Unexpected Obsessions

atamascolily's comment the other day about not having expected MDZS/The Untamed to become the next juggernaut fandom reminded me of the summer in high school when I went to music camp and everyone else there was obsessed with that Coen Brothers movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which I had literally never heard of before.

It was a Celtic trad music camp, primarily instrumental, but we also did a couple of (American) shape note singing workshops. The instructor announced that we were going to do "Go to Sleep You Little Baby" from that movie…and everyone absolutely lost their minds.

The camp was in an isolated area in the mountains with no cell service, so I couldn’t just google what the heck this movie was. And I was an awkward teenager unwilling to admit I hadn’t seen the darn thing. So it wasn’t until I got home that I was able to look it up, and uh...it’s a loose retelling of the Odyssey set in the South during the Great Depression. It’s good, but not what I would have expected a bunch of teenagers to go nuts over – though teenagers attending a trad music camp are admittedly not a representative sample.

So now I'm curious: What are some things you've been surprised by how much people love?