SUCCESS, n. The one unpardonable sin against one's fellows.
Delving deep into my letterbox when I discovered
Fan-mail for MC Front (nooo!)
It kind of hovered
Before my vision
I made a decision
To open it up;
It said 'Yo Frontalot, you suck!'
Whew, I was worried for a second that I'd started to earn love
Seeking all my indie points burned up...
Fan-mail for MC Front (nooo!)
It kind of hovered
Before my vision
I made a decision
To open it up;
It said 'Yo Frontalot, you suck!'
Whew, I was worried for a second that I'd started to earn love
Seeking all my indie points burned up...
— "Indier Than Thou", MC Frontalot
Do you think that they're too cool now,
That being popular is lame?
You're the ones who made them popular,
All the songs are still the same
That being popular is lame?
You're the ones who made them popular,
All the songs are still the same
— "Handbook for the Sellout", Five Iron Frenzy
"My best-selling songs are my least favorite ones."
— Ingrid Michaelson on her Twitter (also crosses with Creator Backlash)
Thou shalt not stop liking a band simply because they've become popular.
— Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Thou Shalt Always Kill
"If you're watching Game of Thrones, you can't joke about midget porn anymore. They're bringing midget porn into the mainstream. It's not kinky anymore."
— Jade Regent, episode 16, from RPGMP3
"I'm off to listen to bands you kids have never heard of, and when they go major I'll be there to complain about how much they've sold out!"
— Uzuki Yashiro, The World Ends with You
"One should always support the independents, at least until they start making money, the soulless sellout fucks."
"Gears of War is second only to Halo in terms of big-selling Xbox franchises, and at such you can't get much more mainstream without having Simon Cowell sitting on the end complaining about your chainsaw technique."
— Zero Punctuation on Gears of War 2
I’d like it more if everyone else would agree to like it less.
You can rest assured that if a movie comes out that is almost universally praised as a masterwork, people will come out of the woodwork to slowly peck it to death, like Lorenzo Lamas critiquing models with a laser pointer. "Well, the screenplay isn't quite up to snuff. And Neil deGrasse Tyson says the film isn't scientifically accurate!" It's like a group of Top Chef judges critiquing a hamburger that, if you were eating it in a normal setting, would taste great. WHY MUST WE TEAR DOWN OUR IDOLS?!
—Drew Magary, Make It Stop
, Make It StopIn 1990, Sheedy reunited with Molly Ringwald...Ringwald and Sheedy were both nominated for Golden Raspberry Awards as Worst Actress and Worst Supporting Actress respectively. There was really no reason for the nominations other than the Razzies having an axe to grind with former Brat Packers. They seemed determined to kick the 80’s actors while they were down every time one of them dared to show up in a mainstream movie. Ringwald “lost” to Bo Derek who “won” for Ghosts Can't Do It and Sheedy “lost” out to Sofia Coppola who very deservedly “won” for The Godfather Part III.
—LeBeau, "What the Hell Happened to Ally Sheedy?"
, "What the Hell Happened to Ally Sheedy?"Now, some may think Alex Jones is batshit crazy, and he is. But surely he is beaten by Lorie Kramer, who believes that Alex Jones is a pawn created by the New World Order to divert attention...I guess this is what you risk when you start to gain notoriety in the hyper-paranoid and chaotic field of conspiracy theory.
What people leave out when they start waxing poetic about the days when bands sold tapes out of a van after shows in dingy nightclubs is the part where their favorite musicians also keep a day job and die of a tooth infection because they can't afford health insurance.
"Which leads us to another common criticism, that the film is too 'base', the swill of the common folk, like that's a bug, not a feature. There is a sort of classism inherent to criticisms like this, in effect, it's 'too many people like this'. [...] And even if you're too young to remember the backlash, you can still probably feel it in the atmosphere. Like saying one of the most successful movies in history is 'good, actually' is a ding against your credibility. Are the masses really that stupid? That if they like the thing, it must be because the thing is 'bad, actually'?"
"She used to be good. Now she's becoming popular!"
— Will Shakespeare, Irregular Webcomic!
Lois: I think you just got to be in the "out" group. Whoever's on top, whoever's in power, whoever's successful, you gotta be on the other side or you don't feel like the smartest guy in the room. All you are, my dear, is a contrarian.
Brian: Oh, please, you could not be more off base.
Lois:: Oh, yeah? Let me ask, what did you think of the movie Titanic?
Brian: Horrible, one of the worst movies ever made.
Lois: Mm-hm, what about Slumdog Millionaire?
Brian: Overrated, just a terrible movie.
Lois: Cocktail.
Brian: Actually not a bad film. You know, as classically structured cinema, Cocktail was one of the best films of its era.
Lois: You make me sick, Brian.
Brian: Oh, please, you could not be more off base.
Lois:: Oh, yeah? Let me ask, what did you think of the movie Titanic?
Brian: Horrible, one of the worst movies ever made.
Lois: Mm-hm, what about Slumdog Millionaire?
Brian: Overrated, just a terrible movie.
Lois: Cocktail.
Brian: Actually not a bad film. You know, as classically structured cinema, Cocktail was one of the best films of its era.
Lois: You make me sick, Brian.
— Family Guy, "Excellence in Broadcasting"
"If you work in entertainment and you make money, then you're a sellout."
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
There was a time when I should have felt terribly ashamed of not being up-to-date...Why should I have my feelings outraged, why should I submit to being bored and disgusted for the sake of somebody else’s categorical imperative? Why? There is no reason. So I simply avoid most of the manifestations of that so-called 'life' which my contemporaries seem to be so unaccountably anxious to 'see'; I keep out of range of the 'art' they think is so vitally necessary to 'keep up with'; I flee from those 'good times' in the 'having' of which they are prepared to spend so lavishly of their energy and cash.
— Aldous Huxley, Silence is Golden
"Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded."
— Yogi Berra
"For the first twelve weeks of Jaws, people were thrilled by it. Six months later, they were saying that no film that made that amount of money could be any good."
"In the art world, if everyone likes your art, it's terrible."
The first song I heard didn't sound so bad, and I said to myself: 'Hey! Perhaps I am still fairly hip after all!' And then the deejay came on and said, apologetically: 'I realize that song was mainstream.' He said "mainstream" the way you would say 'composed by Phoenicians.' Then he played a song entitled—I am not making this up—'Detachable Penis.'
— Dave Barry, "The Old-Timers Game"
Nine Inch Nails were the best and most popular industrial band of all time; as a consequence, industrial purists usually assert that Nine Inch Nails aren't an industrial band at all.
— Chuck Klosterman
"How early you saw Hamilton is such a funny new piece of social currency. "I saw it in previews at The Public" "I saw a reading of it downtown in '12'" "I heard [Lin-Manuel Miranda] talking about it on the subway once!"
— Mindy Kaling on Twitter.
."I can't tell you how many times I've gotten tweets or mail, 'You ruined my local bar, thanks a lot! That was my special little dive bar, and you came with your little camera crew, and you screwed it all up! Now there's people with ironic facial hair and hipster hats coming into the place. You ruined my life!'"
