Maybe you haven’t heard. Maybe you’ve been combing the Mariana Trench for a dropped contact lens, or been employed to brush the dust off the Mars Rover, so have been out of the loop for a while. For everyone else, it’s common knowledge that they’ve made a Ghostbusters reboot, that it has LADIES in it, and large chunks of the internet are seriously unhappy about it.

There are a few explanations for this, from a general disgruntlement with excessive Hollywood reboots to the whole Ghostbusters aspect being a feeble cover for what is basically an enraged anti-feminism backlash, something which is a depressing inevitability when women attempt to do anything, in any context, ever. But some people just seem outraged that they dare to “tamper” with their beloved childhood favourite, in this case Ghostbusters.

Admittedly, such complaints are often legitimate; to have something that you feel very fondly towards, and to see it be manipulated or changed in often-cynically-motivated ways is very irksome. If they painted “I LOVE TRUMP” on the Mona Lisa’s forehead to attract a new demographic, nobody would see that as an improvement. But often, the attempted remake/reboot fades from public consciousness without incident. Barely anyone can remember the Total Recall remake (ironically).

However, there’s often a genuine anger over well-known children’s entertainments being adapted, expanded or altered in ways that don’t meet the approval of the existing fans. I don’t deny I’m susceptible to this too, I’ve based an entire article on one particular grievance. But why do some feel so strongly that they accuse something of “ruining their childhood”?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Attempts to make childhood favourites more modern and realistic can be quite disturbing, in fairness Photograph: Lula Carvalho/AP

Obviously, this is an exaggeration. A modern film, no matter how bad, cannot retroactively ruin a childhood, not unless it somehow travels back in time and gets your parents hooked on class-A narcotics (although some would argue that The Phantom Menace did exactly that). Nonetheless, there are several psychological quirks that would mean people get disproportionately angry and defensive about their childhood entertainments and are quick to use hyperbole.

For one, there’s a thing called the “reminiscence bump”, where memories obtained during childhood and early adulthood are actually more vivid and easier to recall than others. It makes sense; our brains have developed enough to actually form memories effectively, but everything is still mostly new and vivid to us as we’ve not much prior experience, and we are still developing so the things we encounter will have more impact. The things we were drawn towards and enjoyed as children would therefore have a lasting impact, more so than many other things we encounter.

This ties into general nostalgia. Nostalgia is a seemingly universal psychological phenomenon which is actually very powerful, for numerous reasons. But it can actually be too powerful in many ways, leading a majority of people to think things are worse now than they were in the past, despite there being ample evidence to the contrary (e.g. invoking the “spirit of the Blitz” to reference community togetherness and positivity, while overlooking the whole “constant risk of bombing and death” aspect).

This declinism is nothing new, and studies have shown that the older you get, the more likely you are to remember positive elements than negative ones, the aptly-named “positivity effect”. For older people, it’s memories of the war and times of strife. The younger generations, raised in more peaceful periods, it seems to be films and TV of our youth. A Twitter follower of mine Robert Ramsey pointed out that the modern generations are the first ones to be able to record or download their favourite entertainments and watch them at will, thus keeping them fresh in the memory rather than fading over time.

This doesn’t quite explain the ridiculous zeal with which people (mostly men, if we’re honest) often react to any attempt to meddle with their treasured childhood viewing material. However, there are a few potential causes.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Why is the CGI Jar Jar Binks clearly defined and Liam Neeson somewhat blurry in this picture? It’s as if even a still image of an actor wants to distance itself from this character. Photograph: Allstar/LUCASFILM

The shows and films we liked as kids are, typically, self-contained. Nobody is making them anymore, so we can know “all” about them. Seeing every episode and iteration, having all the merchandise, that is a relatively simple way of achieving a goal. It can give us a sense of control, especially if we lack the ability to determine events in most other areas of our lives. Then someone who you don’t know, who didn’t consult you, comes along and adds new stuff, or reboots the whole thing? It may seem churlish or utterly inconsequential, but if you’re invested in your Ghostbusters fandom, then someone coming along and making new stuff can effectively lower your status, reduce your sense of control, add uncertainty that you can’t address, all of which are things our brains don’t deal with very well.

On top of this, the prominence in our memories of our childhood entertainment may mean they are a disproportionately large aspect of our identity. So, any attempt at updating or change could, in a weird way, be perceived as an attack on our identity. And people tend to react very negatively to such things.

Appeals to logic often don’t work. Surely the fans, many argue, will be happy that the thing they love is getting a new lease of life and the opportunity to gain a whole new audience of admirers? This makes logical sense, but overlooks some of the more dubious elements of the human psyche. Namely, scarcity and exclusivity is attractive, so any attempt to make your favourite thing more accessible to the masses effectively devalues it, and therefore the fans will be upset. For examples, see the reaction from current Twitter users to any attempt by Twitter to attract new ones.

It may be that only a minority group of die-hard fans have these extreme reactions to attempts to reboot or expand an existing property or franchise, but we’re all online now, so that’s all it takes before others will join in with the outrage.

In summary, there are many underlying psychological processes that conspire to make people overreact in weird ways to something that should be innocuous. Or, to put it another way, there’s something strange, and it don’t look good.

Dean Burnett will be talking about his book The Idiot Brain with Robin Ince at the Guardian Live event in London on June 2nd.

The Idiot Brain by Dean Burnett (Guardian Faber, £12.99). To order a copy for £7.99, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min. p&p of £1.99.

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