Window Theme/GTK+ Theme issues

[MrSchism]

Allow me to start by mentioning the first few things:

1. I've read through the forum and done everything listed to try to resolve the issue.
2. I'm not a new user to linux; I dropped the files in their folder before even pulling up the forum.
3. I wouldn't be here if it was something easy.

Now, onto the scenario:
(TL;DR~ GTK/Window themes aren't working when they should)

I installed the official release of Maya 32-bit onto the VM I use for my regular browsing and workload. It's great and looks gorgeous, except for the fact that the default Window Theme and GTK+ themes are all very light. I downloaded a few different themes and dropped them into /usr/share/themes, just in case I had to set someone else up with an account on my machine. I restarted the checked it out and only one Window theme was there (Dust), but it didn't work. Dust has a GTK+2, GTK+3, Metacity, and a bunch of other folders for whatever wants to handle it because I wasn't sure what exactly was needed. Around that time, I had an issue where Cinnamon wouldn't even start anymore.

Reinstall.

So, with that having failed, I created a ~/.themes folder and dropped it (and the others) in there. Restarted again (just to ensure that everything is starting right). Nothing. Retried the /usr/share/themes folder. Not working there, either.

I can live without a nice GTK setup and whatnot, but it'd be nice to be able to have things set up uniformly. The rest of the system theme is a medium-dark (using ICS for my Cinnamon theme), but otherwise not getting the results I would like.

Any suggestions?

I'm getting ready to chmod /usr/share/ to being just an open folder to see if that makes any difference, but I doubt it'll do anything.

[MrSchism]

chmod'ing /usr/share/ didn't do anything.

I'm officially out of ideas. Please, if you can think of anything, let me know.

[AJ1000]

Install Ubuntu Tweak. Use it to change the theme. Works for me.

Hopefully it works for you.