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.

Twice in one day!

The URL to my specific island on my Ikariam game has an ID of 1337. I don’t know why I haven’t noticed before today.

This is not a joke, I promise. I know I could have just changed the URL to reflect the 1337 for the ID attribute, but believe me I didn’t. I can’t believe the Reference Burst Theory™ that just happened. Check the comments of the previous post to see how the references are coming together precisely as predicted by RBT™.

Here’s the proof that I didn’t just change the URL. When hovering over the “Island” button in my Ikariam game, you can see the URL of the button in the status bar of my Firefox browser:

Anyone who has doubted my theory up until now has no reason to disbelieve any longer.

The edge of the universe is 50 billion trillion miles away. While Googling this number to see what it’s technically referred to, and how many light years it equivocates, I stumbled upon the largest diamond in the world galaxy.

Space is so cool. I guess a diamond isn’t really “space”. I don’t know what to call that of which I speak. The universe is so cool? All is so cool? Yeah, that’s it. All is so cool.

Oh right the number. Let’s see, 50 billion is 50,000,000,000. A trillion is 1,000,000,000,000. I guess we have to multiply those two numbers by appending zeros. Just to be sure, my cute little Windows calculator says it’s 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Now let’s Google that. Alright, it’s 50 sextillion.

Now how many light years is that? There are 5,878,499,812,499 miles in a light year. I knew that off the top of my head. So divide 50 sextillion by about 5 trillion. That’s 8,505,571,420, which is about 8 and a half billion. I knew that too. So it would take us 8.5 billion years to get to the edge of all things known if we were traveling the speed of light. I knew that as well. THANKS TO THIS SWEET VIDEO. Just wait till you get to the part where it shows outside our galaxy and you start zooming away from the Local Group. Wait, how do they know it looks like that?

Read the rest of this entry »

We know that celebrities die in threes, even though some people don’t seem to think it’s that simple. But I have always found my reference burst theory to be very interesting. It’s based out of a very scientific idea that things seem to get referenced all of the sudden multiple times in a short period, from seemingly disconnected sources. It was made up by me so don’t steal it and take credit for it.

For instance, all of a sudden you’ll hear an obscure 20 year old song on the radio that you haven’t heard in a long time, and then you’ll be flipping through an old magazine the next day and come across the name of that artist. If it’s a true Reference Burst (notice how the term is now capitalized), you’ll then proceed to see an old sitcom on TV where one of the characters makes a reference to that very song, or something along those lines.

It happened to me with Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo a couple years ago when it was referenced on an episode of Seinfeld shortly after I had heard it on the radio and seen it in print (I can’t remember where). That’s just one example - it happens pretty often.

Could it have something to do with the butterfly effect? One event causes a chain reaction, so the first reference somehow prompts the other two, not by chance, but by some complex chain of cause and effect. Could it be that Reference Bursts™ exist everywhere all the time and we only notice them when our minds are open to them? Could it be that I am a telepathic robotic bionic mutant-ic machine? My name is Brian, which is close to Brain, so maybe.

What does this have to do with cats dying? I’ll tell you - you just have to come on a short journey with me first. I’ll have you back to your cubical in no time. Refill your coffee mug, you closet caffeine addict, and let’s go.

A Short Journey

Yesterday I witnessed video of a team of lion hunters flirting with death. About halfway through it contains 5 seconds of some of the most amazing and terrifying footage mine eyes have ever seen. The video is work appropriate, 2 minutes long, and, although not required, is best viewed with sound. I probably built it up way too much. Sorry, but here it is anyway.

I want to go off topic for a second and point something out. Despite what you may be thinking about how terrible it is that they’re hunting lions, that guy drinks Milwaukee’s Best for sure. He got right back up and shot that lion. I would be burrowing into the ground like a little Hobbit creature of some sort. And stop judging that guy too. Maybe that lion killed his African wife and their 17 mixed-children. Ok, back to the subject.

You’re thinking “Man, I’ve got a lot more blogs to read today at work instead of finishing my project that’s due on Friday, and I wish he’d get to the point so I can just move on to Perez-Hilton.” I’ve got the cure for what ales you, my friend. Here’s where it gets interesting. Friday, not two days prior to Sunday’s video-tastic-ness, I happened upon a nugget of YouTube video involving a tiger, a stick-wielding Indian man, and a mostly uninvolved elephant. This one has about 3 seconds of sheer heaven towards the end. It’s work appropriate and 35 seconds long (with no audio).

You’re thinking “If this honky ever wants me to visit his blog again, he better have one more video clip that’s even better than the first two and conclude his post with a profound summarizing statement.” Today’s your lucky day, chief. A few weeks ago I witnessed the most amazing video I have ever seen. I know it sounds fake, but the video is entitled the Battle at Kruger and it contains footage of an epic three-way fight over an innocent little calf between a pride of lions, a crocodile, and a herd of angry buffalo. It is 8:30 in length and is worth every second, so watch it when you actually have a solid 20 minutes of time (I gave you an extra 11 minutes to rewind and re-watch the best parts).

You’re thinking “He’s doing it! He’s actually doing it! I hope he doesn’t screw it up so close to the end.” Don’t worry fake condescending guy, I won’t. It all comes full-circle because today, would you believe it, I happened to come across this article about the popularity of the battle at kruger video. I wasn’t searching for it, and I wasn’t even thinking about the crazy cat videos I had recently seen. In fact, I found it in the related articles section of an article on Digg about the godfather of the Internet predicting the end of TV as we know it.

Conclusion

Is there truth to my © Reference Burst Theory™? Have you had any crazy coincidences recently that would fall into this category? If so, you owe me $12 for stealing my idea that has been © Copyrighted and Trademarked™ and now contains the word “theory” in the official term too, just FYI in case you missed that. I know you can do that, I’ve seen it done. No one just says Pythagorean, do they? Who would give you any credit if you said “I used Pythagorean to figure out the third side of that triangle”? People need to hear that “theory” in there.

Here, I’ll type it again just to clear it up, this is how you have to refer to it without having to owe me $15: © Reference Burst Theory ™ ®. Yes, it has to be underlined and bolded, and just one last thing, notice how it’s Registered® too. I’m just covering my own butt here, ok.