But it played into the trend for pretending to understand philosophy - seen as a sure-fire path to romantic success in the 90s. Lots of people took it seriously, not understanding the joke (also true for a lot of Neil Gaiman readers).
I mean, it's fun to sneer, but I think it might be you who is missing the joke or the real cultural understanding here, I'm afraid. I know Gaiman would strongly disagree with you, based on things he's said. He certainly doesn't see the philosophical elements in his works as ironic or satirical in the way you do.
As for vampires, sure they have long been popular and continue to be popular in some circles, but they had a big explosion in mainstream popularity in the 90s (spawning rapidly forgotten TV shows like Ultraviolet). Then they where replaced by zombies, who where replaced by - well, I don't spend so much time in secondary schools these days, so I don't know what the cool kids are currently into, but I've watched plenty of trends ebb and flow.
Ultraviolet helps illustrate why you're presenting a rather inaccurate account here.
There are essentially two kinds of vampire tale:
1) Vampires are monsters and not people - we might be fooled into thinking they're something else, but they're just monsters. In this type of tale they're often also an allegory of or metaphor for capitalism, greed, disease, power, or many other things (sometimes getting into murky waters).
Things like the original Dracula (and some adaptions), Blade (the movies/TV show), Ultraviolet, The Strain, Let The Right One In and so on.
2) Vampires are monsters - but they're
also people, and some, perhaps only a few, can be redeemed or at least can self-contain.
Things like Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Diaries, True Blood, Angel, Twilight, Vampire: The Masquerade/The Requiem and so on.
Type 2 are often sneered at, particularly by straight men, particularly older straight men. Basically the more akin to Jeremy Clarkson one is, the more likely one is to violently sneer at the latter. Whereas the same people may well enjoy Type 1 vampire antics. Typically Type 2 are more successful, financially and in terms of enduring popularity, than the former (and I say this as a man who die to protect Blade (1998)!).
Zombies never replaced Type 2. They did largely replace Type 1. There were some attempts, particularly in SF/horror lit to try and have zombies replace Type 2, but we can say now that they definitely didn't work. Zombies were never popular with "the cool kids" or the romantics or whoever. They were mostly popular with people in their 20s and 30s who wanted to watch movies and shows which were horrifying but in an understandable and safe way.
