This is an issue of The Wonder Reader, a magazine in which our editors recommend a set of stories to pique your curiosity and delight you. Register here get it every saturday morning.
The more popular something becomes, the less it can start to feel. Take it Pitt: Suddenly, everyone is watching it and everyone is talking about it. At some point, excitement starts to make you feel like yourself must be in it—and just like that, you never want to watch it again.
Anna Holmes calls this feeling “anti-hype” – not quite the opposite, but an attitude of resistance to being told what to like, even indirectly. Popularity, after all, doesn’t just indicate quality. It can also feel like pressure. When something is everywhere, withdrawal can start to feel like a way to hold on to your freedom—to make sure your taste is still your own. What seems like a lack of interest, Holmes suggests, may be something more intentional: not a rejection of culture, but a resistance to “overidentification” with it.
So when you skip a show that everyone loves, do you follow your own instincts, or do you push back against the hype?
On Countering the Hype
People Who Leave Popular Culture
By Anna Holmes
Pitt, Separation, Sinnersyou name it: For some reason, the more hype something gets, the more I can resist it.
Why Does Watching TV Feel Like Homework? (Just me?)
Written by Shirley Li
Binge watching has become a way of life, for better or worse.
Your Form Is Trying To Tell You Something
By Faith Hill
Maybe you it is to miss (From 2025)
Still Curious?
Other detours
PS
My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that evokes their sense of wonder in the world. “I saw this on a cross-country bike trip in 2024. I was struck by the juxtaposition of past and future right there on the side of the road. I might not even have seen it if I’d grown up in a car,” David C. writes.
We will continue to focus on your responses in the coming weeks.
– Rafaela
