Let's not talk about Halo. Let's talk about grapes.
Does anyone here seriously dislike grapes? I mean, I think it's safe to say that people that really dislike grapes are a small minority, but there probably are just as few people who would go on an Internet forum and post "Hay guiz I am A-#1 fan of all grapes WHO'S WITH ME?!"
But then one day, the supermarket is overrun with people buying grapes. They can't keep grapes on the shelves. Grapes are all people at work will talk about, talking about all different kinds, sizes, and serving methods. There are new grape sodas, I<3grape t-shirts, grape-themed bands forming, and cliques divided by how people like to eat grapes.
Some people only eat green grapes, and they get hated on by the people who only drink grape juice, who are looked down upon by the dudes who consider themselves connoisseurs of grapes and seek out rare or expensive grapes, and all of those groups are in contrast to the competitive grape eaters who see how many they can eat in one sitting or how many they can fit in their mouth at once. There are intense debates on the 'true' way to eat them, whether you should pick them off the stems beforehand or one-by-one as you eat them, or if you should skin them as you eat them or just pop them in.
To everyone caught up in the grape craze, it's a great time to be alive. Maybe you weren't into grapes before, and now you like them. Maybe you did like them, but now you appreciate them in a whole new way. Maybe you've always been a grape fanatic and you can tell everyone you bled Chardonnay before it was cool. The world is all orbs, petals, and nectar, and life rocks for you.
But if you were and still are just 'okay' with grapes, or, God help you, you never liked them and still don't, now you're just going to be sick to death of hearing about it. Having to be at school or work or on the Internet or watching TV or at the mall or the movies and everything is grapes, grapes, grapes, all the time, and you can just never get a break from it. Patience is tested, and wits are strained. Pretty soon, a noticeable gulf forms.
People who are ga-ga for grapes are bewildered by those who fail to see the light, and the uninfected screech vile invective at the deluded. People who earnestly enjoyed grapes before are now nauseated by the sight of them. Grape cultists are confused and angered by the people who don't share their passion, and lash out. Spiteful pariahs begin backing other horses, touting pomegranates or Valencia oranges as the new 'grape-killers.' (It never pans out, though.) People identify each other by their viewpoint, and the culinary world slowly polarizes into two camps with a barren no-mans-land set amid them, each with their hands gripping at the other's throat, the issue at the core all but incidental now to the sour, self-sustaining conflict around them.
Then nothing ever comes of it. After a few years, the age of the grape slowly goes from a boil, to a simmer, to a sweat. Nothing has really changed. Grapes are the same as they were since they were bred. But now there's a stigma with them that'll last for ages. It may well be another whole generation or more before people can just sit and watch the tube with a bowl of grapes or pass them by at the grocery store without instantly hearkening back in their mind to every last shred of pointless bitterness or mindless adulation.
But one day, grapes would just be to us like pepper. No one will have reservations or preconceptions about them anymore than we have about any other dirt-common foodstuff. Die-hards on either side are all but extinct, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone of a certain age who wasn't part of it, or at least remembers it. And they'll all look like a bunch of jackasses when 99% of the conclusions reached by their antecedents are 'not bad' and a shrug of the shoulders.
