Collective psychosis - or is it just me?

Why did everyone love Game of Thrones?

I have repeatedly criticised HBO's lavish TV series adaptation of the expansive fantasy books by George R.R. Martin. I know you realise that I'm already coming across as a bit of a nag on the subject, but it can't be helped.

Because nothing in pop culture seems more like one big, sweeping psychosis to me than when half the world was simultaneously (and slavishly) following (and loving) Game of Thrones. Because for me, it never felt like anything more than a bloody trifle that should have been relegated to the REA bin already after the unplugged first season.

Game of Thrones as a whole feels more like the old Channel 5 dance Glamour, with chainmail. Bland actors stood in tanned leather vests in light brown rooms, talking to themselves in a mythology whose bizarre array of characters made the show as poor in the 'common thread' aspect as it was uninteresting. Despite this, in season four it was by far the biggest TV show in the world. 100% incomprehensible.

Starfield was and is a failure?

Sure, sure, sure... There's an argument to be made that Starfield could never have been a game for me given how little enjoyment I got out of Skyrim, but in that case it was more about the high fantasy aspect and the slow build-up not really appealing. Minus that, Bethesda's dragon-soaked top seller was a good game, of course.

Something I just don't understand how you can say about Starfield. Because there, Todd & Co. honestly failed so miserably to build an entertaining action role-playing game that it's almost unacceptable. The idea was, of course, that elusive, expansive, vast, mysterious feeling of eternal space with planets galore, life, movement, discovery, nerve and excitement.

What did we get? A graphically ancient menu simulator with useless atmosphere and zero sense of discovery. It was also delivered with a lot of game-breaking bugs and a low degree of optimisation against the hardware for which it was exclusively developed. 100% incomprehensible.

No one should have hated The Last of Us: Part II?

Well... Joel was killed off just 40 minutes into Naughty Dog's hotly anticipated game, which, of course, we all saw as a massive, massive anti-climax. A significant part of me hates Naughty Dog for killing off one of my absolute favourite characters.

Another part of me, of course, sees what they were trying to say, and how it characterised one of the most memorable action games ever made. It's downright uncomfortable to me how many people don't seem to have played Part II, but still judged it for having one character in the game who is a lesbian and one who is trans. Basically, this was not something I even reflected on during my 20 hours with Ellie.

Instead, I was consumed by my own feelings and my desire for revenge. Very, very few games have stirred emotions like this did, in me. And still do. That the hatred against Naughty Dog and their fantastic sequels became and is as widespread as it is, is bizarre to me.

There should be a general appreciation that Naughty Dog dared to offend, shock and create anger, irritation and disappointment in us as players - to drive through as sensible a point here as they did on the theme of 'love' in the predecessor. 100% incomprehensible.

The Batman was shallow, empty, and boring?

I'd go so far as to argue that Matt Reeves' The Batman is barely a film. It's a series of gorgeous, adorably luscious, moving pictures put together by one Greig Fraser (who also filmed Dune and Dune: Part II as well as Rogue One) that regularly enchant, but a film? Doubtful.

Reeves is stuck in his own trap here, where surface always takes precedence over substance and the sense of disjointed scenes built primarily to be 'visually impressive' rather than dramaturgically effective is constant when I watch The Batman. It tells me nothing. It says virtually nothing about any of the characters in it and feels to me so empty, hopelessly incoherent and superficial that it almost feels bizarre to read tribute after tribute. 100% incomprehensible.

Star Wars: Outlaws feels like a joke?

I've only played about three hours now of an extensive open world adventure, which makes my judgement - and the conclusion I'm about to draw - a bit unfair. Of course, it would have taken at least ten more hours before I can basically say either boo or baa, but I'll do it anyway - for Outlaws feels in many ways like a failure, for my part.

For starters, in my opening hours, I've felt about 0% real, successful, bulletproof Star Wars feeling. Apart from a couple of character names, it barely reminds me of Star Wars, which is cemented by the fact that the dialogue is stylistically bad and that the open world part is limited and thus not really 'open world'. I think so far that the stealth parts are consistently worthless and that the graphics look old. This feels like one of the biggest disappointments of the year to me and I just can't understand how it can already be liked the way it seems to be. Absolutely, 100% incomprehensible.

Am I way off the mark? Do you have any examples of what feels like collective psychosis like this in the world of pop culture? Let us know below in the comments.