Things you begin to understand

Over to the right on my bloglist is a link to XKCD.org. I found this comic whilst stumbling I believe and have since become an ardent fan. Thus it should be cool to see it in the Nytimes, instead its somehow disappointing. There is clearly this attempt to understand what is referred to as niche markets. There is the book the Long Tail as well as theories such as crowdsourcing, viral marketing etc. Which is great and fascinating, but is it just me or does it take away some of the fun of liking something once it becomes an explainable theory? Is that just me?