At the end of Jurassic Park, Dr. Grant, his special lady friend, and those impossibly muddy kids are flanked in the entrance hall of the theme park by Velociraptors. It looks pretty grim until the T. rex lumbers in to bite the other dinosaurs to death and save the goddamn day despite being the central antagonist for the first half of the film.

Little Known Fact: The T. rex can roar loud enough to make banner knots undo themselves.

I mention this scene because, aside from the living dinosaurs and the weird knot physics, there's a fundamental truth in that moment: Sometimes if you surround yourself with enough terrible things, they will just cancel each other out. Fate, it seems, has a soft spot for the stupid and reckless. For proof, look no further than everyday life; some of the cultural habits and irritating trends that should, in all respects, spell doom for our species are miraculously saving lives instead. So rather than rolling our eyes when a fad like Crocs, or Sexy Vampire Stories, or Bro-Step music fight for attention in our collective conscious, let's try to look on the bright side and determine how each of them might accidentally be protecting humanity from becoming the next fossil fuel.