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Another post got me thinking about this--how do you react to a piece of media/art (music, movie, book, game, etc.) being hyped up?

When someone tells you "____ is the greatest thing ever!", when you sit down to experience it yourself, is your mind going "Damn, I can't wait to check out this incredible thing!"? Or do you take a more cautious approach? Or maybe a cynical approach, like "it can't be that good." I'm just curious to what level do people buy into hype or how that affects them in approaching a thing.

For me, ongoing hype doesn't interest me; I just don't trust people's excitement, although their excitement can get me curious (Mad Max Fury Road wasn't something I was even planning to see, at first). If something hasn't initially interested me, it's just a thing that exists until I get around to checking it out, or I don't. I don't garner an expectation about it.
However, if it does interest me, I can get myself hyped pretty easily in my own excitement to check it out. 99% of the time, my approach to even that stuff is "just be something I enjoy." Example, I went into Jurassic World and Star Wars VII with the same desire, just to have a good time--one movie I hated, the other I loved. However, it does happen now and then something I'm personally into gets the better of me; like the last Ayreon album, I got huge expectations for and it was a big let-down.

Curious how you guys are with this stuff.

Zero Esc said:

When someone tells you "____ is the greatest thing ever!", when you sit down to experience it yourself, is your mind going "Damn, I can't wait to check out this incredible thing!"? Or do you take a more cautious approach? Or maybe a cynical approach, like "it can't be that good." I'm just curious to what level do people buy into hype or how that affects them in approaching a thing.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust

--Patrick

It depends on the source for me. If my big movie buff friend likes it, he might like it for doing unique director decisions as opposed to the plot which is more important to me. Things like that.

Same here. If the source is someone who has similar tastes, or it's something I've been a prior fan, I'm all aboard the hype train. Otherwise, I tend to go in with a skeptical mind.

It depends on timing for me. Like old vs. new. If someone loved a movie as a kid and thinks it;s the best and we should totally watch it together - I ride that hype train up one side and down the other. I find that kind of thing fun, I love getting excited over something that someone else loves. I tend to be hype city with things that are from 'back in the day', even if they don't hold up per se, I'm still all in when it comes to that stuff.

But new media - books, movie, TV shows, etc, I create my own hype regularly. I care very little for anyone's opinions on those things, so I just get excited about whatever I want - weather it's in vogue or popular. I am however easily excitable, so I'm hyped pretty much constantly throughout all of my interests.

It really depends on the source and type. "Hype" created by marketing is usually more of a turn-off than anything else. You know, the deliberate "pass this to your friends! This is the MOST AWESOME THING EVER".
On the other hand, friends who are genuinely excited about something can get me interested too - though I'll still tend to ask why they're excited. Hype for the sake of hype doesn't do much for me.

Also depends on the source.

If I really respect a person's opinion or just have a lot of common interests, I'll get excited about what they're "selling."

When it comes to trailers and movie buzz, it depends. There are a lot of crappy trailers out there where you can just *hear* the people making it saying "make these cuts faster! Now add the BWWWOWWWW sound! That'll convince these idiots it's good."

I'll totally bandwagon, though. I knew next to nothing about Mad Max,and the trailers and talk about the characters completely sucked me in.

I will also say, people who get too hyperbolic and won't shut up about something make me feel very contrary. If you oversell it and won't leave me alone, chances are I'm going to ignore you. I'll still check something out if I really want to...but people who talk that way to me generally aren't specific about why it's good. I hear a lot of "awesome" and "amazing." If i can get specifics about why something is worth my time I'm more likely to look into it.

I guess I echo the sentiments of most everyone here.

I have one or two people I know that generally have the same taste as me in a lot of things. If they say "this thing is awesome, go watch/play/listen to it now!" I will definitely check it out. I still tend to go into it mildly cautious, as I don't want to over-hype myself and be let down, but I've hardly ever been steered wrong.

As for my own personal hype generation, it's more about things in specific franchises now. Transformers, for example, tends to get me pretty hyped as long as it's not a Michael Bay production.

Anyone remember the game XIII? Not only did X-Play air multiple preview segments, they took the unprecedented step of dedicating an entire episode to it.

And then... the game came out. And it was BAD. IIRC Adam and Morgan called the XIII special as one of their biggest mistakes.

DarkAudit said:

Anyone remember the game XIII? Not only did X-Play air multiple preview segments, they took the unprecedented step of dedicating an entire episode to it.

And then... the game came out. And it was BAD. IIRC Adam and Morgan called the XIII special as one of their biggest mistakes.

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I wouldn't even call the game BAD. It was just incredibly average during a time when shooters were having a renaissance and cel-shading was a fad. Remember Drake and the 99 Dragons? EVERYONE thought it was going to be huge and it came out and was objectively one of the worst games ever made.

A game that I got sucked into the hype for was Darkwatch. It was a gritty pulp-horror western shooter about a vampire outlaw basically taking on the forces of evil with the help of the titular Darkwatch, a long running organization dedicated to wiping out supernatural threats. I actually have a ton of swag from this... some of the really nice metal sheriff badges, the small batch whiskey bottles, a whole box of t-shirts. Even have the artbook they did that showed off development art for the title. It was clear that they were going to turn this into a series. The game came out and did well enough for them to start work on a sequel that was going to be a PS3/X360 launch title but it got cancelled by Sega for some reason.

Remember all the ads that made Game Boys in different colors a huge deal? This was from Nintendo Power but I remember seeing ads for them in almost every game magazine I read around that time.

I'd like to play it red. Just sayin'.

I had a teal Gameboy Color. I actually knew someone who had one of those rare Gameboy Lites (the backlit ones).

I have the clear one still.

I used the plain old gray brick until the Advance came out. My brother got the Pocket Color in red eventually, with the fancy screen and all, so I did borrow that sometimes.

I had a brick as well. I bought a Color in college before I went on a road trip with my friends.

My dad took a Game Boy (first gen) with him to Desert Storm. It didn't make it back. His only explanation was "it got dusted." Never explained exactly what that meant.

Revenge of the Gator was the best pinball game ever, though.

I still have my Atari Linx boxed up in my closet.

GasBandit said:

My dad took a Game Boy (first gen) with him to Desert Storm. It didn't make it back.

Revenge of the Gator was the best pinball game ever, though.

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The Nintendo Store in New York actually has a Gameboy from Desert Storm. It apparently survived an attack from Iraqi forces, so despite looking like it melted it still plays.

AshburnerX said:

The Nintendo Store in New York actually has a Gameboy from Desert Storm. It apparently survived an attack from Iraqi forces, so despite looking like it melted it still plays.

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I've seen a picture of that one!

I suspect my father got his run over by something.

I try not to get hyped anymore. I got REALLY hyped for both Hellboy and Ang Lee's Hulk and wound up disappointed. Though Hellboy was a great movie, I ruined it for myself by buying the art book for the movie, which included the full script. I already knew every plot detail before the movie came out.

But the biggest reason was when I was in high school.

See, there was a big comic book movie coming. And I knew - I KNEW - it would be huge. It'd make this superhero a household name. We'd see merchandise everywhere after this movie came out. Every superhero afterwards would be judged by it.

I convinced my girlfriend that we had to get to the theatre hours ahead of time, just to get a good seat. After all, such a huge movie would no doubt be sold out.

By the time the movie started, there was maybe a dozen people in the theatre.

Turns out Spawn wasn't the blockbuster I thought it'd be.

The last time hype really bit me in the ass was Mass Effect 3. I became really cynical about game hype after that.

Movie hype was me camping out for Episode 1 tickets. Never again.

GasBandit said:

My dad took a Game Boy (first gen) with him to Desert Storm. It didn't make it back. His only explanation was "it got dusted." Never explained exactly what that meant.

Revenge of the Gator was the best pinball game ever, though.

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My dad bought himself a Game Gear and a couple platformers, I think one of the Sonic games and Dynamite Heddy. He liked the system but didn't much care for the games, so he ended up letting my brother and I have it so he could take Mario Land and Tetris with the Game Boy on long work trips.

CynicismKills said:

My dad bought himself a Game Gear and a couple platformers, I think one of the Sonic games and Dynamite Heddy. He liked the system but didn't much care for the games, so he ended up letting my brother and I have it so he could take Mario Land and Tetris with the Game Boy on long work trips.

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I gotta say, Ax Battler on game gear was pretty fun. But it chewed through AA batteries like Beavis ate nachos.

GasBandit said:

I gotta say, Ax Battler on game gear was pretty fun. But it chewed through AA batteries like Beavis ate nachos.

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I had these cool hand grip battery packs for mine. They didn't last any longer than batteries really, but it was certainly cheaper in the long run.

We live in an age of over-exaggeration. We can't simply call something good anymore, it has to be AWESOME. A word that once meant something so great it was terrifying. So when I see a ton of hype surrounding something, being called the best x ever, I interpret that to mean "It's not bad"

Ravenpoe said:

We live in an age of over-exaggeration. We can't simply call something good anymore, it has to be AWESOME. A word that once meant something so great it was terrifying. So when I see a ton of hype surrounding something, being called the best x ever, I interpret that to mean "It's not bad"

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"How was your date with Rachel?"
"Non stop orgasms from start to finish!"
"Aw, that's too bad... gonna call her again?"
"Nah, we both agreed there was no chemistry."

Yeah. Sounds like it was all Biology.

--Patrick

ThatNickGuy said:

I try not to get hyped anymore. I got REALLY hyped for both Hellboy and Ang Lee's Hulk and wound up disappointed. Though Hellboy was a great movie, I ruined it for myself by buying the art book for the movie, which included the full script. I already knew every plot detail before the movie came out.

But the biggest reason was when I was in high school.

See, there was a big comic book movie coming. And I knew - I KNEW - it would be huge. It'd make this superhero a household name. We'd see merchandise everywhere after this movie came out. Every superhero afterwards would be judged by it.

I convinced my girlfriend that we had to get to the theatre hours ahead of time, just to get a good seat. After all, such a huge movie would no doubt be sold out.

By the time the movie started, there was maybe a dozen people in the theatre.

Turns out Spawn wasn't the blockbuster I thought it'd be.

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I was wondering what 90s shitfest it was going to be .