Unexpected Obsessions

[ermingarden]

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?

Comments

[atamascolily]

To be fair, the soundtrack for OBWAT is excellent, and I can totally see why chorus kids would be into it! "Man of Constant Sorrow" was constantly playing in the background of the early '00s and seeped into my consciousness along with "Hero" by Chad Kroeger and "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)" by Nine Days. I listened to the CD long before I ever watched the movie, and finally got it out from the library mostly just because I was curious about the context of some of the songs.

This topic of trying to predict what's the next big hit is discussed at length in Nassim Taleb's book Black Swan, which you might find interesting if you haven't already read it. (I certainly did!) He argues that Black Swan phenomena (basically anything with an outsize impact that results in a distribution skewed to a "winner take all" system) is inherently unpredictable, but there are certain strategies one can take to minimize or maximize their impact. You can see the same thing at work in fandom, where most fics receive a small percentage of views compared to a handful of juggernauts; it's certainly true on a microlevel with my own work--the graph of all my A03 stats almost perfectly matches the classic Black Swan curve.

Star Wars is THE classic example in my mind of unexpected success. Nobody expected it to make money - not the studio, not the actors, not George Lucas. And yet people loved it and still do to this day! Heck, even Harry Potter boggles my mind when you think about it, given how it's far from the first "British wizard at boarding school for magic" story by a long shot, and the prevailing wisdom of children's book publishers at the time was that 500+ page hardcovers would never sell.

[ermingarden]

Here's where I...date myself? reveal my embarrassing youth?: This was in 2015! (I'm a baby, I know – OBWAT came out when I was two.)

I just looked up Black Swan – it sounds fascinating! I'll definitely have to read it at some point.

[chestnut_pod]

Sort of on the same wavelength as Atamascolily's recommendation for Black Swan, you might like Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel, by Clayton Childress. It's all about how publishing tries really hard to make hits -- but sometimes it just doesn't work out! A full sociological exploration, with the added bonus of being about a prof from my own alma mater, lol.

Why and how did It become a fandom thing? Perpetually bewildering.

[ermingarden]

Oh, that looks fascinating too! (This is one of my favorite things about Dreamwidth – I make a post about whatever and get book recommendations!)

Haven't seen It, and I don't plan to – not a horror fan, I'm afraid. But from what I know of it, that does seem very surprising!

[bunn]

*What are some things you've been surprised by how much people love?*

The Silmarillion :-D

[ermingarden]

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