If you find out, let me know. (The TADC community is horrid in part due to this.)
This inquiry tickled my sense of humor for some reason, so I asked Grok. It first suggested "hype aversion," leaning hard on the "positive news" aspect of the phenomenon, and followed up with a reference to TV Tropes' term for it: "It's Popular, Now it Sucks," but finally it gave a more interesting answer that I think fits better:
Grok powiedział(a):
Psychological reactance: A broader psychological explanation. When people feel their freedom of choice is being threatened or constrained (e.g., by social pressure or omnipresent hype), they push back by rejecting or opposing it. This fits the "I must be angry at this thing I never heard of" dynamic.
I guess there's a bit of meat on that bone since there's only so many developers, so many game products in development, and only so many things a person can "focus" on, so maybe if they feel like something's being astroturfed maybe it rubs them wrong. Though I don't think Palworld is being astroturfed; it's a genuinely fun and surprisingly "full" game.
It also threw in "this isn't always pure contrarianism (which is more general opposition for its own sake) or reverse snobbery (dismissing popular things to seem superior)" and finally concluded "In short, it's a mix of defensiveness against perceived bandwagon pressure and a desire to maintain personal taste autonomy. Many people recognize this in themselves with big pop culture hits."
Not the best analysis I've ever seen, but not the worst either. I think it's onto something blending different concepts into this "newer" phenomenon. There's definitely a sense of "lots of people love it so it
must suck" contrarianism to it but the sheer
investment of so much time seething with rage about something that doesn't affect them adds something "special" to it.
There's gotta be something to it though, since Hollywood especially is relying more and more lately on this vague concept (they haven't figured out a name for it yet either, which is frustrating them to no end, making it funny to watch) to try to blame audiences for their endless flops. The difference there is people aren't actually doing this to Hollywood's output; Hollywood's actively pissing off their fans and insulting their customers and playing "surprised Pikachu face" when it goes wrong every time, and it's really fucking funny. But they're definitely aware of the concept, because they're trying to blame it for their failures.
