Why does the phenomenon of fanboyism still exist? And more to the point, why does it exist amongst men (and it pretty much is always men) who are old enough to know better?
The simple and easy answer is, of course, that it’s always been around. I remember growing up as an Atari-based family and all of the Atari magazines at the time belittling the competition with stupid names like Spectrash (Spectrum) and Crappydore (Commodore 64). Then came the schoolyard arguments – SEGA vs Nintendo. Sonic vs Mario. “We’ve got Street Fighter II! Hah! …Oh wait, now you have, too.” It got pretty silly.
Once the Dreamcast came out, it was hard to justify fanboyism because, certainly once SEGA’s wondermachine came out, it was so far ahead of its competition – the 64-bit Nintendo 64 and the 32-bit PlayStation – that half-hearted attempts to call it things like “Dreampants” always came across as more than a little desperate.
Things then kicked off again with Sony vs Microsoft, with Nintendo kind of relegated to “background observer” by this point. The PS2 and the original Xbox both had fiercely loyal supporters when, in fact, you’d have a far better experience if you bought both systems, played the relevant exclusives on their respective platforms and played multiplatform titles on the Xbox. That’s what I did, and I never felt the need to slag off any of the systems.
And it still goes on today, despite each of the consoles arguably offering a more distinct and unique experience from each other than ever before. The Xbox 360 offers its legendary ease of online play, the PS3 is home to a variety of unusual and interesting games (like Flower, flOw, Linger in Shadows, the Pixeljunk games) and the Wii is the family-friendly bundle of fun.
Still the hating goes on, though.
But nowhere is it more apparent than in the world of smartphones, particularly between the owners of iPhones, BlackBerries (let’s pluralise it properly, please) and Android-based phones. iPhone owners are either Apple fanboys who bang on about how great Apple is all the time or jailbreakers who bang on about which ludicrously-named hack they’re installing this week – and, of course, which apps they could get for free rather than paying for them on the App Store. BlackBerry owners seem to be updating their OS every night. And Android owners seem to be particularly sore about the iPhone for some inexplicable reason.
The question is: why? When it came to the early console wars, slagging off the systems your friends had was just schoolyard banter. You didn’t really think that the systems were inferior, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone around to their houses and played those games with them. The fact that this juvenile banter has grown up with people who have been using gaming and other consumer electronics for years is utterly baffling. Even people who started gaming at the same time as me – or before – are still bitching and moaning about how much better their handset is that [x]’s handset, and blahblahblah open source, blahblahblah build quality, blahblahblah BlackBerry Messenger, blahblahblah… You get the picture.
Am I alone in thinking that all of this stuff, without exception, is seven degrees of awesome and we should appreciate the brilliant things we have? Yes, some of them have more features. Yes, some of them are objectively “better” in terms of capabilities, power and technical specifications. But is that really any reason to act like 5-year olds telling each other that their respective Mums smell of wee?
No, it’s not. So why does it still go on?
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My assumption has always been that it’s about finances. If you can only afford one console (or computer), then it becomes necessary to say that the other one is garbage so you can feel good about your purchase.
Yeah, agreeing with Feen here. It seems like that sense of vested interest begins early, and continued justification of your position makes for a compulsion to at least eye off the competition in some folks’ case. You could say the same about sports teams or cars. Video games and systems…well…seems like a very late eighties and Nineties thing to do, as multiplatform releases were somewhat of a rarity.
Although, I cannot stand Nintendo apologists. That company and the diehard fans who continually give them a free pass can go jump in the…oh. Oh dear.
I believe you’re probably right, gents. I still find it a bit strange, though. I mean, even back in the old Atari era I knew that those other systems all had their own benefits, so despite us only owning one brand of hardware, I was always interested to read about the others. That’s why I used to love multi-format magazines. A long time ago, there was a FANTASTIC one here called ACE that covered everything from the Spectrum up to SNES, PC, Mac and so on. Even though at the time I knew we’d never have, say, a Mac, I still found it fascinating to read about strange early CD-ROM titles like The Manhole.
I’ve always just wanted everything, simply put! I’m ‘loyal’ to all the consoles that I can possibly get my hands on.
As a child and teenager I was pretty limited in what systems I could afford but I never thought that my console was better than the rest. It was just the one that I wanted most at the time when I/my parents could afford it. Now I’ve got all 3 systems. Due to some dodgy financial moments I’ve considered which one I’d get rid of in dire straights and I just don’t know! I like them all equally, even if some might get more play time than others.
I’ve got an iPhone. It does exactly what I want but is it the best? Who knows. It’s subjective. It just happens to do what I want thus I’m happy with it. Same as other people will be happy with something else 🙂