Does Greece Hate Tom Cruise? An Investigation

On Tuesday, Vulture published a story breaking down where in the world Tom Cruise is the most popular. As it turns out, Iceland really loves Tom Cruise. Lost a little bit in the celebration for Cruise’s popularity in Iceland is that, of the countries listed, Cruise comes in dead last in Greece. For some reason, Tom Cruise is not popular in Greece.

So, to investigate, I spent the morning in a few Greek Internet chat rooms to ask about Tom Cruise’s popularity in Greece. Anyway, here are the highlights of how that all went:

My first problem: I didn't really know if there was a such thing as a "Greece chat room." I mean, is there a such thing as a "United States chat room"? Anyway, the answer is there are, in fact, Greece chat rooms -- and, not surprisingly, most of the people in them are speaking Greek. Which is a problem for me because I do not speak Greek. Anyway, I bolstered ahead and asked the first room I was in about Tom Cruise -- and, right away, I got an answer:

Well, there we go! Socrates himself claims, "We love Tom Cruise," which is a pretty definitive answer from one person in a Greek chat room. Unfortunately, the rest of my questions in this particular chat room were ignored, so I went to another one. I mean, once Socrates speaks...

In the next Greek chat room, I once again asked about Tom Cruise -- four separate times -- and was ignored.

But! For some unknown reason, someone named antonis20 asked me to private chat with him. And, at least for a little bit, he answered my Tom Cruise questions: swearing that Tom Cruise is very popular in Greece. Eventually, like any normal human being would, he abruptly left the conversation.

A chat room appropriately titled "GreekChat" got me nowhere:

At the last Greek chat room I visited, I found a user named ΑΛΛΟΚΟΤΟΣ, who relayed to me, in Greek, that Tom Cruise is very popular. (I tried my best to translate with the use of Google Translate.) Of course, in the process, he asks if I was told that Cruise wasn't popular in Greece by "competitors" or "foreign agents."

Later, he (I think) explains that he likes Tom Cruise, but doesn't see his movies, which seems to be the trend here. Then, kind of understandably, he tells me to come back and ask him later after I learn Greek. I explain that will take a long time. He then responds, in English, "No problem." I'll be back someday, ΑΛΛΟΚΟΤΟΣ. I'll be back.

Mike Ryan has written for The Huffington Post, Wired, Vanity Fair and GQ. He is the senior editor of ScreenCrush. You can contact him directly on Twitter.