I Liked it BEFORE it was Cool!

[Terramax]

I Liked it BEFORE it was Cool!

RESPONSE: So, you liked it when it sucked?

(This was not made to be offensive to you. That just seems to be the proper response to snobbery.)

On the contrary, in terms of television shows or musicians, usually when they start getting popular they get worse/ go downhill.

To me it's anime. I used to love anime during the 90's when it seemed no-one else in the UK even knew what it was. I used to have to spent masses of time and money ordering them on VHS, and buying specialist magazines that promoted the top anime franchise. But it was always well worth it.

But after the internet anime boom of the early 2000's we got a flood of terrible, kiddie crap and porn that clouded all the good stuff; solely targeted at the dumb crowd, instead of all the meaningful and mature works such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Dominion Tank Police, Guyver, El Hazard, which no longer seems to get made, with a few exceptions i.e. GitS:SAC.

If this opinion makes me a snob, then call me a snob. But it's still true. Even contributors in the industry are complaining of how stagnant the industry is these days.

 

[Buffoon]

I watched South Park before anyone else in my school had heard of it. It was shown on a relatively obscure network here in Australia, I'd seen a half dozen episodes by the time the sudden wave of absolutely incredible popularity hit.

 

[Bucket0Bones]

I listened to Buckethead long before 13 year olds declared him as a god thanks to the song Jordan being in Guitar Hero

 

[Zac_Dai]

To me it's anime. I used to love anime during the 90's when it seemed no-one else in the UK even knew what it was. I used to have to spent masses of time and money ordering them on VHS, and buying specialist magazines that promoted the top anime franchise. But it was always well worth it.

But after the internet anime boom of the early 2000's we got a flood of terrible, kiddie crap and porn that clouded all the good stuff; solely targeted at the dumb crowd, instead of all the meaningful and mature works such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Dominion Tank Police, Guyver, El Hazard, which no longer seems to get made, with a few exceptions i.e. GitS:SAC.

I can relate to this, an anime guy a bit like yourself introduced to me stuff like you listed several years ago. I admit I was pretty ignorant thinking anime and animation in general was kids stuff, then I watched Ghost in the Shell, Akira, etc and was blown away by how good it was!

Sadly like you said its all shit like Lucky Star now.

Back on topic I have the old liked it before it was cool thing happen to me a lot. I don't mind stuff becoming popular, but I hate looking like a dick when someone says "Check this out" and I have to reply "I already have".

A more odd version is to do with The White Stripes, I remember me and my friend discovering their album White Blood Cells and being obsessed with it, playing tracks 'Dead leaves on the dirty ground' and 'Hotel Yorba' constantly. We tried to get all our other friends to listen to them but no one was interested.

Two years later and their album Elephant comes out and for the first time they get serious radio play in the UK with the track 'Seven Nation Army'. I didn't like it at all but suddenly everyone loved The White Stripes.

So I had the weird experience of people I had been trying to get to listen to the band years back now becoming massive fans overnight while I had gone from massive fan to someone who kept the radio off so I didn't have to listen to goddamn 'Seven Nation Army'!

 

[x0ny]

I've been wearing Hoodies since I was around 10 (now 25) because they use to be the only jumpers I could fit over my head. Now they are so connected with the Chav/hooligan culture my previous workplace banned people from wearing them.

Yeah, that's what stopped me buying a Left 4 Dead hoodie. Damn Chavs.

 

['Aredor]

Oh, and on a more gaming related note: I played Doom over serial cable with a friend back in 1994; after that, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Quake II, Half-Life, Counter-Strike back in 1999; can't stand online multiplayer nowadays.

 

[comadorcrack]

I wore black before it was emo.

Liked MCR before they were cool
Liked Fall Out Boy before they were cool
Liked Lost-prophets before they were cool

Infact you could say I single handedly made Emo! You could say that... But I wouldn't as it would be wrong...

The way things are going now I'll be saying Well I liked Theory of a Dead man before they were cool too!

 

[Mammon]

As a nerd, I lived through the times when LOL terms started. It was annoying as hell when it became a trend.. my first problem with it was the pure lazyness of saying lol insted of actually laughing. My other problem was it became a shorthand which ment something like, laughing sarcasticly at a situation. It just feels like I was watching another timeperiod when they though discopants and moonshoes was cool.

 

[MelasZepheos_v1legacy]

I like it when things I like get popular, because it means they are more likely to continue. Sometimes you may have to accept a dip in the quality of the userbase, but that's fine by me.

Also, I have an odd example. I didn't find ZP until it was already popular, but I did find it before any of my friends (by nearly a year), so now that all my friends are finding it, I do have this weird feeling of 'huh, didn't expect that.'

 

[Doitpow]

It's a really pathetic reaction to anything gaining popularity. It makes the person look unwilling to share in anything they enjoyed. It also is a complete fallacy because for us to have exposure to almost any kind of media it has to have had a modicum of popularity, so you never 'liked it first'.....
Which is why I have so many!

I liked Death Note before it was cool!
I liked Studio Ghibli before it was popular!
I played Phychonauts before Yahtzee put his stamp of approval on it!
I listened to muse before they were mainstream!
I loved fallout before it went 3d!

I...
I...

 

[Doitpow]

I started saying "f*ck a duck" before the bear-jew said it in inglorious basterds.

My dad's been saying "fuck a duck" since the 60s.

I'm pretty sure 'fuck a duck' is in the bible somewhere

 

[Nivag the Owl]

This happens to me all the time. I was hating Zoidberg way before it was cool.

 

[Mozza444]

I liked Example before "Won't go quietly"
I liked Professor Green before "I need you tonight"

 

[Deleted]

I honestly don't mind, if people around me starts to liek somethign i like.
I never needed to have "my own bands" so i could feel special or something.
The more people there are, who appreciate stuff i like, the more people there are to talk to about said stuff, be it games, music, movies or something else.

I won't start pretending to liek something just cause others do, sure i'll listen to stuff my friends put on, even if it's not what i like, but thats just to not be the ass-hole who says "you can't put that on, cause i disliek it" but i'm not gonan go buy the CD if i din't liek it. But if my friends show me something, and i'm like hey thats actually awesome (and mean it) thats perfect, and also the other way around, cause then we'll have another thing to talk about, or anotehr band we'll both wanna see live, or a game we can play together.

I never really udnerstood how people "got off" on knowing that they liek something which others don't. We all liek stuff, and most of us likes something not a lot of others do, it doesn't make you special, it doesn't make you a rebel, it doesn't make you cool.
So i'm almost disgusted when someone starts whining that a certain band is "their" band, and that people are stealing away their coolness, by liking it as well if it becomes popular.

People are so fucking scared of not beeing super unique in every way possible, not realizing that they are just beeing shallow when they can only define themselves, by the music they listen to and their "style" and starts acting patheticly whiny when they realize that this doesn't make them "cool" or "unique" anymore cause suddenly a lot of people like it.
Well guess what, it never made them cool or unique in the first place, they were clothes and listened to music just like everyone else, and the fact that every otehr peerson now knows their favourite band doens't change them.

I honestly wish most of my friends could find some love for metal, cause then i'd be able to put on the music i liked at parties, without someone instantly changing it to some dance music.

The point of my story was that you like something or do something, and people know you like it. Then something makes that thing popular and whenever you do it, people will go "Hey you took that from X." or "hey that reminds me of Y".

One example is that I almost always sit on comfy chairs with my legs up, like L from deathnote. But this was before the manga existed (5 or so years ago), and now I stopped doining it in public because people will go "Who do you think you are, L?" and I seem like a poser :'(

 

[Disaster Button]

I wore black before it was emo.

I remember being told at age 10 wearing all black makes me a goth. I was kinda confused at the time but I soon realised that person was an idiot.

But this happens to me with music/film tastes or with beliefs. Now with that last one I don't mean to say that I created them because that would be stupid, but when you mention that you're socialist/athiest/whatever and then the person you told suddenly starts claiming to be those things without even knowing what they are its kind of obvious what happened. Of course that's a very specific example and should probably be ignored by everyone.

What I hate more than anything is the trend to claim to have depression or hate everything, things like that. I'm aware that depression is a real and serious illness but I doubt that half of my year, who all hang around together, have it. Its depression, not an STD.

 

[Agema]

Reminds me of a Flaming Lips gig just after they'd really got some mainstream attention in the early 2000s. There was a pause in the music, whilst Wayne Coyne happily told us in his slightly hippyish fashion how we should all be good to each other, have fun, enjoy life and not be too full of ourselves.

As he was in the middle of this meandering talk of goodwill to mankind, I overheard the woman next to me arrogantly and bitterly bitching to her (boy?)friend about how she'd been into them years ago and now their gigs were full of all these second-rate fans who had just jumped on the bandwagon.

Ah, the irony.

 

[teisjm]

I wore black before it was emo.

Emo's are teh best thing thats happened to ninjas in ages.
If you wore all black before back in the day, people would assume you were ninja, and beeing noticed isn't that ninja.
Now if i wear black, people will assume i'm emo, and not only do they miss the fact that i'm ninja, they also think i'm emo which is even betetr cause who would ever suspect anything dangerous from an emo right?
And when i killed assassinated ninja'd the unsuspecting victims, people don't even bother to ask about the blood on my clothes, as they just assume i cut myself.

 

[A random person]

A lot of Shonen Jump manga since I subscribed back in 2004 (hell, you might be able say manga as a whole in the west, though I'm not entirely sure when the boom happened). I read Naruto, One Piece, and the first chapter of several things (D-Gray Man and the ever-popular Death Note, for two) a good bit before they became popular, among other things. Of course, in Naruto's case my reaction was more "eh, it's OK, but Shaman King and Yu Yu Hakusho are where it's at."

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I hated Twilight before the films.

I loved Rage Against The Machine before whenever the hell it was that all of a sudden everyone else heard of them.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I've never actually said, "I liked it before it was cool," because it sounds ridiculous. It was cool even then, it's just that nobody else agreed with me. So, on occasion, I might say, "I liked it before everybody else thought it was cool." But not often, because I have no friends and rarely get to talk to people.