Before Big Brother, on a smaller scale, it was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire that got the pop cultural dilettante going. People liked saying Pikatchu, in the same way as they like saying Scary Spice. The use of pop cultural vernacular is not an Ali G attempt to speak to da kids in their language. Nor is it quite ironic. It's a sad fact, but these days intellectual posturing has been replaced by its obverse.
People pretend to like things to make themselves seem less disconnected, more apt.
Football is a good example of something that lends itself well to this kind of willed fanaticism. The annoying thing about all of this for those of us who stick with popular culture in the lean times as well as the good, is that dilettantish tendency to gather up all the glory without putting in the hours. If you haven't sat through six months of crap EastEnders, I don't see what gives you the right to come in for the Christmas episode and talk about Tiffany's death as if you cared as much as we did. Nor do I really approve when grown women flaunt an attraction to Robbie Williams when they don't know what he went through to get to where he is today. I don't want to sound like a snob, but it takes a lot of time and energy to understand popular culture - you can't just come in for the good bits any more than you could stand outside a concert hall until you hear the aria you know from your Classic FM compilation.