Slashdot Mirror
The Psychology of Fanboys
Testiiiiing writes "CoolTechZone.com's Gundeep Hora publishes his thoughts on why fanboys act the way they do. 'For fanboys (and I use the term with utmost respect, at least for this article), their appetite to support their favorite company to beat the big, bad corporate heavyweights gets delusional at times. And why not? After all, we all like to cheer the underdog... reasonably. In addition to cheering for the little guy, fanboys also think it's their responsibility to spread the word about their favorite company. Combine their need to do marketing on behalf of their adopted companies and their products with the passion to make others see things their way, and you have a powerful group of people.'"
M$ is clearly not an underdog, and I work with a guy who is quite a fanboy....
...a "fanboy" (or, more often, "fanboi", and sometimes even "fangirl") when I disseminate correct information about Apple on slashdot, clarify a misleading story, or correct completely and utterly factually and provably incorrect claims. It's not even about trying to "convert" anyone to anything. I usually respond by asking if the person calling me a "fanboi" could point out anything incorrect that I said in my post. That is usually followed up with brilliant posts about sex acts.
So, here's another question: this article is called "The Psychology of Mac Zealots"; what's the "psychology" of people who instantly call anyone who posts anything about Apple a "fanboy"? The article talks about how "fanboys" might be right, but also says that being anonymous and abusive (and therefore annoying) when making their point is a hallmark of a "fanboy". So how can a person who is neither (and also is correct about a factual point) a "fanboy"?
It isn't about "rooting for the underdog" or trying to create "converts" (directly, anyway). It's about wanting correct information disseminated about something you're interested in. And if it adds factual information to the discussion, what's wrong with that? To me, saying that something is obviously better or "rocks" or that something else "sucks" with no logical reasoning to back it up is what makes someone a "fanboy".
Cue the posts calling me a "fanboy fanboi"!
OMG no one reads CoolTechZone lol! ARS for lifez yo~
But I'll have a guess that it's a little like being religious, other people can tell you all sorts of bad truths about your beliefs but that still doesn't stop you believing.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
In addition to cheering for the little guy
Sony is hardly "the little guy". In other words, fanboyism exists at all levels of the market.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
Fanboys like Zonk?
Now THAT'S a name. Bold parents.
And note how fast his fanboy buddies modded him up.
The fanboy is fixated, a product of the Skinner box of technology. They find a particular product/service to be so useful, so much like what they have always wanted (read: reinforcing), that the idea that there is anything different/better out there is inconceivable. Also, deprive them of their fixation, and they go into withdrawals.
The fixation is unhealthy and limiting. People with fixations are frequently unable to adapt to changes in their environment. They cling to a thing even after that thing ceases to bring them the comfort/serenity that it first did. They will viciously attack anyone who disparages they chosen tool, unable to see the light of even the most cogent argument.
I've personally never let an individual piece of technology/software or service consume me. Some are nice, some are useful, some are downright cool. But this is the Internet Age -- if you wait five minutes, something new and better will invariably come along. If you don't allow yourself to be open to new ideas and ways of thinking, you're bound to be left behind.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
When someone uses the term "fanboy", it tends to conjure up an image of someone who is so fanatical in their support that they ignore all logic and reality in pursuit of ensuring that their company is the one that wins "the war". (Whatever that may be.) As such, it tends to be a rather derogatory term used to discount someone from a discussion because their fanaticism makes their opinion useless.
;)
Unfortunately, there's a growing trend of abuse in relation to the term. More and more I'm hearing *real* fanboys preemptively use the term to discount others. For example, any true fan of a game system should be willing to acknowledge its faults as well as its strengths. I very much enjoy my Nintendo Wii, but I know that its low cost came at the expense of raw horsepower. That doesn't bother me. Similarly, PS3 fans should be willing to acknowledge that their system is incredibly expensive (in comparison to the rest of the market) and that there is a fairly small game library at the moment.
Yet what I regularly hear is the PS3 fanboys jump in and yell, "Anyone who likes the Wii is a Nintendo fanboy! After all, how could you not like a $600 Bluray player! The game system is FREE!" Or something to that effect, anyway.
This constitutes an outright abuse of the term. Now I'll admit that it doesn't help the situation that many Wii fans (and even worse: fanboys) don't like Sony or their business practices. So they tend to cheer on any difficulties that the company may be having. (I'll even admit to this myself. I don't want Sony around if they're going to install rootkits, shut down distributors, sell exploding parts, ignore customer service, or the billion other anti-consumer things they've done of late.) That still doesn't justify the abuse.
Similarly, a lot of Windows users are simply familiar with what they are used to. So they're not so much as fanatical themselves, they're just highly resistant to solid logic that's often used by the Mac community. They're also quite used to the Mac users of yore, who were very much fanboys. (I'm sorry, Mac OS 8 was NOT that great of an OS.) So they also abuse the term in an attempt to get people to stop pestering them about how much better the Mac is. They're comfortable, so they don't want to be bothered. Sometimes they even become a sort of inverse fanboy in that they hang onto ever possible wrong they see with the opposition. (Case in point: Java is slow.) Never mind if it's still true or not. It was once at least sort of true, so that's good enough.
So next time you think of using the term "fanboy", think for a moment. You may be abusing the term and making yourself look bad at the same time.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Combine their need to do marketing on behalf of their adopted companies and their products with the passion to make others see things their way, and you have a powerful group of people.
Right, here's the kind of reactions the marketing of a group of unstoppable fanboys achieve.
I too am someone who witnessed the sad transformation of a Windows/Linux guy into a Mac fanboy. Now every little problem I have on my computer, be it slow connection, or program hang, or WHATEVER, serves as a reason that I should be constantly reminded "how much I need a Mac".
"Man, you SO need a Mac!"
"Shit, dude, you gotta get a Mac."
"Macs are sooo cool, let's find you a Mac."
Everything on a Mac is godly and I apparently and struggling to survive without that on my Windows system. Even shadows! How the heck can I work without shadows behind my windows?! Impossible.
I'm suspecting that when you sum up the total of positive and negative effects of rabid fanboys defending their limited view on the world, the picture isn't nice. I'm sure there are people who will despise Mac and Linux without ever seen them, just because of the overly zealous fanboys that nagged them incessantly.
How, exactly, did this trolling article make it to the top of the Firehose? Have we become Digg while I was sleeping?
Man, I must be new here.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
In my mind a "fanboy" is someone trying to justify their purchase or time invested.
:)
"You mean I spent on a crappy that's been collecting dust or doesn't live up to expectations!?!?! I need to get all my friends to buy this too so I can feel better about having bought it..."
Feel free to insert that with anything made by Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Nintendo - any of the big guys (or little guys) - or games/pieces of software (WoW, etc.) whatever tickles your fancy
I guess it's a slow news day. How am I supposed to avoid work all day when this is all slashdot has to offer :(
TODO - Insert Creative/Witty Signature
I'd like to know how anyone can be a fan boy for anything that boils down to luxury items? I mean the answer is easy: you bought something and need to justify why you bought it even if it sucks. You'd rather say product A is amazing and is a cure all vs. damn made a mistake need to fix it. You can also tell how unhappy a person is with their product by how much energy and effort they put into attacking the competition.
Isn't everyone a fanboy for some reason or another? Aren't the Ford guys who put that Calvin sticker peeing on a Chevy logo (and vice versa) fanboys? And how about all those Harley Davidson tattoos out there, would you call that 300 lbs leather-clad biker a fanboy? And then there's the people who watch a particular tv show and say "Hey, you gotta watch this..." and then is hurt that you don't have any interest in watching a bald guy picking songs from a juke box in a Jersey restaurant.
Finally, I know a guy who is as close to a luddite as you can get..no computer, no tv, just a regular phone and a radio for electronics. Prefers reading to everything else and doesn't give a whiz about what bike he rides, what clothes he buys, anything; whatever's on sale and fits he gets. But if you ask what he's reading, he'll say he's reading Grapes of Wrath for the umpteenth time and then he'll talk your ear off about how Steinbeck is the only good writer America ever produced, and on and on for an hour or more. So that makes him a Steinbeck fanboy, doesn't it?
Tech/Gaming hobbies can be expensive. Just ask someone who has played WoW since launch how much of their money Blizzard has now. If it weren't for the fact that Blizzard/WoW is "amazing/ohmygod/awesome/cool", then it'd be possible that that money was misspent, right? Your average person is convinced he is not a fool. Fools don't make stupid decisions. Therefore, your average person is convinced that that PS3/WoW/iMac they just bought must be worth every penny. Given the prices on some of these things, the products (and their companies) must therefore somehow be 'better' than they seem. Result: Delusional Fans.
I suspect that for this discussion the "elephant" is going to be the FOSS fanboys, though I guess they're more often referred to as "zealots". It's interesting that the linked article only refers to the mindless dedication to a company and not to a cause. IMO the latter is the more harmful and destructive, and *much* more common on Slashdot.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
How is 'fanboyism' any different from cheering for your favorite sports team, political candidate or having faith in your religion.
/.
And in keeping with the tradition of analogies on
Apple hardware is like the Yankees, someone paid far too much and got so little.
Either way, both the Yankees and Apple suck.
Yours Truly,
Curt Shilling
Sometimes a company likes to promote the idea that they actually have a fan base (you know, to generate 'buzz', stomp bad opinions against them, etc etc). See also Microsoft (though they are hardly alone in this). Incidentally, political figures and ideologies have a good parallel in fanboys and astroturfing as well.
Trolls?
Sometimes it can be (at least in my case years ago, it used to be) great fun to go in and advocate for The Other Side (tm), just to see what folks would do with it. Sometimes it's done to simply incite a reaction (a digital equivalent of throwing a stink bomb into a football locker room @ high school, or the chess club meeting, if you prefer), but sometimes it can be done to get folks on all sides to stop and think. You can tell very fast, depending on advocacy and style, if the reactions are by blinkered unthinking fanboys, or if there's some actual insight and thought that folks have put into their decision to support something.
Both cases tend to make the whole thing not so clear-cut, and I think the author should have discussed those a bit more, as they are large factors IMHO.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
What kind of parent calls her child Gundeep Hora ? Is Zappa still alive ?
Ah, that feels better.
(Sorry for the random CAPS, the lameness filter told me "Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.", well I was trying to yell, thank you very much).
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
You bring up a good point with case of the "inverse fanboy" who feverishly, persistently, and often irrationally criticizes or insults a particular company or product. The phenomenon is widespread but I think it needs a better name. If there's not a prevalent term yet, I vote for "flameboy" or "foeboy".
isn't that like a head-less setup?
Fanboy seems to be the calling card of someone with passion behind a product or company. Take away the tech and IT and gizmos and they're just fans. As in sports fans.
Hardcore fans have their team. THEIR team. Armchair coaching while watching the game, collecting memorabilia, indoctorinating others with how awesome his team is and, if they're doing less than awesome, it's because of external influences and not lack of awesomeness.
Kind of like those "Da Bears" sketches on SNL.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Fanboy seem to be looking for a replacement for religion. I mean okay you like your PS3 or Wii but why do you care if anybody else does? Same for Apple, Windows, or Linux.
I think part of it is defending your choice. People like to be right so if you bought a Wii instead of a PS3 you can feel that you are better or smarter than those that bought a PS3. If you bought a PS3 you might feel that people are insulating you be cause they are taking such glee in the lack luster sales of the PS3 so you defend it.
Frankly I find it depressing that people are now identifying themselves with some marketing juggernaut like Sony, Apple, Microsoft, AMD, Intel, and or Nintendo in place of some spiritual or ethical framework. Oh and before anyone makes some comment about killing for religion how many people got shot or hurt trying to get a PS3?
"It benefits a man not, too sell his soul for the whole world, but for a gaming console..."
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
OMG for Nintendo fanboys its more like child psychology mirite???
Yeah, but in addition the fanboy's choice of product is validated by persuading others to use the same product. Hence the proselytization. If someone else chooses the same product they must have made the correct choice themselves.
Oh Yeah... Linux rocks.
Deleted
Are you now just a Windows anti-fan, or not a fan of anything at all?
I mean, I like both the aforementioned OS's, and talk about them a lot, but they're still technically in opposition, so it makes me wonder whether the fact I support both equally is enough to counter any elitist behaviour I might exhibit when discussing either of them, as putting one thing - and one thing only - on a pedestal seems to be the trademark of the fanboy/girl.
Dudes!
CoolTechZone.com is the absolute bizz. You should stop reading all other 'tech news sites'.
Honestly, it is way better, totally the underdog. How can you believe anything these big corporate sites feed you?
shills, blatant adverts, misinformation?
</fanboi>
monk.e.boy
Open source, flash charts
The most biggest group of Fan Boys are the Grammer Fan Boyz. I Can't remember the last time the wasn't corectid for my grammer. They are clearly the mostest annoing, I can deal with the lennox, MS, Mac, OS/2 zellots but them grammor Folks are awful.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
Companies are just groups of people. I can't be a fanboi about anything but an excellent product, and few companies make all excellent products. This keeps me from drinking the kool-aid of some populist cult based on a plastic object, but does let me praise true excellence where I find it (TextPad).
technical writing / development
worth linking to? LAME...
Just as how middle eastern countries have their fundamentalist wackos shooting AK-47s into the air and hating Jews, we Americans have it too.
But, we have no religion to grasp onto, no AK-47s to shoot, or civilian areas to blow up. So we improvise in a capitalist society. We grasp on to our favorite video game console, car, team, or whatever sellable good/brand. We discuss and agree with others that have made the same purchase we do. We fight with others against who bought a competing product. Our symbols(Chevy brand, Calvin peeing on something) show our loyalty.
So it's basically a fantasy football league for capitalism. Companies know this and will milk you for it. For example, a Nike shirt. YOU pay THEM(Nike) to advertise THEIR product. Sheer genius! It's the most economical form of advertising!
C'mon we live in a capitalist society. It was bound to happen. I mean, my top friends on my myspace friends list is a bottle of Smirnoff ice and a box of tampons.
>> Wherever that term is dropped, you'll find someone who can't argue on logical terms and has resorted to name-calling.
That observation is correct, but you may be missing a key point that is necessary for context.
The reason why an otherwise-rational person can't argue on logical terms and ends up calling his opponents "fanboys" is often because those opponents refuse utterly to hold a discussion based on logic in the first place. And it's *that* trait that makes them fanboys, so the labelling is frequently entirely accurate.
A person who defends a favourite company or product through rational argument, and yet accepts negative criticism of it when logically presented, can never be a fanboy.
So yes, calling out fanboys for what they are does indeed indicate the abandonment of logical discussion by the name caller. However, logical discussion had usually been terminated previously by the other party anyway, and the name-calling just points out that fact.
Seriously this post sucks. Why is some lame rant slashdot news?
and yes I've been there was a was younger and more naive, it's that being a fanboy achieves nothing for the most part. The fact is, fanboys can be spotted a mile off and achieve nothing, if anything they counter-achieve.
Previously I was tempted to buy a Macbook, after seeing a friends, how decent a size they were and so forth it seemed like a nice buy, I'd also try developing on it and so forth but to do this I'd need to ask a fair few questions, both about developing on the Mac and possibly even when getting used to Mac OS itself. I'm no longer interested in buying one for the very reason that responses from the Apple fanboys when asking questions about the iPhone and Mac are some of the most pathetic I've ever seen, Apple fanboyism makes PS3/XBox 360 fanboyism look extremely pale in comparison.
Amen. It's amazing how few people figured this out.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I prefer "volunteer corporate evangelist" :-)
Now all the psychology fanboys are going to be coming onto /. to defend this story!
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
Typically when a group is labelled, the most interesting thing is the psychology of the group that is doing the labelling. A label is used to contain, restrict, and demean someone with an opposing view, or a view that you simply do not understand. After all, they aren't doing what most people do, so they can't be right can they... But I'm not a lemming so therefore they must be labelled as something else. If the psychology of the fanboy were really important they would name themselves. People in general do not trust people who go against the grain, particularly if they are sure of themselves. This is an issue that is gratly exaggerated on slasdot... where you must begin every post with " In my humble opinion...but I could be wrong...not to be a fanboy but..." If you just state what you think, you are a zealot or narrow-minded, or a fanboy. It should be a given that anything you say is your opinion, people should realize and accept that whether they agree or not. You should not have to beg off abuse in advance. Labels are just a part of the phenomenon of people not being able to accept individual differences (in my humble opinion) through insecurity.
People would label me a unix or mac fanboy depend on the individual comment, but it not because I have a particular attitude about those things, no religious zealotry, no overarchign RMS-philosophy, just that those tools do what I need done. If I ever needed a windows machine, or a PS3, or whatever. I would by one... It has just never come up as an issue. The non-fanboy can't accept that though.. in general...
To paraphrase Al Franken, there's a difference in love between a three year old who loves their mommy ("you said something bad about mommy! You are against her and me.") and a grown man ("yes, it is a legitimate criticism you bring up, but a minor con in the relationship")
a fanboy is someone obsessed and/or reliant on a product and therefore thinks there is no alternative. ie, any windows user. And in-turn diss people who know whats really better and usually understand the technical origins of all competing products.
MOD PARENT UP.
The thing is, it's not like slashdot has gotten worse about this. it's been the same bullshit ever since I started reading slashdot. the only thing that you no longer see as the "Linux will take over the desktop by Xmas!!!" posts any more. At best, you get the occasional glee of "Today the Friedrichshafen municicipal water department has switched to Linux, tomorrow the world!!!!"
You got modded "troll."
Sorry, man. Slashdot had its sense of humor surgically removed a couple of years ago.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
"Hora" in Norwegian means "The Whore"... Pretty suitable esp when the line below the article says "Click here to get the latest prices on Apple products!". That cracked me up!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Cmon, get a grip, do you really think the 'fanboy' phenomenon is really somehow magically limited to computers or technology.
This is just your plain old obsessive compulsive human nature. People zealously apply themselves with blind confidence to many things in life. Religion, politics, their career, their school, their family.
This is just how people tend to act when questioned or when their ideas are in competition. It would be a mistake to think the attitude had some relationship to the technology. They have simply made a mental attachment with their favorite OS or software or God and they'll defend it to the end regardless of how good the technology is in most cases. Look how long the Amiga following has lasted. They might not be flaming benchmarks at you, but they are fanboys none the less.
Seems to me this is more a matter of human nature than technology.
Original article is titled "The Psychology of Mac Zealots", which was changed here to "The Psychology of Fanboys" a much more neutral sounding title. Yet the summary still includes enough information to pass on the meme that Apple fanboys are suffering from a Napoleon Complex. Let's see... small marketshare, check. Support for their favorite company, check. Yeah... it's fun to slam Mac users ain't it? Couldn't possibly be any Windows fanboys out there right? Or even "PCs" in general, naw only those small-marketshare crazies. Those poor misguided children.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Where's the point about intellectual and emotional maturity?
I've always felt that, at least for some, rabid and rapid defense of something is a sign of personal need to justify one's choices. Perhaps I just spent a good chunk of money on a console or a laptop. Perhaps I think I'm okay financially for it, but, deep down, I'm a tad nervous as most large ticket purchases probably do to many folks. And I can't return it. Then I go online and see just how horribly ill-sighted my choice was, in the foaming, stated opinion of others.
Now, if I am intellectually and emotionally mature, I will probably not respond. But if I'm not, I'm going on the defense! How dare they say my $2100 MacBook is a "piece of dung that a Dung Beetle wouldn't even roll around." I must justify my purchase to complete strangers, dammit! (Nevermind the fact that the dung-poster probably is justifying her own choices.)
I appreciate someone trying to shine a light on this topic, but I hope the author doesn't expect any fanboys to slap themselves on the forward. "OH! That's what I'm doing! All this time! Silly me."
Cheers,
Mike...
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
http://fanboys-online.com/index.php?cid=45
Here's my paraphrasing of a show I saw on PBS. For decades, marketers have been studying cult psychology to determine what creates and sustains that frame of mind. Once they had it figured out, they started employing methods with the intention of creating a cult following for whatever product they were hired to promote. The idea was to create loyalty that transcends reason. Now, the question we have to ask ourselves is, "is there more brand loyalty now than there was back in the 50s?" If there is more brand loyalty now, we can attribute at least a portion of the fanboyism we see on a daily basis to the success of cult psychology based marketing. If they succeeded, color me scared.
The fanboy label gets thrown around a lot.. If you show a liking for anything, someone will label you a fanboy. But, sometimes a product really can just be a good product. Recognizing that fact doesn't automatically make you a fanboy.
For example, people here are quick to call Walt Mossberg (tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal) biased for Apple -- a fanboy, because he has given good ratings to a lot of Apple products. But, when I read the columns, I see them as taking care to fully analyze the product and providing a fair evaluation.
I happen to agree that Apple has made a lot of the right moves over the last five years. As a longtime Unix/Linux user, I loved NextStep but couldn't afford one of their machines. Mac OS X continues that bloodline to what I consider the best personal Unix machines going today. But, whenever I state something to that effect here, childish slashdotters are quick to dismiss it as fanboy-ism.
This is not to say I don't think there are Apple fanboys.. I have been really disappointed with a lot of iPhone issues (Cingular-only, two year commitment without any subsidy, no (real) third party app development). And, when I voice those Apple-critical opinions, there are many people who react as if I've insulted their mother.
So, yes.. doggedly defending a company without any critical thinking or logic = Fanboy.
But, no.. just expressing that a product is good or meets your needs does not mean that you're a fanboy.
...seeing as its definition of fanboy is wrong. Fanboys have nothing to do with underdogs. There are fanboys of Microsoft, Star Wars and Star Trek hardly any of which are underdogs. Fanboys are merely fans who take their love affair to the extreme regardles of whether their love interest is an underdog or not.
Does having a state issued vanity plate, "LINUX OS", make one a fanboy?
Man, am I sorry I RTFA. It's like the guy got called to dinner after ten minutes of rambling and just submitted his "column" before he went. I'm sure that there's something interesting that could be said about the psychology of fanboys. Perhaps if there was something written by a psychologist, and the result of rigorous study, and more than 500 words long, and couldn't be summarized by with "Let's all be tolerant," it could be a subject worth exploring.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
The article takes the usual approach at looking at only one side of the problem. Most of the time "fanboys" are so vocal not out of love for the underdog, but out of being fed up with the arrogance of the corporate monopolist: "You don't know what you like, so it is our duty to tell you what to like. Love our product, buy it and shut up. Why ? Because everybody else has done that". In fact AMD had almost no fanboys until they relesed the K6, but it wasn't that that caused the fanboys to become both numerous and vocal. It was the arrogance of Intel telling everyone what great favour they are doing everybody by shoving the Celeron down their throats. Intel's attitude was "Everyone has bought a Celeron, so what are you waiting for ?", while at the same time experimenting with the product. They were experimenting in downgrading a product and expected people to foot the bill. And incredibly large numbers of ignorant cunsumers happily swallowed the crap that Intel was feeindg them. They were blisfully unaware of the fact that they were financing a monopolist's attemtp to figure out how much can they lower the quality of a product and keep people happy to buy it. Surprisingly or not, they were very happy as long as Intel told them that the Celeron is good for them. Fanboys are simply capable to think for themselves, and do not like to be treated as computer illiterates by sales people who themselves are proud of being computer illiterate. That is why they buy a product for its features, not because Dell, MS or Intel told them that it is good for them.
OK, I am one of those, though I would hesitate to call myself a fanboy. (Pentax hasn't done everything I wish, or as well as I would like.)
SLR photography (film or digital) tends to encourage brand loyalty, because of the modular nature of the system. You're not just buying a camera body, you're also buying lenses and other accessories with a longer lifecycle. Even when a shiny new camera body comes out, people are loath to change brands, which would mean selling all their lenses too.
Pentax were slow to the digital SLR market, and did things a little differently to their main competitors (Canon & Nikon);
On photography sites such as DPReview (a new Amazon acquisition), the DSLR market is generally considered to be a two-horse race, with Canon's & Nikon's huge marketing budgets meaning they could send reviewers on press junkets, and get cameras into reviewer hands more quickly. Other makers are treated with lower priority, which leads to some well-documented irritation.
The result, on forums, is a classic Clash of the Fanboys: Canon users like the high frame rates (on some models) and the highly-sharpened and saturated JPEGs. Pentax users had a lot to be fanboys about when the K10D was released, thanks to price, ergonomics, lens compatibility and weatherproof construction. Canon sell far more than Pentax, of course, and Pentax is in some corporate difficulty, leading to deliberately-antagonistic "Pentax is dying" statements. Meanwhile, Pentax users are as mad as hell at the preponderance of C&N gear in camera stores, and the fact that some reviewers just ignore the whole brand, regardless of a camera's merits. Each side uses "Fanboy" as an insult, while Nikon users generally stay out of the battles if they can (or so it seems to me).
Fanboys, eh? 8)
* megapixel race: the marketing-led drive to squeeze more megapixels on to a digital camera sensor - ignoring the fact that the size of individual pixels has a huge impact on image quality esp. noise performance, and the defining role played by the lens in image quality. The result is a range of 10 megapixel compact cameras that produce poor quality images in good lighting conditions, never mind in low light e.g. indoors. The pictures are fine for the web, if you shrink them to a small fraction of their original size...
(this is not a
Amiga Persecution Complex
Signed,
idontgno
former Amiga fanboi
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
those opponents refuse utterly to hold a discussion based on logic in the first place
Right, but I already had that covered: a person who is repeatedly wrong is either delusional or deliberately mistruthful. So instead of dropping the "fanboy" -- that vague, near-meaningless term which essentially amounts to mindless insult -- why not just call him out for what he really is: either delusional or deliberately mistruthful.
I'm not sure if you got the joke and decided to play along or whether you took it seriously, but either way... both hilarious and insightful. :)
..."Click here to get the latest prices on Apple products!"
... that computers built around the S-100 bus are WAY better'n those toys that use the SS-50 bus!
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
There are no "fanboys" for underdogs. The "fanboys" rally around the top commercial products in each market, based on logic such as (1) X is on top, and as long as we stay loyal to X, X will stay on top, (2) the more I support X, the more X's value rises in my 401(K), (3) I've based my career on X, so I'm screwed if X dies, (4) any competition is a threat to X.
There, I pulled TFA's lies inside out to be the truth instead, and said more in less space; read the above paragraph instead of the TFA and go home happy.
I see three different types: the political, the tech, and the fashion fanboys.
The political ones (obviously I am talking about the open source fans) love the ideas or values behind a technology or a company.
The fashion ones love the brand, or the image associated with the brand.
Both of these first two will often claim that they are actually tech fanboys, but that their tech happens to be the best. There probably are real tech fanboys, but they are hard to distinguish from the other two.
I believe that I am none of the above, but I have the most sympathy for the political fanboys and the least for the fashion fanboys. I like good technology, but I'm not going to get excited about it. Fashion I have disdain for. At least with political values I can understand people caring enough to become fanboys, though they can become bigots and harm their own cause if they go too far (I guess every movement has its crazies).
It starts with an idea. I have the idea that Linux is all kinds of great, super. I generally gravitate on the web towards other people that think the same way about Linux. Pretty soon, I have surrounded myself with nothing but Linux lovers, a group that I now want to join, distorting my ideas into beliefs and those beliefs get built with a prepackaged lifestyle. (I like Linux therefore I must hate Microsoft, etc, etc)
Now substitute the idea of "liking linux" with "not liking America for perceived transgressions." What you have at work with the fanboys is, at a fundamental level, the same societal forces that radicalize terrorists. People are social and want to belong to a group, and they can gravitate towards self-radicalizing groups. Fanboys, communists, terrorists, hippies, yuppies, ravers, goths, ballerz, and so on are all product of their surroundings, especially when you can choose your own surroundings.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
This is known as the crafty consumer phenomenon, and it was mentioned in another Slashdot discussion last year, check it out.
The saddest poem
While there are others in the world, lets face it, we're talking about Apple fans... While there are 'fanboys' who follow the company blindly, these are in the minority.
I'm getting sick and tired of the stereotyping of Apple pundits as fanboys. Lets get some facts straight about me, and I think the majority of Apple fans reading Slashdot:
1. We are technically savvy.
2. We know the face of the technology today and what products are being offered in the marketplace.
3. We use Apple's products because they range from equal to much better than the products of other companies.
4. We are harder on Apple as a company than non-fans simply because our criticism is more informed.
5. The only 'psychology' of our platform-choice is that of wanting machines that work elegantly and efficiently. It's no deeper than that.
6. Before using the term 'fanboy' to describe anyone who chooses to champion Apple and its products, I ask that you buy a Mac, and use one for a month. The vast majority of flame-spreaders out there either haven't used OS X or used it with the mindset that anything that wasn't exactly like Windows was 'wrong'.
7. For the record, I hate being the underdog. I think most other Apple users do too. Instead of asking "why we like being the underdog", how about asking "why do so many people use a platform that puts them in the position as the underdog", maybe there's a reason, and maybe it isn't psychological, maybe its technical.
Fanboyism, as we see it today is closely tied to lifestyle and branding. Companies, more than every before, have developed identities and products around set lifestyles. These companies then expend massive resources trying to convey the message that a particular lifestyle is cool and necessary. Given that society has grown increasingly materialistic you get people gravitating towards a particular company which they believe defines who they are.
Of course, it also gets more complicated than that. There's a level of fanaticism that pervades society in general. Everything is black and white. You either like PCs or Macs. You either like the PS3 or a Wii. You're either a liberal or a conservative. A person can't really fall somewhere in the middle. They can't appreciate aspects of either side of the argument. If you're in the middle inevitable people on the fringes end up labeling you as the extremist.
Being completely devoted to a single company is as irrational as completely hating a company. A rational person might come to the conclusion they don't like Microsoft, for example. But they should still be able to acknowledge that Microsoft has done something of merit.
I have come to prefer Macs over PCs; I'm using one at the moment. However, many Mac fanatics are particularly absurd. There are people with Steve Job's portrait as their desktop background. I stumbled onto a site where those backgrounds were available and frankly it was pathetic how people were fawning over this guy.
A company doesn't adore you. It doesn't exist to make you happy. Nor does it hate you and try to make your life miserable. The people at these companies aren't looking to destroy the world. Fanboyism isn't really anything but a simplistic, polarized view of the world.
"Fans"
Perfectly good word, you know.
Linux will take over the desktop by Xmas!!!
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I have reason to suspect that there are more anti-mac zealots than pro-apple zealots.
The psychology is simple. A fanboy wants their own choices to be validated. They bought a mac, dell, whatever and now they feel any slight against those products is a terrible personal insult.
If you say "I heard that Mac has problem XYZ." they hear "Yet another design flaw in Mac, you are incredibly stupid for having bought one."
fanboyism is just a projection of a person's insecurities about their own decision making abilities. it might be annoying, but it's natural. One thing more annoying than a fanboy are the people who troll fanboys. It's sort of like picking on someone who is a little slow, and it doesn't impress anyone.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Same thing that makes for fanatical Republicans, fanatical Democrats, annoying street preachers, Fred Phelps, anti-religon proselytizers, and so on.
Once you can establish that you are part of a good group, and that other people are part of a bad group who threaten you, you can get all sorts of really happy feelings.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Most fanboys don't admit they are fanboys. They tend to say they are just posting the truth and that truth just happens to support the product or company they are fans of. The fact that you responded to this topic in this manner indicates that your truth may be overly bias towards Apple and your argument is often used by fanboys. I'm not saying your a fanboy just that you sound like one. Saying I post correct information about the company doesn't mean a whole lot. Should I take your word on that? A fanboy creates, highlights and distributes logical reasoning to backup their products and that reasoning is biased. If that same reason supports the competition they ignore it or try nitpick a small difference. But the golden rule is to never admit or realise your bias or your agenda and pretend that you are fair and balanced.
Semantical discussions of "fanboy" aside, fanboyism is the extreme identification with anything (e.g. ideas, cars, OSes, religion, sports teams, country of origin, university).
Identity formation is reflected through personal choices in addition to social, religious, and cultural affiliations. Whether I go out to buy an expensive sports car or a fuel economic hybrid says something about me. In regards to this article, my materialistic choices are a reflection of myself and thus those criticizing my decisions are indirectly attacking my identity.
Whether or not someone feels the need to defend themselves depends on how strongly they identify themselves with that particular choice. Criticize a person's choice in gasoline stations and they won't care. Criticize a Southern Baptist for their religious choices and they'll bite your head off.
Every individual strongly identifies themselves with something, but there are individuals who are more prone to confirmation bias more than others.
What makes Apple more susceptible to fanboyism is that the company not only advertises superior products, but also subliminally advertises a superior lifestyle. "Our products aren't just better than yours, we're better than you."
What is the first thing that comes to mind if I told you there were 3 people with Mac laptops and 2 with IBM laptops in a downtown coffee shop?
Ideally one shouldn't come to any preconceptions, but I instantly thought of the Mac users as snobby creative types and the IMB users as business professionals. This shows my personal biases towards these two companies, and apparently that marketing an image works.
Steve Jobs is the personification and corporate cultural leader of Apple more than Bill Gates ever was. Even though I have no preference for Apple products, after watching the iPhone keynote speech I was "OMFG the iPhone is going to change the world and Apple rocks!". Afterwards I had to remind myself it was just a phone. That man is a modern day Hitler.
This is stupid; it's already a very well understood behavior and mindset, IFF you dispense with the stupid buzzword and define it as it traditionally has been, as just another form of dogma. Any search engine or library will reward you with plenty of information about the symptoms and emotional causes of dogmatism. You don't need to waste your time reading some pointless article from a TECH publication attempting to describe a PYSCH phenomenon.
When my brother wanted to install Linux on my sisters PC, I got irritated. The philosopher I am, I wondered why, and figured it ultimately was I really loved Windows XP/Vista, and didn't wanto see it go away.
Further thinking brought to the conclusion, Linux can be all what Windows was to me, a simple way to setup resolution and network, responsive windows that float around in XGL heaven, and easy driver update.
I've used Windows for many years and I'm very familiar with it, it's like loosing a good friend. But now I don't mind.
Teasing the nobles, and rightfully so!
Ya'll need to get a life if you're going to sit here and defend your love of Mac / Nintendo / Sony / Linux as if your entire identity was rolled up in there. Get a damn Mopar.
Linux and Mac fanboys approach from a position of advocate with high standards, trying to get people to try something they believe is superior to what everyone else is using. Microsoft fanboys, however, seem hell-bent on obsessing over market share numbers and strutting over how big Microsoft is. Quality versus quantity.
"Sufferin' succotash."
This article is completely misunderstanding fanboyhood.
I say this because the most rabid and ubiquitous fanboys are Microsoft fanboys.
Since Microsoft is not an underdog it can't have anything to do
with rooting for the underdog.
or soccer for that matter. People get attached to what they believe in, even when their wrong. I think the fanboyism stems from the denial that is created when you will not accept that Wind^W^U the product simply does not work as advertised. Ever.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
"Fanboy" isn't a pejorative term, for me anyway. They drive opening weekends for films - they camp out in line and attend multiple screenings And what would ComicCon be without the fanboys? Or girls for that matter? (ComicCon has gotten too big, now that the movie studios have invaded the space, but there are still some fun moments.) Maybe fanboys should just take back the term and strut their stuff, like gays use the "Q" word. Fanboys, it's the new F-word. Long live the fanboys. P.S. I'm a Mac fan myself but I'm fanperson enough to admit that my latest MacBook hasn't worked out too well. The hard drive fried after six months, the plastic is peeling off in strips around the edges, the click button is skewed and sticks, and the darn thing runs hot, really hot. Too hot to be a laptop in the summer, that's for sure. It's great in the winter tho. Very cozy.
Because everybody who isn't autistic knows that a fanboy is delusional or deliberately dishonest. There's more to it than just that.
I'm a bit of a fanboy. It comes from a mix of wanting to see Apple grow, mostly because I want them to continue, because I love their products, and I think everyone deserves them, also because more market share means game companies taking them seriously =P
That, and there's a lot of false rumors surrounding Macs, and it just drives us nuts.
Fanboy'ism is interesting. One might call me an Open Source fanboy. It's interesting though, although I am rabidly anti-propriatery software, I feel that I have the experiences and rational to backup my feelings. Basically, I ask, is there a difference between a fanboy and someone who has just honest had an unusually bad set of experiences with basically everything that they are not a fanboy of?
I've worked in Robotics labs for several years. The first time I ran into a somewhat poorly written piece of software it took me 2 years to get enough specs for the hardware (based on someone elses reverse engineering resulting in a peice of software) before I could fix the software and make it stable, make it run 4 times faster, and upgrade from linux 2.2 to 2.6.
The second time I we were using a proprietary vision library compiled as a *.a. I tried to upgrade the OS to a newer kernel because I wanted libusb. To do this I needed a newer glibc. It turned out I was stuck at the next changeover of libstdc++ calling convention because otherwise the *.a wouldn't link. As a result that robot can NEVER be upgraded.
It's not an axium but a derived rule, sortof like thermodynamics that all software has bugs. The reality is, if you use a peice of software enough you WILL find bugs in it, and if you really depend on it you will want to fix them. Thus it's idiotic to ever depend on software that you CAN'T fix. Sure maybe you can pay someone enough to fix it, but they will take time, and they may not believe you. As a computer geek, and at least a decent programmer, I know the edge cases, and I hate working around them. After you code for a while you realize just how little code out there SHOULD work, and are amazed that anything works at all. By default I will crash a piece of software within about a week of using it.
Now, I understand that not everyone is a developer, and if your not going to fix bugs, obviously you should get the software that works the best for your needs. So I try hard not to push open source on everyone, but for myself, I know perfectly well that whoever the developed the program has less than a 2% chance of being a better coder than I, or at least one of my good friends. As a result, If I'm going to depend on it I'd rather be able to fix it. This also means that I'm heavilly biased towards small simple programs though as well, because they are easier to get right, and easier to repair.
So.... am I a fanboy? I literally haven't installed realplayer or flashplayer on my laptop because they are closed source. I won't by a nvidia card, I'd rather have an i810 than the newest nvidia on the market. I buy hardware based on being able to run linux on it. I won't use a normal PDA, even palms piss me off because they're closed. I have an n770 and I'm trying to recompile the OS for it from scratch because it's too hard to get software on it as is, and I can't make the modifications I want to every part of the OS. I honestly feel that any computer that isn't running an open operating system is useless to me. I will readilly recognize that I'm batshit crazy, but am I a fanboy? I don't know.