It's everywhere
Back in the Olden Days, if you were interested in say, Star Trek, you had to WORK for it. If you wanted to buy a Phantasy Fur Tribble, you had to go to a con or maybe travel hundreds of miles barefoot through the snow to a seedy little store, where you and your pale, shell-shocked fellow addicts would clutch the tribbles in trembling fingers and gasp with memorabilia lust.
Then you'd go home and put your addict-self in a box, and resume your normal life until the next weekend. It was frustrating, but the difficulty was part of the thrill. You felt you were doing something secret and illicit and subversively cool. Once in blue moon there would be a movie, but it was one movie among many others and relatively easy to miss.
HP is different. It's impossible to turn on the TV or go to a bookstore without running across some HP reference. This is an improvement, in a way, because the object of desire is always there, but it's also inconvenient, again because the object of desire is always there.
So, there you are, walking down the street, thinking about insurance or something, and Harry floats by on the bus (well, on a poster on the bus). And you think, "HI HARRY!" and all your productive thoughts about insurance are gone. In a funny way, so is the thrill. I'm looking forward to the movie, but maybe I'd be happier if the movie were harder to get at. HP is so universally available that an obsession with it no longer feels quite so secret. Which is great. But somehow not.
Then you'd go home and put your addict-self in a box, and resume your normal life until the next weekend. It was frustrating, but the difficulty was part of the thrill. You felt you were doing something secret and illicit and subversively cool. Once in blue moon there would be a movie, but it was one movie among many others and relatively easy to miss.
HP is different. It's impossible to turn on the TV or go to a bookstore without running across some HP reference. This is an improvement, in a way, because the object of desire is always there, but it's also inconvenient, again because the object of desire is always there.
So, there you are, walking down the street, thinking about insurance or something, and Harry floats by on the bus (well, on a poster on the bus). And you think, "HI HARRY!" and all your productive thoughts about insurance are gone. In a funny way, so is the thrill. I'm looking forward to the movie, but maybe I'd be happier if the movie were harder to get at. HP is so universally available that an obsession with it no longer feels quite so secret. Which is great. But somehow not.