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The Science Behind Fanboyism
crookedvulture writes "We've all encountered fanboys. They lurk on messageboards and in comment threads, ready to trumpet the benefits of their product or brand of choice with Cheeto-stained fingertips. And it's not their fault. This analysis of the scientific research on the subject reveals that our brains unconsciously develop an affinity for products we choose over similarly attractive alternatives. Duh, right? But what's really interesting is that this affinity exists not just among adults, but also children, monkeys, and even amnesic subjects with no memory of their original choices. We're all hard-wired to be fanboys, it seems. Some of us just do a better job of overcoming our subconscious tendencies."
When clearly Doritos are the superior snack food.
Orwell was an optimist.
Is there any research into what turns affinity for a product into to the need to be a dick about it?
I think it's much more than merely developing an affinity for products we choose over alternatives. The mark of a fanboy isn't that they like something better, it's that they've literally coalesced into miniature tribes where their preferred product (Apple being the obvious example) becomes the culture and any alternative culture (say, Windows PCs or Linux) are intruders or the enemy. But that's not really a surprise. Humans love tribes. We've loved them when we were tree-dwelling primates.
My postings are informational and does not constitute legal advice. Act on it at your risk.
Boy was I such a fanboy of such a mediocre game...it was my first MMO (ahhhh, first love, no wonder)...so this study must be true.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
[ Insert rant about party systems here ]
"This analysis of the scientific research on the subject reveals that our brains unconsciously develop an affinity for products we choose over similarly attractive alternatives. "
Elliot Aronson described this in his 1972 textbook Social Animal. (Resolving cognitive dissonance and stuff ...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliot_Aronson
As and avowed Apple fan, I do sometimes wonder about my odd feelings of love for my iThings and Mac.
Why would this effect be obvious? That we choose products which we favor seems logical, but that we favor products /after/ having chosen them, even if we have a horrible experience with them after the acquisition, is not "duh".
I mean really, this whole article is just an excuse for the trolls to come out and say how good their fanboyism is versus all the other fanboys.
I've never seen such an obvious pitch for vi, Windows, and Ubuntu
You align yourself to a belief in something or someone then defend it despite any contrary evidence or arguments no matter how well presented. Then occasionally someone has a "conversion" - eg christianity to islam or windows to mac and they're now just as fervently against their previous choice and tub thumping for their new one.
Personally I think its a mild mental illness and its hard to tell apart the tone of the rantings of fanbois from religious nutters.
I for one welcome our new Cheeto-stain-fingered fanboy overlords.
As long as they are /. fans!
We see it all the time here. There are rabid fans of this or that company and there are rabid haters of the same. Both groups are sick and pathetic and, I believe, doing pretty much the same thing. The problem at slashdot is that people who like or defend a product or company and who are being fairly rational and objective are often dismissed as "fanbois" by the haters. I see a lot more haters at slashdot than I do real fanbois. Most real fanbois are probably more comfortable staying with the sites where their views aren't questioned. I suppose the haters enjoy their group thinking at slashdot.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
What about anti-fanboyism, where someone's irrational hate for a product they attack the product and demonize it's users at every opportunity?
in our world, admitting you were wrong before is seen as a sign of weakness. Would you say " I bought this but in hindsight it's a piece of crap". Everybody would translate this as "he admit being an idiot therefore he is an idiot". This in turn would cause you to lose prestige then lower your employability. That's why our world is led by overconfident idiots.
It is probably a protective strategy, to defend our choices. As we choose a mate we will try to protect them as to secure the next generation. Evolution probably went where this over-generalization of the effect was good enough, and it didn't need to be particular down to having to be a mate, just a choice.
Hanging on to the Idea that your OS choice is superior to the others, and the need to protect it against other ideas, falls under the same emotion. Failure to do so may cause other OS's to become more popular then you have wasted your time and resources on that choice. But if you defend it and keep it going then your choice was valid and good and you didn't wast your life on your OS choice.
The same with religion, Religions that expand by converting adults are often have members with more Zeal then people who grew up with a Religion because that was what their family practiced. Or with someone who decided to become an Atheist, they will often be more hateful towards people who believe in religion.
I personalty try to catch myself becoming a fan-boy and make sure I say sensible about it... Although I don't always succeed as it is such a primitive emotion I feel it has helped me keep in good graces with a lot of people.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm sure plenty of us have gone out with someone who we initially thought was ok but not amazing but eventually got to really like them. And it certainly wasn't because their personality or looks had undergone some radical overhaul in that time.
Our adherence to products we love causes us to favor our choices over others? Makes perfect sense to me, we all want reasons to love our decisions. Now if only we didn't give so much of a damn about how our decisions compare against those of others, then there would be 100% fewer "fanboyism" fights. And less fighting is good, unless I am a madman and no longer have any idea what I'm talking about. We like being right, but it's not always necessary to show it. Maybe if everyone decided once each day to realize situations, not take flamebait and keep their opinions to themselves, we'd all be friendlier. Go ahead and get angry at me for showing some optimism, but deep down inside y'all know it's true.
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
Great observation. I believe we reduce the political field to two parties because we all want to win... So we rally behind those who have the largest chance of winning.
Even if someone follows a third party, they most likely will vote "with the winner" instead of their own party which stands little to no chance of winning.
The brain does not use deduction, it uses pattern matching, and therefore, given enough training over the same things, a bias is developed.
At least fanboys are expressing a positive sentiment--haters are losers. Live and let live--somebody smart said that once.
explaining how or why someone thinks or acts a certain way does not remove them from accountability or responsibility
"well see, he is a drug addict, so when he mowed down the family with his car, this is why it is not his fault"
this is obviously tangential, but i want to make sure people understand: there is nothing wrong with explaining why people behave a certain way or say a certain thing. but explaining why they do something doesn't mean they are removed from responsibility or accountability for their actions
i see this kind of thinking about responsibility like in the summary all the time, and it bothers me, as various neurobiological investigations EXPLAIN someone's behavior but it doesn't EXCUSE someone's behavior
some people think explaining=excusing. no: without personal accountability in this world, all sense of morality is destroyed. if it comes out of your mouth or your hands, YOU are responsible for it. no explanation nullfies that. please understand that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I guess that's why I keep coming here, as opposed to switching to reddit.
They get a show on Fox News or MSNBC and pretend they are newscasters.
I'm I the only one who is concerned by the validity of their experiment. The last experiment lets me very dubious.
Imagine you have 3 smileys. They have similar ratings, but for sure there is one you prefer, one you rate 2nd and one you rate 3rd. Now, let's just see the result we would have for each scenario.
Rating of cards 1/2/3 ; 3rd card chosen after initial choice ; 3rd card chosen without initial choice (so just between card 2 and card 3)
1/2/3 ; False (1 chosen on first pass) ; False
1/3/2 ; True (1 chosen on first pass) ; True
2/1/3 ; False (1 chosen on first pass) ; False
2/3/1 ; True (2 chosen on first pass) ; True
3/1/2 ; True (1 chosen on first pass) ; False
3/2/1 ; True (2 chosen on first pass) ; True
Which makes in the first experiment 50% chances of choosing the third card and 66% when we made a previous "preselection". This is approximately the figures children had. Monkeys had lower 3rd card preference, maybe because they prefer to take cards in order.
About the rest of the article, I'm just as dubious. If you choose a product, for sure you rate it better. It's called the cause of you choosing it, not a consequence ...
I (buy android) am (ipad is crap) completely (don't touch windows with a barge pole) unbiased (and let's not mention blackberry), thanks (nor symbian)
PLEASE APPLE!! If you would just let me have an iPhone 5 NOW instead of me having to wait ALL the way until fall, I PROMISE to hold it right!! I'll do ANYTHING! Please!?!? I really don't want to cryogenically freeze myself again :(
That's because some of us are more intelligent and realize being a fanboy doesn't stand up to questioning. The rest just mindlessly follow, follow, follow the yellow-brick road...
Or maybe fanbois develop irrational and emotional attachments to products because they are just average idiots who have been beguiled by marketing. That is after all the whole point of mass marketing -- to beguile the average idiot.
".... Some of us just do a better job of overcoming our subconscious tendencies."
It's called "being a rational, critically thinking person" and ignoring the shininess to look for value.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Cool Ranch is by far the greatest creation ever. Taco was a conspiracy brought on by the global banks investment in the Doritos brand. But they couldn't silence Cool Ranch freedom of choice! I mean, can you even eat Taco with Dr. Pepper and call yourself a lover of freedom? No, it's horrible and eats away at the mind! Cool Ranch and Dr. Pepper will lead to world peace and we will not be silenced!
Down with the Taco Conspiracy!
I8-D
I do have to say that it depends on the individual. I speak from my choices, along with friends' choices. When I buy something, I don't just pick it up and think immediately that it's awesome since awesome would need some sort of base. Before I buy something, I research it and it's competition, pros/cons, etc. Of course there are many areas which the grey areas are the selling points as that is the only deviant properties.
Though I'm sure that there are going to be lots that simply say I'm lieing and go on trying to prove everyone thinks compulsively.
I love Apple because when you use Apple's products you come out as intelligent person. You aren't like a normal person who is only able to use Windows, but neither you are a nerd that uses Linux. With Apple's products you can really just go out with your iPad, sit down at the coffee shop and wait for girls to come talk to you.
we are hardwired to excuse away the faults of something when we are vested in it.
Fanboys are people who go to the extreme end and try to force other people to ignore the same faults that are.
It applies to family, religion, products, everything. The length of the excuse will be correlated to the amount of value and time people put into something
It should be noted that being aware that happens means someone can learn how to recognize and stop making those emotional judgements.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's easy to induce fanboyism; just give the subject a bag of Cheetos, Doritos, or any crunchy snack.
The most extreme fanboys are those who have received little gifts from vendors. A desk trinket or T-shirt goes a long way towards making the prospective fanboy feel "loved", "part of the team", etc. Bigger gifts work even better -- free products for home use, "training", etc. And for the truly resistant fanboy there is some extreme methods that can induce fanboyism: blackjack and strippers.
The other way to induce fanboyism is to prevent the subject from discovering alternatives. If you can make sure the prospective fanboy never drives a car other than Toyota, he or she will probably become a Toyota fanboy with no incentives whatsoever.
In humans, the degree of fanboyism (let's call it the "FB factor") is computed by the number of excuses per hour the person will make to defend the shortcomings of whatever the fanboy is addicted to.
Computing FB for prospective fanboys of Microsoft was hotly disputed until Vista provided a foolproof test case.
What would be interesting would be to figure out why certain products attract the more shrill fanboys. The worst two are easily Apple and Nintendo; I would guess Apple attracts the most brainwashees because they have a slick marketing operation, and Nintendo does because a lot of people grew up on Nintendo so had it imprinted early.
"Some of us just do a better job of overcoming our subconscious tendencies."
I've never met any of these people.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
Part of being a fanboy is to ALWAYS consider the OTHER to be the fanboy.
An even bigger part of it is to consider anyone who favors a choice that is not yours to be a dick about not begging for mercy for their erroneous choice and call on you to show them the light.
It is like that [insert race you think of as dumb here] who heard on the radio, while driving down the highway, that there was a car going the wrong direction and proclaims "one car? I see dozens!".
Everyone else is a fanboy for foolishly claim their inferior product is better then mine.
I'm sure that the research has hit upon the primary factor behind fanboyism; however, for certain groups, it goes far beyond those reasons. For many products and technologies, there is a personal investment in time and money that gets wasted if your particular choice falls out of the mainstream. Behind most consumer technology, there is a critical mass that is needed for any sustainment of future relevance. To many fanboys, there is a feeling that it falls to them to make sure that others buy in to the same technology, so that the critical mass can be reached.
There is nothing wrong with being enthusiast over a product and IMO there's also nothing wrong with sharing your experiences and opinion on how great the product actually is.
The problem is simply that certain people lack self reflection and a healthy dose of common sense.
When it comes to music / audio production my favorite tool is the combination of together with Max for Live. The latter being a visual programming environment ('Max / MSP / Jitter') which has been "embedded" for Ableton Live.
And I guess writing all of this up here also marks me some kind of fanboy. Quite frankly I am; I'm very excited about the products and the stuff I can do with it.
BUT... I'll also be the first to acknowledge that this software can't do it all (well, it comes very close though) and that other people might be much better of using other environments (Reason/Record, ProTools or maybe stuff like Cubase or maybe even Reaper).
THAT is IMO where things go wrong. There is nothing scientific about it; some people are simply dorks and lack any common sense. What they say goes and other people are simply "wrong" because. We all should know by example since most of our countries are ruled by such people.
I bet you could make a case for this applying to people who like a certain type of music over another. We don't like to think of our music choices as "products" but I've certainly seen the same play out.
Discussions like:
"Country is the Best" usually followed by "Not in My Car"
"Trance is the Best"
"Metal is the Best"
Of course, we all know that Trance is the actually the best--so it's kind of a moot point, I suppose. :-)
All association with a product, person or people, or ideology is a way for people to augment their identity in such a way that they appear to have some level of importance in the social strata of their choosing. Identification with an equally attractive thing risks being ousted from the social strata based on the fanboyism of the original thing or at least being of diminished importance within said fanboy group. This is really just a subset of the social dynamics that exist among peers or in politics. For example, an alpha male does something incredibly asinine, something that anyone outside his group would call him an idiot for. However, within his group, his underlings rally behind his stupidity out of fear of being of less importance in the group, while everyone else who calls him out for his stupidity are instantly shunned.
TL;DR: People tend to make decisions based on how important those decisions make them feel, not so much because of the practicality of those decisions.
of that all-time greatest fan-boy tag line?
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
Can't blame the good doctor, he didn't put those lustful thoughts for your mother into your head either. ;-)
Now explain what is this "Windows" I keep hearing about...
Yeah... Nothing new here. Psychologists have understood confirmation bias for decades --if only the unwashed masses had this insight and could turn off Fox News (or Air America?) long enough to consider their own biases. God, what I wouldn't do to get one semester of critical thinking added to the K-12 educational curriculum.
Like Michael Shermer points out in his recent book, giving mental priority to our first impressions and previous experience was critical to our survival back when we were swinging from the trees. Today it's more likely to lead us into making bad political and personal choices.
Ask me about my sig!
From Social Psychology an interesting construct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
La culpa no es del chancho...
Pfft, I laugh at your pathetic iPad. The only Apple product worth taking out in public is an iPad2. Thus says our lord Steve Jobs *Peace be upon Him*
I got here through a series of tubes
i swear to god man every time i visit slashdot it just get better and better, from the funky green/teal colors to the submissions and the comments are the best! even the anonymous cowards are to be loved!
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Harvard Psychologist Dan Gilbert, who was mentioned in the article, did an excellent TED talk on this very subject. Definitely worth watching - it's one my favorites.
Why Are We Happy?
In Social Web 2.0 some scary things emerge from taking your nice statement and playing musical chairs with the words.
(Modified from Talderas' original)
"People are just products. Mark Zuckerberg defines your worth and thus his own through who he uses via who you associate with."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Dan Gilbert, Harvard psychologist, and one of the scientists behind the data used in the article, made an excellent talk at TED. Definitely worth viewing. Why are we Happy?
Honestly, I think that calling someone a "fanboy" is just an ad hominem attack that people use when someone else's favorite thing is different from your favorite thing. The fact is, people come to like things, and they enjoy talking about them. Some people won't shut up about football. It's their thing. They enjoy it. They may seem unwilling to admit that basketball is an equally valid sport, from an objective point of view, because to them, football is the best thing. EVERYONE has this kid of narrow perspective on SOMETHING. However, while they may be narrow about it, calling them a fanboy is nothing but a way to completely dismiss every argument they make, even those that may be perfectly valid and useful. Maybe they are wrong that basketball sucks, but they may be equally correct that football is awesome.
Let's try an example. Richard Dawkins is an atheism fanboy. In fact, he's a great scientist and educator. I understand evolutionary biology very well, but this guy could run rings around me when it comes to depth of knowledge and the ability to explain it clearly to others. On the other hand, he's got a bug up his ass about the evils of religion. Many of his complaints are perfectly legitimate, of course, because various religions have been the cause of massive atrocities. Moreover, our scientific understanding has brought us to the point that the vast majority of things that humans once attributed to gods are in fact the result of completely natural processes that follow consistent physical laws. With regard to the vast majorty of the world, it is completely unnecessary and even perhaps inappropriate to evoke "God" as part of the explanation. That being said, an absence of evidence does not imply evidence of absence. For all we know, "God" could be inhabitants of a meta universe wherein our universe is a computer simulation, and they have made occasional tweaks to keep the simulation running right. So, Dawkins has taken his lack of evidence for God and taken a leap of faith that there definitly isn't one, and rather than just being a proponent of atheism, he is vehement about it, attempting to persuade people of the "truth" of his belief. He should stick to being a fantastic scientist and picking at specific problems that religions cause (in any case, religions are human constructs), and stop being so forceful about something he can't really prove. He can prove evolution. He can't prove atheism. Evolution is good science. Atheism is a belief, taken on faith, even if it is in fact highly plausible, with the alternatives having very little support. (I am inclined to think that agnosticism is the only belief without faith, because it doesn't assert anything specific, but I could be wrong about that.)
The point I'm making here is that Dawkins has some errors in his reasoning that might make some people dismiss him. If you're religious and he attacks your religion, then you're not going to want to listen to him talk about evolution. But in fact, he's one of the BEST people to listen to if you want to understand evolution.
I was thinking of going on with some other example about Mac fanboys, but I'm running out of time. For me, I'm just getting old and I prefer the fact that a Mac doesn't make me babysit basic things like connecting to wifi or backing up files. But my idiology places usability concerns first, with issues of "free software" coming second. The point is that many Mac fanboys have religious fervor. Nothing can touch the awesomeness of a Mac. But I'm sure you can anticipate what I'm going to say next: Even if their knowledge of Windows and Linux is completely wrong, they know tons about Macs and you might learn something from that.
If your parents didn't think you were wonderful when the rest of the world thought you were an obnoxious brat, you wouldn't be here right now.
People in general have an affinity to belong to groups ... Tribes, religions, sports teams, Coke or Pepsi, vi or emacs, KY or Astroglide ...
People invest their self worth into these things, and they feel threatened when challenged. Sometimes, they feel motivated to tell everybody else how they should also sign up for this exclusive club .. because it further validates their self image.
I think the reverse is also true, some people have invested just as much into disliking something ... oh, for example, the almost irrational hatred of Apple you see here on Slashdot (which, if I remember correctly, is about what it was for Microsoft about 8-10 years ago).
That the 'other guy is a doodie head' is part of the us/them image you build up. He simply has to be a doodie head, because he disagrees with you on a topic on which You Are Right(tm).
I suspect from an evolutionary perspective, this is probably indicative of a broader range of how people have affinities for group membership as a whole.
Or, I'm talking completely out of my ass ... it could go either way really. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Sorry folks, you can't say from a purely behavioral study what "the brain" is doing. Even if you take a totally materialist stance (as opposed to dualism) you still can't. You must point to a brain region that lights up (or is damaged), or event related potentials (a type of EEG analysis) to talk about what the brain is doing. In this case, it is entirely possible that other parts of the nervous system are influencing the biases reported in TFA and the cited articles. The peripheral nervous system is important for behavioral and emotional processes too. For example, paralyzed patients experience dampened affect, among other things.
As a neuroscientist I'm scared that the perception of my field will be hurt by crappy pop neuroscience, much like how psychology was hurt by pop psychology in the 90s (and is still recovering).
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
Therefore it is good to reply to.
QED
"Some of us just do a better job of overcoming our subconscious tendencies."? More like "some of us convince themselves that their hatred is actually based on reason, and that it is actually proof they are beyond fanboyism" - and they are. Far beyond.
Fandroids hate facts.
A degree of hysteresis in a decision-making process, when selecting between discrete alternatives, protects against chronic flip-flopping when the choice is not clear-cut. Therefore, it should be no surprise that biological systems display this property.
I hate the Apple fanboys the most, foaming at the mouth with their idiotic arguments as to why their overpriced, underwhelming garbage is worth it. I read a post once from one arguing that Apple purposely making the iPod so you couldn't replace the battery was a good thing. He said it would ruin the beautiful esthetics. Morons.
At this time and age, being passionate about something can be labeled as fanboyism. Sure there are bona-fide fanbois out there, but people passionate about something is being labelled fanboy by anyone who disagrees.
It's like if every positive quality of mankind was being diluted until it's reduced to a set of memes.
"Some of us just do a better job of overcoming our subconscious tendencies."
Discrimination is a survival trait. It only needs to be overcome when it hampers good decisions.
I run a ballroom at Dragoncon every year.
Hardwired or not, seen plenty of fanboy-ism ... from the guy asking Felicia Day for her phone number, to the screaming girls when Tom Felton walked out on stage.
It's just normal hero worship .. or something .. or not ...
Sure there are tons of places where they went a little over the top, but Apple took an open source core and did all the UI work that FOSS folks put off for a decade. It's as simple as that. It's "BSD on the desktop", followed by "2nd derivative of BSD on the phone".
All their recent patent / lawsuits stuff is typical big $ corp games. "FOSS honesty" starts to creak when the dollars flow in. Google managed Not To Be Evil for a couple of years, but then they had to Just Do Stuff against nasty competitors.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
If you identify with any of the tools you use: OS's, programming languages, platforms, then an attack on the tool you identify with, is an attack on yourself. You will vehemently defend an attack on your self identity. The only practical way to avoid fanboy-ism is to be a professional and not to identify with your tools, simply realize, that every useful thing is a tool and not 'who you are'. Then you can give a professional opinion on any of your tools, the pluses and minuses, without having to feel threatened emotionally.
It's an identity issue, people want to find a common ground to identify with, and with obsess with a certain factor they see as part of their identity.
Hence why fanboys create labels for themselves. This is why we have 3 separate religions in the world that believe in the very same god (I know there are more than 3, I'm using the big 3 that believe in the same god as an example) but will kill each other over the fact it isnt in the same way.
hell, even within those religions there are separate sects that believe in similar, but different ways.
Catholics vs, protestants, Suuni vs Shiite, and then there are some jewish sects I cannot think of the names of, and even within those there are different views.
If all put in the same room and given weapons, there would be a blood bath because THEIR WAY is better. They identify with those views, it is part of who they are and someone else who isnt that is a threat to them as the others think that their identity is simply better. This goes both ways. Muslims think they're the bee's knees, as do christians, and as do jews. All three try to kill each other all through history. It's all fanboyism.
More locally and simply: VI vs. Emacs. You just mention you like one or the other, or something like nano or pic, (which, tbh, I prefer, as I do basic text editing. This will likely get a hostile response as I am being "stupid" and should use the superior VI, or the SUPERIOR EMACS.) I've been able to start hours long flamewars over this very subject on IRC in linux channels, quite easily. even if I dont actually participate. It's hilarious and sad at the same time.
The sad part is, they all do the same thing, edit text. The saddest part is someone threatened to kill me over my views. (LOL)
Then you get fan bases cenetered around franchises, like sonic the hedgehog or my little pony. It becomes almost a religious thing, complete with certain people in the community you must kiss up to to win over favor with to be part of it.
It still all boils down to identity, and often, control over others.
I've learned that fanboyism does not pay the bills and does not shape who you really are, and often people do it so they can put meaning into their self-perceived meaningless lives. (if you look at it in a nihilist manner, it's all for naught anyway.)
Like what you like, it's a matter of preference and dont be retarded about it.
I love linux, for example, I used it for 5 years straight, but I use windows now moreso than linux. Why? Nothing ideological, but because windows does what I need for games, and it's what I use for my job as others use it. However, I still will use linux where I need it (such as fixing windows problems 99% of the time) and when it comes to webservers and database servers, linux is my weapon of choice. But it's a choice which I realized you cannot rabidly prefer one over the other, both have strong points, Windows is perfect as a groupware server, tons of control that just simply is not there in linux that an admin needs to keep a system in check, it's not the greatest on the desktop end (viruses galore) but it works for what it does.
Linux on the other hand, is great on older systems, great for fixing windows issues, a great router OS, and great for many many other things that windows cannot do efficiently (like being a webserver or a virtual host, even vmware uses linux, cisco uses linux as a kernel in the asa and many of their products these days that are not IOS related.)
But I will not go around saying one is the best ever. That's just silly.
You Dorito-eating cock-sucking nacho faget haha
I want to send you a thank you note, what bridge do you live under?
Wow did I call that or what.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.