There are things that everyone enjoys that no one wants to discuss, those guilty pleasures that we all indulge in from time to time. Whether they are guilty pleasures because they are just so childish that you question your maturity, because they have zero intellectual value, or because you know that they will embarrass your children, it is time to embrace them. There are cultural guilty pleasures in which everyone partakes, those moments when something so obviously humorous and embarrassing becomes a craze or trend. The world is full of guilty pleasures; here is a review of some of 2007’s most interesting and well-known indulgences.

1. Soulja Boy “Crank that Soulja Boy”

The lyrics seem to have been words strung together after being pulled out of a hat, and, upon research, so inappropriate that you can never discuss them with your parents or even think about them yourself without disgust (I suggest everyone look up “Superman” on Urbandictionary.com). The dance is essentially a ghetto Irish jig, which results in a performance that is the most embarrassing footage you will have from your college years. Yet every highly intellectualized, future professional Stanford student was running around fall quarter singing and performing the dance. One frat even had every member learn the entire dance for a performance at special dinner.

2. Stalking Britney Spears

The pictures of Britney Spears’s shaved head were everywhere, and no one could look away. Deep down everyone knew that the scrutiny was making her, if anything, more insane, and yet no one could stop talking about, analyzing and judging the poor girl. And then there was the fan video, all over Youtube and in a shining moment of journalism on the morning news, with a rather androgous boy screaming into the camera that we all need to leave Britney alone. His video actually had the opposite effect of making it just a little bit more amusing to make fun of her. As her condition progressed, it became abundantly clear that there was no hope for her and that maybe she needed a vacation. Or to retire. But no one was going to let her. There is such a sweet perverse pleasure in watching this former teen idol destroy herself.

3. “America’s Next Top Model”

Every season an uber-educated girl is kicked off, generally for being too composed, which the judges paint as arrogance. This season was no exception: Victoria from Yale was kicked off for arguing with Twiggy (and her inability to understand why she should “be a cactus”). This is a show that laughs in the face of intellectualism, and yet it is widely popular with Stanford students. It is also a show with high drama, controversy and the occasional bulimia accusation. It is a modeling show where the girl with the best picture probably won’t win because she lacks “personality” and the girl who does win is rarely capable of intelligent insight. And yet it must be watched.

4. The Movie “300”

Freshmen from the class of 2010 could take Ancient Empires, an IHUM class that somehow managed to get the school to pay for tickets to a movie that had no historical insight whatsoever. The fight scenes are cool, the movie itself was visually incredible, but the dialogue and the portrayal of gender roles and other ethnicities was farfetched. The government of Iran even protested the film on the grounds that it was racist propaganda. However, none of these things stopped Stanford students from quoting the movie, Roble hall from using it as its theme or my engineering friends from proclaiming that the movie had “the best sex scene ever.” It is one of those movies that I’m pretty sure the next generation will use for mystery science theater, but I personally have seen it twice.

Revel in the absurdity of these fine pop culture moments of 2007, be guilt-free and look forward to Britney Spears’s probable total meltdown in ‘08.