you guys need a pet elephant.

Ah, Star Trek. I honestly never liked DS9. It's been a good while since I watched any of them, but I loved TOS, I loved TNG, I loved Voyager, and I know I'm in a minority, but I loved Enterprise (when it wasn't trying to pull a story line, the stand alone episodes are much better and I am sad it never got its fifth season). I feel like re-watching the entire run (including DS9), but I'm a little worried that I'll find Voyager not holding up (I've seen the other series more recently, I know they do).

As for games, I was super excited to see that my uncle had the Age of Empires 1 and 2 collection, because I played the hell out of 1 and the demo for 2. Sadly, I've really moved past traditional RTSs like that. I've never been good at them, and at some point between then and now I accepted that. I just can't enjoy them any more. On the other hand, Descent and X-Com are still awesome.

Also, Jaime, I'm really not getting what you're trying to get at. That holding onto things from your childhood is a sign of Intellectual stunting, but then you go on and say that obviously that doesn't mean that you shouldn't hold on to those things because it's not bad? I loved Thundercats as a kid, and I still do, is that a sign of arrested intellectual development? How about the people who still love Harry Potter, even though they started reading them when they were 11?

This happens a bit, but not as much as most people since I tend to replay most of the games I remember fondly. The worst offender was FF7... I'm no graphics whore, but that game literally gives me a headache if I don't have 50 texture mods applied to it.

I'm not 100% sure. There's a sense of loss in nostalgia. I'm nostalgic of things I've lost and won't feel again. He seems to be able to restore all these impressions, and reactualise them. This is different from me being nostalgic of my uncritical views and childlike enthousiasm for a random Terence Hill & Bud Spencer fight scene, for instance. Or the magic of some novelty. Or the powerfulness of the exagerate love I've felt for some human lady. Or the enthousiasm for singers who evolved badly enough to give an annoying taste to their former songs. If I managed to enjoy these songs as fully, it would be a present pleasure. I'd be driven by the direct enjoyment of the thingies, not by the moments they indirectly remind me. Although both aspects can sometimes be combined.

Anyway that's one thing. For the rest, I disagree. While I have reservations about encyclopedic nerdism when it's an accumulation of fiction knowledge at the expense of the rest (but, again, aren't folklorists, mythology experts, and some anthropologists, just "anachronical nerds", learning teaching and analysing corpuses of popular fiction ?), I'm not certain you can read it as a "refusal to outgrow" some pleasures. First of all because it's never general, it's always selective (everybody outgrows a lot of things), so deciding which ones are obligatory and which ones are optional sounds a tad arbitrary, and driven by personal preferences, or worse, personal exposures. I personnaly find adult references to star trek, dragonball, disney, dc/marvel or transformers much more morbid and puerile than references to james bond, the persuaders, tintin or space 1999. Because I liked the latters, and I disliked the formers. And being faithful to "my" universe is fine, being faithful to "their" universe is obviously totally retarded. Mine is of an absolute superb quality (proof is : it's mine). See what I mean ? Call it the Prince Valiant syndrome (sooo lame compared to Johan & Pirlouit, hah).

People are idiots because they don't outgrow the idiocies they used to wrongly enjoy. I don't need to outgrow mine, their quality is totally objective. To my eyes.

And some of them are double idiots. They're so dumb that they claim to "outgrow" MY stuff. They SO can't appreciate genuine quality, when it's done for children !

... So, what annoys me, is less people who say "omg I liked this so much, I don't care how lame it is, I enjoyed it and still enjoy it under the same angle" than people who do the same, but with guilt, and try to justify it ("hey, the a-team was so DEEP, you just don't get it, man"). As a kid, I didn't like people trying to sound adults. As an adult, I like them even less. I don't believe in adults. Especially those who "outgrow" superman to go praise the last Daniel Craig james bond, or whatever equivalent, just as childish, but designed to make them feel more "adult". I'm totally behind Roger Moore when he claims that his childish version of Bond is more mature than the so-called serious, pseudo-realistic action thrillers of today. There is, quite often, an hypocrisy, and mere (age class) identity issue behind these. "WHAT, they made Aliens versus Predator versus the Avengers PG-13!? They made it for KIDS ? I'm a GROWN UP, I want to see a REAL ADULT superhero space monster story !"

I don't think it's really about "refusing" or "accepting" to outgrow things. There are things you appreciate less with time, for good and bad, related and unrelated, reasons. There are also things you are not allowed to appreciate anymore (until you have kids and can use them for a socially acceptable co-consumption of these things). These things differ a bit from individual to individual, just like taste evolutions differ (we're exposed to different elements of comparison, and the old things meant different things for us to start with). And the pressure to distancize oneself from childish-labelled stuff is also lived differently for various individuals, in various communities (Tex Avery, or Tintin, can be a validated adult interest in some subculture, Superman and Batman can be in another, etc). Essentialising it under one universal label of psychological/biological cognitive development is very restrictive, and probably quite biased in its content.

There can be discussions about objective qualities (on various levels) of productions for kids. I think it's very distinct from discussion of what supposedly has to be outgrown or not. After all, still appreciating something later, but under a completely different perspective, is also "outgrowing" it, and is not exactly what we talk about. And also, accusing adults to be dumb enough to not "outgrow" some things is, in my opinion, rather harsh towards the adults who produces these very things, and considered that they were worthy enough for the public. If a man in his prime still appreciates a kid/teen show/game/book,and is judged as retarded for that, what's to say about the people in their prime who have put their heart into making them ?

What in the world? Grown men watching and liking My Little Pony? Where i'm from, i'd have been beaten up for something like that! Not that i'd watch it anyway though.

It's a comic. About a knight. It doesn't carry much philosophical weight, it's simply the most romantic work I ever had the pleasure to witness. I admit again that I used a poor example to make the point I had in mind, namely that of course I still have time for some (but far from all) of the things I enjoyed as kid. Naming Prince Valiant was wrong, as it is a genuinely great work of art, despite the lack of what is commonly considered depth, and I got carried away (the "true art" comment).

There's really only one thing that makes me hostile on the internet, and that's having words put into my mouth. The strawmen I was referring to. I really, really, really hate that. Now you may call me an intellectual elitist, and I may very well be one, but I'd never say something like that it's degrading to enjoy a show for little girls (I can live with the summary you gave in your second post), or other statements you seemed to accuse me of. As I said, I may have expressed myself poorly, and in that case I've brought my anger upon myself, so to speak.

As for the "refusing to outgrow..." stuff. Yes, I've met my share of such people, off and on the internet. I'm not talking about those who still have a lot of affection for the tings they enjoyed in younger years, but those who are genuinely hostile towards anything "artsy-fartsy", who despise movies that are slow or make you think, and refuse to read anything that doesn't have a spaceship or elf on the cover. That isn't a question of intelligence (you don't have to be intelligent to appreciate great art in any medium), it's a question of willfully and proudly remaining an idiot.

Oh. I see more clearly what kind of people you have in mind.

I think there is a stupid war going on, between "artsy elitists" and "geeks", both reacting (and identifying themselves) in opposition to the other. Like, snobs who will only appreciate, or claim to appreciate, something if it can be labelled as artsy and obscure and intellectual enough to contribute to their self-image of above-the-world connoisseur. And nerds who developped a huge complex in front of this, feel extremely insulted and threatened by it, and reject as "pompous" and "pretentious" and "fake" everything that is referred to by these snobs, and who build up an opposite exclusion, an opposite misunderstood-above-the-world elitism, often -hypocritically enough- with the very same rhetoric (that is, long digressions about the hidden philosophical depths of their own favorite works, even though they simultaneously claim that judgements should be about fun and not about intellectual content).

I think that most people, and especially actual cinephiles, don't follow this frontier, and appreciate many things from both sides of the (imaginary) fence. Actually, for some reason, I have met more intolerant people on the geeky side, but their stances always felt a bit defensive, as if they were reacting to having been attacked first, or to expecting it. But yes, I've been violently arguing with people of both hermetic castes, even though the geeks have been either the most violent, or the most commonplace. And of course, everybody describes hiself as part of an oppressed minority ("everybody loves this Avatar shit !" versus "everybody denigrates this Avatar masterpiece !"). It's tedious.

But I think that both groups are easy-to-ignore minorities. I don't even try anymore to convince one group that I'm not a representant of the other, when they unleash on me...

I... really don't think so.

Anyway, regarding the other group you mentioned, the "artsy elitists", you might enjoy this vid (I'm sorry, it's in German, dunno if you're familiar with the language, but it may be possible to realize what's going on in any case):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyGi5SEI9RI

Edit: Basically, the guy "singing" is a comedian in disguise, giving the most idiotic, ridiculous performance imaginable, and most of the assembled "art connoisseurs" take it at face value.

That used to be my favorite book when I was younger. I reread it within the last month or so expecting to have one of those "nostalgia slaughtering" experiences where it would reveal itself to be significantly less good than I remembered. But that never happened. Although I picked up on some character cliches and prose quirks I hadn't noticed back in middle school, I was amazed how engrossing and evocative it managed to still be. Probably still one of my favorite books.

Also, Bigwig is a badass.

Aww, I like GTA 2 :D. I loved the "respect" system, the wacky sense of humor (which didn't have the sneering tone that I get from later GTA games), and "Damnation!! No donation, no salvation!!!" I do dislike the controls, though. It REALLY needed mouse aiming of some sort.

GTA III is still pretty fun as just a pure sandbox insanity fest. Although I don't think there's much in it that hasn't been done better by later GTA-like games.

Huh, now I feel like installing it again.

It was fun, by my german was barely sufficient to grasp 15% of the comments. I would have liked the details.

It left me the impression of a pretty decent public, actually. Both respectuous and careful at the thought of possibly being the ones not 'getting' it, and also a bit critical. I think it's a difficult context to deal with, as, even if the performance could be weird, it could be sincere, nd thus, not warrant too brutal mockery. I'm not sure what would have been the 'right' reaction. But if I understood well, the joke/test hypothesis was brought up by a person in the public.

It reminded me of the famous Asch experiment (but here, the context plays the role of the accomplices), and of the difficult questions of the definition of art (where, again, the institutionnal context decides for the public - Duchamp and the readymade, etc). I'm quite forgiving for such things.

Also, loosely related, Solomon Asch applied to the iphone 5...

Honestly I don't think it was intended for children. It has a lot of adult themes and in many ways the rabbits act very alien, instead of like cute little furry humans like you'd expect from a children's book. The movie version was also not intended for children, but many folks took their kids to it because it was a cartoon that had bunnies in it. When it reached the part with the snare, many nightmares ensued. Bigwig's fight near the end of the movie is substantially more gory than standard kiddie fare as well.

Now that I understand what kind of people you have a problem with and why, I have to take back the "intellectual elitist" part. Since you feel so strongly about it, I'm guessing you've had a fair share of bad experience with them. And ehh I thought it was obvious that, considering when that thread was made (the quote reminded me), I was making a superficial approximation which served as nothing more than a superficial reminder of what I was exactly referring to. Sorry.

Anyway, depending on the level and manner of stubbornness I usually consider those people somewhat superficial or lacking a sufficiently open mind to try other things (telika is right too). Same thing with those who listen to only one genre of music and categorically refuse/bitch about every other genre. Although, with those who don't like slow movies because they're slow (but only those), it's probably a matter of temperament, or they might simply be victims of a hyperactive/hysterical age that makes everyone a little ADD.

btw I know that it's a comic book, just never got my hands on it. used to watch the cartoon when i was a kid :)

Not so much "superficial approximation" as outright falsehood, actually.

The cartoon has sadly very, very little to do with Hal Foster's comic. Decent enough, but a completely different thing.