986 anymore.

*Note in this context the word “gay” purely references style, not sexual preference. I like small words, not big words.