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Nerdy Things You Love/Hate: And the Winners Are


Love Hate.jpg

?This week’s contest gave you all the opportunity to name the nerdy things you hate that everybody else loves and vice versa. When it came time for me to judge the entries, I was surprised to see that each side had roughly the same amount of entries. (Well, it seems like the hate side had a bit more, but it wasn’t a landslide of disdain or anything).

The thing that made picking the two winners so difficult was that I was essentially judging your opinions here. Not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination. So in order to sift through the hundreds of worthwhile entries and actually settle upon two winners, I found myself gravitating to entries that made me laugh, made me think, and/or slaughtered sci-fi sacred cows in a thought-provoking manner. With that said, let’s kick things off with the honorable mentions for nerdy things you hate that everybody else loves:

Jedisilk:

I hate Superman. Seriously, I cannot stand him. Here is a man whose ONLY weakness is Kryptonite. A fairly easy rock to avoid seeing as its from a planet that no longer exists. I like my heroes to have some flaws. Batman for example. Here is a hero with some serious mental instability. And I like a hero to bleed after being in a serious battle. Plus they shouldn’t be good at everything. I believe it was from a Cracked.com After Hours video that says the rule of Superman is he can do anything except the stuff he hasn’t tried yet. And his personality is so fucking Boy Scout. Just a nice guy without any hubris. REALLY??? I’m not an expert on Superman of course, but from what I can tell he really is THAT nice. I’m sorry I believe Zod would be the norm for anyone that badass and all powerful. So fuck Superman.

Ridureyu:

Most modern nerd TV Show loves. Firefly, BSG, Walking Dead, Heroes, Terra Nova… not EVERYTHING, but most of them.  I watch them, and I end up suffocated by all the “Look at ME! I’m a GOOD SHOW!” pretention that often precludes actually being a good show.  I admit, Sarah Connor Chronicles had some good things, but as a whole? I zoned out. Even ones like  The Walking Dead which I know are well-done just… something about the atmopshere seems off.  And the less said about True Blood, the better. It’s like a lot of modern shows are just masturbating about themselves all the time.

wintersmith:

I hate GI Joe because I’m British and we had Action Man who is ten times better.

Tome Minder:

I hate Blade Runner, I find the movie boring as hell and some of the performances laughable.  Harrison Ford isn’t the total badass he’s supposed to be, I just never took him seriously.  Rutger Hauer is the shit though. 

The Pirate Star:

I’m going to say the nerdy thing I hate that everybody loves is anime. I associate anime with all the weird guys I dated who would try to get me to watch it with them, embrace all things Japanese and suggest I dye my hair pink for them. Am I being too hard on this genre? Maybe.

infrafan:

The “Hot Nerds” trend.  99.999999999999999999999% of those girls aren’t even remotely geeky.  “Oh, she’s got a PowerGlove on and nothing else.  Here’s my money for your calendar.”  Pfft.  They didn’t get labeled and misjudged in school. They get paid to pander to the stereotypes we try to break, and it’s beyond annoying.  It’s offensive.  In fact, let’s broaden it up to anything that panders to geekness by dressing it up in a Batman t-shirt.  Why I have trouble accepting The Big Bang Theory and “nerd porn.” I don’t want to see the characters I love and respect have sex any more than I want to see my family and friends do.

Spacegrass: 

I hate Nintendo. I thought Nintendo was great when I was a kid, and it was…but for decades now, they’ve just been remaking the same handful of games every couple years. Bowser kidnaps Peach, and Mario has to save her. Ganon kidnaps Zelda, and Link has to save her. Everyone gets together to race go-karts or play mini-games or whatever. A new handheld comes out with some new gimmicky bullshit, and we get to pay full price to buy the same games we played 15 years ago. Enough is enough.

Mastercylinder:

I find it hard to believe I would ever say this at any point in my life, but I really hate Star Wars right now. Yes, you would be correct to say that it does have something to do with the prequels, but not entirely. See, I am the strong story minded type, so I can dismiss parts of a franchise I despise (Looking at you Bayformers) and just look forward to a spinoff or look back through nostalgia goggles. I can’t do this with SW anymore. Everything about it, even the classics, are so “meta” and awkwardly everywhere that I can’t really see it as what it’s supposed to be, it feels like a collection of pop-culture-y squall now. It’s almost too iconic. I miss being the butt end of a joke because I had a Boba Fett pen in high school, instead of looking like an internet savy hipster. I have all these stupid SW shirts I don’t want to wear and I can’t bear to throw/give away. I wish I could forget everything I know about it now and just ignore the media saturation and try to isolate myself and maybe I could really love it again, but that’s impossible.

Christopher Bricklemyer:

Something I hate that everyone loves is George Lucas bashing. I don’t see the point. They are only movies when all is said and done. Buy them, don’t buy them, love them, hate them, just please shut up about it. I love Star Wars and have copies of the films on VHS, VCD, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-Ray. Small changes (in my opinion) don’t change my memories or enjoyment of the films. However, the nerd rage that is vomited all over the internet when a new release is announced really makes me hate my fellow fanboys.

Shaz:

I hate The Goonies. I never watched it when I was a kid, and my husband made me watch it just a year or two ago. I don’t get it. In fact, I find a lot of the content creepy. That movie can truffle-shuffle off a cliff.

Gagalvatron:

I hate Zelda.  I loved the SNES game and Four Swords and still do, but each new Zelda fills me with loathing.  I think Ocarina of Time is overrated, I hated Twilight Princess and I am currently hating Skyward Sword even more.  Yes, I bought it.  And I hate myself for that.  I could be playing Skyrim now.

What do I hate?  Everyone gushes over Zelda and how it’s perfect.  I don’t get it.  It’s clunky.  It treats you like a special-needs gamer for all the obvious stuff, then makes finding things (including the next thing to do) needlessly obscure.  The new Navi — Fi — is always spouting on the most basic, stupid stuff.  Unskippable text and braindead UI.  Control is supposed to be so good, but I find it clunky and often doing things I never intended.  They’ve been using the same stupid fetch quests for 25 years. HEY!  HEY LISTEN!  I FUCKING HATE ZELDA!

Brando Lars:

I never understood why the hell people enjoyed ThunderCats. That show always irritated the fuck out of me. To many annoying characters, incompetent villains, I can appreciate an incompetent Villain IF they’ve got personality. but that show always encouraged me to TURN OFF my TV set. And this was back in the days when you had to get off your ass, walk over to the TV and push a button. Actual physical effort was required to avoid something.

Mike Donahue:

I hate Lord of the Rings.

In high school, I grew my hair out. It got really long. We’re talking almost to my belt when I finally got it cut. And in high school, I was teased by this group of girls. They were younger than me, but they were stereotypical popular girls like the “Cordettes” from Buffy. Anyway, they would constantly make fun of my long, blonde hair. They would tell me that “long hair looks stupid on a guy” and that I was “pathetic.”

And then came the Lord of the Rings movies. And Orlando. Freaking. Bloom. When the movie came out, all those girls that made fun of me for having long, blonde hair suddenly got massive crushes on Bloom. Then spent the last year of high school making fun of me, claiming I had grown my hair out trying to look like Legolas to impress girls. Even though I had been growing it for three years at that point.

So due to the constant harassment, I could never really get into the movies. (Then I tried reading the book, went about 200 pages where nothing happened and gave up entirely.) As a geek, I understand the effect and influence it’s had, I just really freakin’ hate it with a passion .

Matt Wells:

I cannot stand the Lord of the Rings books. I liked The Hobbit as a kid, but I could not make it past the first hundred pages of Fellowship of the Ring. So much pointless bullshit, and tangents on Hobbit geneology, and the family tree of Throkril, son of Huimdal, who was begat by the son of Ghortn… and GET TO THE BOODY ORCS ALREADY!!!

I appreciate the world and charcters that Tolkien envisioned, but his writing style simply bores me to tears. I may be an uncultured Luddite, but I’m sticking with Peter Jackson’s film versions all the way. It’s the only method I can bear to digest the saga. And as a History student, one can only bear Tolkien’s throbbing hard -for Saxon Age England before respite is needed.

Yes J.R.R., we get that you think technology is evil and industrialisation was the death of your quaint little rose tinted picture of rural Britain. The rest of us are waiting for the bit where Gandalf does something awesome, please. Less of this time wasting bullshit filler, thank you very much. In the immortal (paraphrased) words of C.S. Lewis, when read a draft of the trilogy by his close friend J.R.R., “OH CHRIST JOHN, NOT ANOTHER FUCKING ELF!!!”

ThePreacherSchevia:

Boba Fett. I hate his armor. I hate how he’s this badass that does nothing badass on screen except fly around on a jet pack and fall into a pit which he never gets out of. I hate how he has all this technology that’s just hidden on his person and how he’s a walking army just because. I hate how his ship just looks like someone flipped over a frying pan, through a stick across it and called it a ship.  I hate how they make him to be a clone of Jango, who actually showed off some competent combat skill, only to get bitch-slapped by Samuel L. Jackson. Then expanded universe and fan fiction made him this ultimate killing machine. I hate how he somehow learned to fight with a lightsaber and matched Darth Vader. I hate that everyone ignores the fact that this “ultimate badass” got poked by Han Solo on accident and gets his shit wrecked all the way into the Sarlacc Pit.  He’s just what happens when a nerd-gasm gets canonized by a guy who can’t write his way out of a paper bag, just to make money

Korbi:

Dragonball, in all its myriad forms, bugs the shit out of me. The art is shite. The story is an absurdly lame rip off of Chinese mythology. The main characters seem to be the lamest form of anthropomorphic animal ever, anthropomorphic monkeys. It takes fucking forever for anything to get done. I’ve watched two episodes, and I refuse to give it any more of a chance, because the art hurts me too much to view for any prolonged time. And when you’ve watched two episodes of a supposedly amazing anime, and nothing. fucking. HAPPENS! it’s a shit anime. Seriously. One episode, some big fat green dude tells some pointless story in which nothing happens. Second episode, some stupid looking fuck that I can only assume is Rice (I’m sorry, I mean Goku), and a Mewto ripoff stand about the length of a football field apart, and scream at one another, charging their attacks.

Sanriostar:

Slave Bikini Leia. Why? Leia’s one of the first ‘real’, three-dimensional women characters I got to know (I also would add Susan and Maria from Sesame Street here). Until then, I knew Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Thing, Godzilla, and all the big characters from the late 70’s (dating myself here; don’t care) and they were all guys. Girls/women were accessories and kinda afterthoughts. With SW & ESB, we saw Leia witness the destruction of her planet, give as good as she got in the Death Star, to both the Empire and her liberators (Han, Chewie, and Luke), and stare down and defy Darth Vader in Bespin. She gets into a contest of chicken with Jabba and a Thermal Detonator and wins. All while wearing complete coverings. And how is she most remembered? In a copper 2-piece with a chain. A uniform that has become cultural shorthand for the arrested sexual development of all of mostly-male nerd/fankind. Everything she did in the movies is reversed in cons and cosplay all over the world. It’s become a cliche, like I’m supposed to be ‘into’ it, because I read/watch/play these things. Just say ‘NO!’ to Slave Bikini Leia.

darthbogus:

The thing I hate that everyone else seems to love is video games. I can play a video game here or there but for the most part I don’t care or have any interest. A lot of games make me feel like I need a college degree for getting through a game. When I get home from work I just eat some dots or jump on some turtles, not build a hadron collider.

Wibblyone:

I hate the fact that nerds, including myself, will time and time again give George Lucas all our money, even though he is clearly just screwing with us at this point.

Dave M:

Farscape. Did nothing for me.  “Pigs in Space” with guest Mark Hamill was the definitive Muppets in space as far as I’m concerned.

Wisestford:

I hate Geoff John’s new Green Lantern series with a violent passion. Being a Green Lantern fan in the nineties raised up on Kyle Rayner’s selfless exploits and John Stewart’s stoic heroism, I find Hal Jordan’s cocksure swagger and holy-than-thou-because-of-the-Parralax-cross-I-bore attitude to be the most grating thing ever. I was glad that they were bringing Hal back because all people did when Kyle had the helm was whine about how great Hal was. So at least bringing Hal back should shut them up. But the second he came back Kyle gets put on the bus for space cop duty, and had zero effect on the rest of the DC universe outside of the Crisis events. And now Kyle just seems to be the whipping boy for whenever the writers want some emotional torque. I mean, they killed him in blackest night just to send Guy Gardner into a Red Lantern rage, just to rezz him an issue later. Geoff’s skittles lanterns have gotten out of hand. Even after taking away Hal’s ring they give the title of the comic over to fucking Sinestro, the villain before considering Kyle, John or Guy headlining the issue.

There is no justice outside of the league these days.

Benjyl:

I hate Darth Maul. I know that it’s cool to hate the Prequel Trilogy, but everyone seems to think that Darth Maul is a total badass. Here’s the news for you, he’s not. He has no presence whatsoever, and he has no character traits other than “evil.” When Vader first appeared, you knew that he was scary just by the way he carried himself. Darth Maul was a joke. All he had were two lines repeated, and they just consisted of “We will have our revenge on the Jedi,” and “Yes, Master.” Darth Maul was a forgettable joke, who died before he could establish himself. Vader was more iconic; Palpatine was more memorable; hell, even Count Dooku was a better villain than Maul.

operations:

Felicia Day. Felicia. Fucking. Can’t. Act. And. Who. The. Fuck. Cares. If. She. Plays. World. Of. Fucking. Warcraft. Fucking. Day. End of damn story.

Scooter Atreides:

I hate cooperative AND competitive online games. If I want to play with other people, I’ll go visit them IRL. If I want to socialize online–I’ve got a goddamn FB Group! 🙂 For instance: Would it have been SO difficult to give DC Universe Online an “offline” mode? I don’t wanna join anybody’s motherfucking league!

Dancore:

I absolutely cannot fucking stand “The Touch” by Stan Bush, and I fucking hate it when anyone defends it. It’s a fucking horrible song. It ruined the movie when I was a kid. I still hate it now.

frodosbluefairy:

The Matrix. The first one. I thought it was boring and overrated.

Fvslacker:

These contests. I never win.

Hit the jump for the rest of the honorable mentions and the winners.

And now for the nerdy thing you love that everybody hates honorable mentions.

Vindica Sean:

Thing I love that everyone hates: the end of Quantum Leap. It just honestly fit the character motivation of Sam Beckett, that there was always going to be another person or event that went wrong that he could put right. Was it a dark ending? Of course. But it fit dammit, and gave a great capper to the series.

Dr. Abraxas:

Sexual depravity in fanfiction. especially (but not limited to) the cramming, the union of human and robot in beautiful expressions of physical love, fetishes involving fluids and or drippings of the sexual kind, weird and bizarre paraphellia and end of the world inducing insanity.

Rose_Tyler:

Thing I love that everybody hates– that Hayden Christensen’s head was put into Return of the Jedi. I know everybody complains, but I remember being a kid and wondering, “Who the fuck is that guy we’ve never seen before with Obi-Wan and Yoda?” Seriously.At least now, assuming they’ve seen the prequels, kids might understand that’s supposed to be pre-Sith Lord version of Anakin.

arivalscientist:

I absolutely love The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou.  It’s my favorite Wes Anderson film, yet when I tell almost everybody about it, it always ranks as their worst WA film.  The last relationship I had was started because we both liked this movie.  Too bad it didn’t last, I would have liked a Zissou themed wedding.  

rpmarsh: 

I love the word nerd though many people prefer geek. It first appeared in Dr. Seuss’s book If I Ran the Zoo and was connected to bookishness by spelling Drunk backwords as “knurd” which was used to describe people who studied rather than partied.

skrag2112:

For my love, Disney’s ‘The Black Cauldron’. Critically panned when it came out and almost forgotten now. The Horned King really was an underated villian, and I sometimes find myself, while searching for food, talking in Gurgi’s voice “Munchings and crunchings are in here somewhere!”

Someguy:

I know it’s on the fringe of nerd kind, but one of the things I love is Boss Hog.  I love Sorrell Booke ‘s work, most specifically in, “Dukes of Hazzard.”  The reason is for the man himself.  When I was a young kid I watched the show like everyone else.

 Now back then people use to sign autographs without having to make money off of it.  While this was nice you also never got a very gracious person.  These signings would happen at malls and other places for a few hours.  Now if you were lucky, one if the first in line, and brought a star something you may get smile, but after the first 20 people all bets are off and they are out of there when their 2 hours were up sometimes while you were still in line.

 I was young, just old enough to know he was an actor, but still worried about what he would be like.  We were also at the back of the line, eight people from the end and my sister and I being the last of the kids.  Now we stood in line for 3 12 hours and this is in the days before portable game systems, hell before Nintendo!  So here we are, I’m a very tired, shy, little boy who slurred his s’s when he talked and my first and last name have s’s in them.  I always needed someone to translate my slurs, the last people my family dragged me to for these signings were never nice, seemed annoyed I couldn’t talk well, and I was about to meet the mean villain of a show I actually watched!  We wen’t up the stairs on the small stage, and like I did everywhere I went, I starred at the ground not looking up.  (On the up side I always found a lot of pennies) 

 When we were heading to the table the man jumped up and talked to us like we were family.  He shook my hand, talked to me like a friend, made his way through the slurs graciously, and gave more energy to us then all the other stars i have met put together, past and future.  He met everyone in that line with that energy and didn’t leave until he saw everyone who came to see him.  I remember the awesome respect I left for him that day.  My autographed picture went into our family’s photo book.  This was a fabulous man.  He was smart, taught himself 5 languages, including Russian and  Japanese (a language I’m still having problems with), did tons of his own stunts, and even did voice work. (Tiny Toon Adventures being one)   He showed me how great a person could be, being a lovable villain took true skill and that a person could be gracious and famous all at the same time. I cried when he died in 1994 and use him as a person I try to emulate in my adult life.

John Driscoll:

The Star Wars Expanded Universe novels, or at least the Bantam ones. Yes, many of them follow the tired superweapon-of-the-week formula, but for the most they stayed true to the characters and told a mostly coherent, fairly enjoyable story, which is more than you can say for the later books, comics, or prequel movies.  Some EU books like the Thrawn trilogy or the X-Wing novels are fairly well-liked, and I do agree that those are among the best, but even books like The Crystal Star that are almost universally reviled are still better than the prequel movies as far as I’m concerned.

Fvslacker:

The Phantom Menance. Because I’m barely too young to have seen any of the originals in the theater so on openning weekend.  During the opening moments of the film I was emotionally in a place where I can only imagine what it was like to see it for the first time.  There have been only a handful of times since my childhood where I was so genuinely consumed with wonder and excitement, not having any idea how the story was going to unfold.  Then to see the battle between Darth Maul, Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan, set to none other than Duel of the Fates, was so monumentally thrilling, there’s still no fight scene that tops it to this day as far as I’m concerned.  I saw it three times that weekend.

Snorlax:

Batman and Robin is an amazingly entertaining film because it’s so down right awful.  Everything about the movie is bad but that’s what makes it great.  In the end its an incredibly entertaining throwback to the campier Batman days.  Yet everyone takes it so seriously.  They talk about how terrible it is, how painful it is to watch. How its not dark, how Batgirls origin isn’t correct, and almost everything else. But if you stop taking it seriously and just sit back and laugh its a really great-in-a-bad-way film.  It is one amazing trainwreck that I shall forever love.

Jesse:

My love, on the other hand is reserved for the 1990’s. Yes, many consider it to be the nerdy dark age, what with all the foil variant comic book covers and Vanilla Ice, and to be fair, there’s a lot of bad. But the 90’s gave us, among other things, Sandman, Bone, Sin City, and the rise of Image (who sucked at first but are now awesome) in comics, amazing animated series like Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, Beast Wars, the rise of the internet (which was the last big jump ahead in technology in the world and managed to make our kind respected), DVDs were invented, the first Matrix movie revolutionized filmmaking for years to come, and a host of other things that the detractors overlook. Seriously, the 90’s were a great time to be a nerd and deserve more respect than they get.

Michelle Bischof:

What I love that everyone hates. Transformers 2. Yeah, you heard me. Transformers 2. I love every second of it. I ENJOY it! I thought the twins were hilarious. Obviously, young Autobots should not be allowed on the internet and the music channel to learn our language. I love the insane nonstop action. The footage in Shanghai was awesome. I love Devastator, he was monstrously cool. No, it wasn’t Shakespeare. It was a fun insane action movie with characters I grew up with. The most important thing was, Peter Cullen voiced Optimus Prime. Good enough for me.

Or maybe not. I wasn’t impressed with the third movie. Prime would not kill Megatron while he was down. Way too out of character for my favorite peace loving Autobot leader.

R-mor:

Duke Nukem Forever. I fucking LOVE this game. Is it good enough to have been worth the 14 year wait? Hell no. Is it archaic and clunky in its design? Of course. Is Duke unfunny and filled with toilet humor? You betcha! But these are what make it fun. Its not meant to be taken seriously. Turn your brain off and enjoy the fart and tit jokes.

Hob Anagarak:

Dune = Dead sexy Kyle Maclachlan. It has my approval.

LJSLarrsson:

I hate Hollywood’s big movie adaptations of great fantasy works.

I’ll admit that the Lord of the Ring movies are boot great movies and good adaptations per se, but to me that kind of movies diminishes the original work. It’s used to be that everyone considering him- or herself a fantasy nerd read Tolkien, how many just watches the movies now instead?

The strenght of literature was that the reader was allowed to create his own fantastic visuals in his or hers own mind. Now we have Hollywood with their own definite versions – I don’t hate Viggo Mortensen, but I miss my own Aragorn that I can’t remember anymore.

The worst kick to the nuts went to Harry Potter, since filming began before all the books were finished. Rowling admited she started to imagine her characters more like their Hollywood counterparts (especially Alan Rickman’s Snape) and described them accordingly in the last books. Clearly shows who’s the bitch and who’s the butch in the movie-litterature relations. 

rubi-kun:

I love the live-action Speed Racer movie. It has a few fans, but not nearly enough. Get off your Wachowski hate (besides, it’s a known fact the Matrix sequels were the result of quite a bit of executive meddling) and give it a chance. Yes, it could use a serious trim, but it’s still fucking beautiful, hilarious in all the right ways if you’re familiar with the old show or anime in general, and has a surprisingly heartfelt art vs. commerce story going for it. Surprised it hasn’t caught on as a cult classic; I guess Scott Pilgrim might have stolen whatever thunder it had (and not without reason; Pilgrim does a lot of similar stylistic things but is a better movie overall), but seriously, it’s worth a watch.

MRK:

Smallville. Fuckin’ love it. I don’t care if he never flies or wears the costume. I don’t care if they spent a majority of the 10 seasons focusing on his love life. I don’t care if they made it too “emo” at times. I love it. I love how they would have random heroes and villains from DC be a part of the show. It was cool as hell to see the Justice Society and Booster Gold. I even liked Oliver Queen for the most part (but I am disappointed that Bruce Wayne and Princess Diana never made an appearance). Darkseid. Metallo. Cyborg. Even Aquaman was halfway decent. It was by no means perfect but Tom Welling is the best Superman alive today and Michael Rosenbaum is an excellent Lex Luthor.

Eric Shea:

As for the one thing that I love and everyone else hates.  That one was a lot harder since I’m hate filled, so the only thing I could really think of that no one I know could get behind, was the short lived  2007 show Journeyman.  It was fun, and I don’t know where they could of taken the show if it hadn’t been cancelled after like twelve episodes but for the short run it had I appreciated what it tried to do.

Tom Servo:

I love the Star Wars Holiday Special.

Oh, I’ll fully acknowledge that it is a great big pile of shit. But my husband’s mother wrote some of the music for it just when her career was taking off. It was supposed to be her breakthrough to the mainstream, and she’s eternally grateful to the producers of such a big pop culture phenomenon who took a chance on an unknown artist like her. Plus, my husband’s older sister got to sing with the children’s chorus on one of the numbers. She’s a nerd of the highest caliber who saw the original Star Wars like ten times in the theater when it came out, so getting to be in the holiday special AND meet Jon Bon Jovi in the recording studio is one of her fondest childhood memories (bet you didn’t know Bon Jovi was involved in the Star Wars Holiday Special! I think it was the first thing he recorded, actually). So it’s a source of great pride and happiness in our household, despite the fact that it was an artistic and commercial flop that eventually became the butt of every Internet joke ever. I would never say one word against the thing and will sometimes call the radio station this time of year to suggest some of the Christmas music from the special just to see if they’ll play it, so I can call up my mother-in-law and yell “They’re playing your song!” It never works, but I always hold out for a Christmas miracle.

Honkey Kong:

The thing I love that everyone hates is a tough decision, but I’m going to go with Shock Treatment, the sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  I don’t know, for sure, if it counts as something everyone hates, because a lot of people don’t even know it exists, but I do know the reason so many people have never heard of it is that it wasn’t very popular when it came out in 1981.  I’m one of those people that got into the ridiculous, campy story of Brad and Janet, and I love seeing how their marriage matured and the further bizarre challenges they face after years in their hometown of Denton.  The music is great, and the characters are brilliant parodies of cultural archetypes.

Raymondthefrog:

The thing I love that’s universally reviled is the Super Mario Brothers movie. it’s such an awesome example of suicidally misdirected ambition. it would have been super-easy for Nintendo to make a 90-minute version of their existing Mario cartoons with a little better animation and rake in the dough, but no… they decided to make a BIG-BUDGET SPECIAL EFFECTS EXTRAVAGANZA with a wacky, parallel dinosaur dimension plot. Highlights include Dennis Hopper chewing scenery as Koopa, Bob Hoskins visibly being unable to process what’s going on, and a moustache-less Luigi. They made the weirdest Mario movie possible, and managed to lose money on something Mario-related in 1993. That alone is an accomplishment.

josh-ee:

I love Sgt Hatred from The Venture Brothers.  He may not be as good as Brock but he is what the show needs. When they stopped going on adventures and mostly stayed around the compound they needed a character that would be happy to do whatever weird thing Doc and they boys needed him to do, and Brock couldn’t do that.  But Hatred can and does.  Sure he may be a reformed pedophile but he is funny.  And now that Brock is back we have a kind of bodyguard competition going on between them so that is good too. So lay off Sgt. Hatred.

DJRM:

I love Ewoks. Ewoks are awesome. I don’t understand why Star Wars fandom ever hated ewoks. They are awesome little bear creatures that live in trees and they eat people. Bears are awesome. Treehouses are awesome. THEY WERE GOING TO EAT THE HUMAN CHARACTERS. You do not fuck with ewoks/ Lumping ewoks into the same category as Jar Jar Binks is an insult. Do not insult the ewoks, they will eat you.

And, finally…

DoctorGoddamnBatman:

I love Chris Cummins but you guys are always telling me how much you despise him while his back is turned. Fucking backstabbers, it sickens me. Well don’t worry Chris, I think you’re the coolest! You’re make me feel the way I feel when I watch that scene in Kung Fu Hustle where those guys use music to kill! You’re cooler than a sandwich with Bruce Lee and Clint Eastwood as the bread, and ME as the filling! When Hendrix sang about a Foxy Lady, he really meant to be saying ‘Chris Cummins’ but he was too AFRAID OF YOU to speak your name! I guess what I’m trying to say is, I love you Chris Cummins, almost as much as I love winning TR contests. *blows kiss*

Nice try Doc. His entry made me laugh a little bit, smile a lot… then contemplate a restraining order. But as charmed as I was by his efforts, it would be unfair for me to award him a TR shirt just for some inspired ass-kissing. So here are the winners I picked.

Rosette:

I have a ridiculosuly irrational hate of Firefly and Serenity. I feel it’s very over-hyped. It’s a decent show that had the potential to be amazing, but was cut short in its prime. That doesn’t make it “the best sci-fi ever omg!!!” More nit-pickily, I hate how it’s ostentatiously a culture heavily influenced by China, and yet none of the main characters — or, hell, even the minors — are Chinese. The characters never really rang true with me; they all felt one-note. As I said, a lot of the problems stem from being a show that never really got off the ground.

But the biggest reason is that my dad liked to try and guilt-trip into losing weight every time we watched it by telling me if I was just a bit skinnier, I’d be “pretty like Summer Glau, only with bigger boobs.” Every. Single. Time. So I can’t watch it anymore without feeling sick to my stomach.

(Did I just admit this online? Bless anonymity, and it feels healthier to get it out there).

I’m sorry to read that Rosette had to experience this. For sharing that deeply personal story she wins a Topless Robot shirt…and my respect. As for the winner for nerdy thing you love that everybody hates…

Zilor:

Um… Hmm… I love sunlight, most nerds hate that shit.

There were a lot of great entries in this category, but none made me laugh as much or rung as true with me as Zilor’s here. Well done.

Thanks to everyone who entered. If you didn’t win, better luck next time. As for the lucky pair of you that did, Rob will be in touch with you to get you your shirts when he returns from his vacation early next week.