In Defense of the Fanboy

An anonymous reader writes "Ran across a great article over at TV Squad regarding obsessive internet fanboys. It's funny and pretty dead on about how we all benefit from the monomania of the typical fanboy." Where would my own useless mental database of knowledge about Green Lantern and Mobile Suit Gundam be without fanboys? Probably out on a date, but for now, thank a fanboy!

Comments

Ummm...

[Golias]

Where would my own useless mental database of knowledge about Green Lantern and Mobile Suit Gundam be without fanboys?

I think you can stop talking about them in the third person.

So....are you saying I'm OK now?

[thomasdz]

My obsession with PDP-11 computers (well, actually, all things DEC) and Valerie Bertinelli is OK now?
So I can actually speak in public about my pilgrimages to Maynard Massachusetts, 31736 Broadbeach Road, Malibu, and 3361 Coldwater Canyon, Beverly Hills California?
ummm...not that I know those addresses by heart or anything... :-)

TDz.
1) hmmmm...I wonder...should I hit the "Post Anonymously" button?
2) yes, my wife does know about my obsessions
3) how many Slashdotters can guess my age from this post?

Re:So....are you saying I'm OK now?

[beakerMeep]

I was going to moderate your comment but I couldn't find the "+1 creepy" option.

Re:Male obsessions

[ettlz]

It is typical of the male to concentrate on things that most females don't understand.

Um... boobs?

I agree!

[sg3000]

Great article!

Fanboys are a national treasure. Their diligence to spending hours/days/years nurturing and cataloging their obsession provide a useful function for the rest of us. Like a beaver spending its life building and maintaining a dam, or an oyster taking a piece of dirt and slowly making a pearl, we benefit from the years of their hard work for the few short moments when we care.

I'm sure we all go through periods when we run across something cool and it keeps our interest for a few weeks. We develop an interest and we're grateful to find the web site of some guy who has obsessed about our new subject for most of his life. We satisfy our desire for learning about whatever the subject du jour is, and then we go about our lives. I for one appreciate the effort they put into their obsession.

For example, over the years, I've developed or rekindled an interest in random topics: the show "The Prisoner" (from the 1960s), Magic the Gathering (which I hadn't played for 10 years), the musician Donovan, and other oddball things. I thought it was cool that one quick search on the Web revealed information that probably took all of someone's free time for several years (reading biographies, attending fan conventions, and talking to other hardcore fans):

1. I know that from the opening sequence from the Prisoner describes both the desire to get secrets from the spy named Number 6 but was also a pun for conformity: "What do you want?" Was he saying "Information" or "In formation"? Neat.

2. I know that the rules for "banding" were changed three times for MTG. Nifty.

3. I know that Donovan sang on the song "Billion Dollar Babies" by Alice Cooper. And Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin may or may not have played guitar on "Hurdy Gurdy Man", but John Paul Jones (the bassist from Led Zeppelin) did play bass on the song. Neato.

Could I have lived my life having never learned this info? Sure. Am I glad to learn this trivia? Yes. With fanboys, I can do both! Fanboys are like the Cliff Notes for millions of subjects, albeit disproportionately on Hobbits, lightsabers, or even Billy Joel.

I'm not mocking them, of course. I think it's funny because we're all obsessed about something or another -- they're called hobbies. For example, I probably seem to be a fanboy about some topics (I'll let the bored Slashdot reader sift through my previous posts to figure those out).

Anyway, here's to you, fanboys! Keep up the good work!

Re:literal avalanche of pornography

[jayblackcomedy]

when i wrote that line i debated whether or not people would nitpick the use of the word "literal." i decided to use it since i was writing a semi-comedic piece and i thought that the ironic use of the word there might be funny. my fear was that people might not realize i was using the word ironically and would call me out on it. it's probably weak writing on my part that didn't make the comedic overtones of that paragraph more obvious.

i've been reading more and more screeds against people using the word "literally" in situations when they actually mean "figuratively." i think what's happened is that people started using the word "literally" as a way to ironically create hyperbole (i'm so hungry, i could literally eat a million pounds of pizza). it became a popular way to create hyperbole but since it's devilishly difficult to communicate irony through text a lot of uninformed readers began to infer that "literally" actually meant "figuratively." the result of this is that there are now approximately eleven million blogs out there using the word "literally" incorrectly (and unironically).

(this is probably as good as time as ever to say that my own little grammar nitpick is when people use the word "ironic" to mean "coincidental." it drives me crazy. but it's likely that in a generation or two the words will be synonymous. today's mistakes are tomorrow's rules, as they say...)

all this being said, i'm enough of a geek to be honored that something i wrote has been nitpicked on slashdot.

now, if you'll excuse me, i literally have a million things to do today...

all the best,

--jayblack