1:07 AM
@forest I kind of get that instinctive knee-jerk reaction against popular things, because I think I've felt it too
but at the same time, I actually really unironically like Naruto
I first came across the series via randomly picking up volume 4 off of my younger brother's bed and flipping through it aimlessly
I remember one of my first impressions of the series being "wow, Sasuke and Sakura's names are so similar-looking, that's kind of confusing"
and then I read through it and it was right in the middle of the Zabuza and Haku arc, and by the end of it, I was like 'that was so intense'
and then I was like, 'geez, there's a good reason why this is so popular'
and then I went to read the rest of the manga starting from the beginning, and I basically binged from the start all the way to around the Pain arc over the course of several days
anyway, here's how I think about it:
yes, it's pretty common for people to hate on series just because they're popular
but you know what else is popular?
hating on series just because they're popular
so with hipster recursion level 2, you go against the grain of hating on popular series by actually unironically enjoying the popular series
of course, with hipster recursion level 3, it swings the other way again
but the magnitude is a bit smaller
so if you take the limit and sum the offsets of the hipster recursion levels approaching infinity, it basically mostly cancels out to 0
and so I just don't really pay the popularity of a series any mind and just decide whether I like it or not on its own merits