FolkLorre

[lewstonewar]

People are scared of chaos. They don't want Sheldon or Howard to be funny, they want them to be "nice", when the definition of "nice" is that nothing surprising or challenging or different ever happens. Unimaginative people love this theme of becoming more conventional, because they're frightened, confused, and insulted by anything outside their own experience....(snip) They feel relief when the "icky stuff" starts to go away and is replaced by weddings and shopping.

This is kind of illustrated by the first season of American Big Brother.

Originally it was identical to the various European versions with the audience voting people out. The flaw was American viewers were voting off all the irritating(read: entertaining) people, so that by the end of the first season only the most boring uncontroversial people remained. It made for bad television.

For the second season they had to revamp the format to included that head of household nonsense to counteract that.

Also it shows what people think and say they want and what they actually want may be two different things.