Let's see if anyone is willing to discuss the underlying paradigm without it devolving into an actual platform war... I'm a nerd by nature. My friends are too. Many of them are gamers. I am not. I haven't played video games since floppy disks were actually floppy. Right now my Facebook news feed is ablaze with this PS4 v. Xbox One drama. Here in the forum there is a thread on the subject wherein members have posted videos created by individuals who seem to be extremely emotionally invested in the subject. There is one video where the young man is nearly foaming at the mouth. I am a Mac user. I don't 'fanboy' my Mac exclusivity, yet I am often treated to bizarre looks from others when I whip out my 13 inches of frosted aluminum at the local Starbucks. Online, I am treated to scorn whenever I ask a question specific to Mac as the fanboy-haters lash me with their own fanboying from the other side of the fence. I have an iPhone. I've had other phones in between models of iPhone but I always return to the iPhone because I am the customer for whom it is made. I am not the customer for the other platforms. Android users IRL and online constantly need to hold up their phones at me in a nya-nya-nya-nya-nya-nya way and show me how they share playlists just by touching another like phone model. Assuming they know someone with a like phone model. Even I myself am having difficulty just now holding back my own platform rage. Why? What is it about this dynamic that makes it fall under the same emotional umbrella as political dogma and religion? People don't feel this way about microwave ovens. There are no websites filled of house-wives and house-husbands calling each other obscene names or dishing out snarky retorts concerning a particular oven's lack of a combination microwave/convection mode. There aren't. I looked. There are no Behr Paint hooligans hanging out in front of Glidden stores to deride and snicker at the customers as they walk out. So what gives?
You're looking at this too hard. It's very simple, all fanboys are moronic children. They get the same way over games as they do over consoles. Look at the flame wars you see between Call of Duty and Battlefield players. Both games are fine, and large numbers of people play both, but you'll see tons of trolling on any video or forum that is on one game or other by people that only play the other one etc. In short, some people are just brain-dead. It's fine to have strong opinions over something being done badly, but fanboy behaviour about one item over another is just plain stupidity.
It's the same force that drives people to actually care about sports, to paint themselves with a team's colors as if the team owns them. This force was involved in the Crusades. It's at work in Congress today. It's tribalism. People seperate themselves from other people by joining groups -- by its very nature, tribe forming is a hostile act to those excluded. In the end, human tribes see other tribes as competitors, as threats. People are whipped up in a self-reinforcing loop where they only talk to members of their particular tribe, only read stuff approved by the tribe, and automatically view statements from the outside with suspicion. Cults are tribalism taken to an extreme, and Communism is tribalism institutionalized. Politics, put simply, is the organization of tribes. Kings and presidents are functionally chiefs. As for why tribal conflict has grown up around Mac v. Windows and iPhone v. Android, I am not sure. It may be the prevalance of these devices and their importance in daily life.
Well, I don't "see" these flame wars because I don't go to gaming websites or places (real or virtual) where these arguments take place. The current console war is known to me only because of FB and the thread here in the forum. Needless to say, the forum thread is like a Victorianly polite discussion over sherry served in Bavarian crystal compared to the crazy conversations I see in FB threads. But my question is more to why these things (games, consoles, computers, phones) seem to bring out the idiot fanboy side of people, while other products have no effect at all.
I don't care what other people use. I don't care for Macs, myself. Typically I use Linux. I had my first iPhone last summer and ended up selling it about three months later. I got my daughter a Macbook for graduation and she absolutely loves her iPhone. What's the big deal. These are pieces of technology, not religious affiliations. Who cares what one person likes and another doesn't? The only explanation I can think of is that the people who end up as fanboys are extremely insecure and that's how it manifests. I avoid them.
Now here is some discourse to sink one's teeth into.... I have read more than one spec-fic story/novel wherein the author postulates a future where governmental and national affiliation as we know it today is supplanted entirely by brand affiliation. In one story, people were citizens of Pepsi Co. or Coca Cola and the like. At the time those stories were written, the advent of the internet and its own form of branding did not exist yet, so I can only imagine that had the arthor written the story today, they would have been citizens of Microsoft and of Apple, of Facebook and the Democratic Republic of Twitter. I grok your account of tribalism. Tribalism is itself a prettified way to say the pack. In a biological sense, we are very much pack animals, though that term is eschewed when speaking of humans. Your presentation of this behavior as an outlet of sorts for the stifled pack animal now living as a herd or hive animal but still very much the pack animal it always was presents some extremely interesting story ideas.
Yee ha. A lounge rant morphed into a fantastic story idea. Now THAT'S what I call a writer's forum! Another weird Idea that will probably be Reality before too long. I'll sneak into Apple before "they" slam the borders shut. Too fat to get in under the fence...
LOL My lounge rants tend to at least try to go in that direction. It interests me because the behavior is so extreme, and it revolves around technology. Science Fiction has a very hit & miss history of predicting the future. Popular sci-fi completely missed the telecommunications revolution as it glorified the mighty interstellar transport system. And I'm wondering if it is missing this little feature of human interaction as a paradigm shifter. What happens when you care less about the antiquated nation-state into which you were born than you do about other types of allegiance like these techno-allegiances of which we are speaking? What happens when your ability to converse with the entire planet at any given times makes borders even more arbitrary than they already are? What happens when the company for which you work recognizes and allots you more rights than the government (I have worked for two companies now where my medical benefits were extended to my hubby, something the federal government still does not protect or provide for since we are a gay couple). What happens when the kind of citizenship you posses is something you can design and tailor by your espousing of or allegiance to these concepts?
Does that mean that wars will be fought solely via ad campaigns? Nah, that would make too much sense.
This is all intentional. There's nothing better for a company than having a bunch of really passionate advocates who they don't have to pay. In fact, it's these zealots that are paying for the privilege of promoting their products. It's really quite genius. As to how companies encourage this behavior, that's the advertising business. And as to why people are so easily taken in, it's a combination of idiocy/gullibility and the pleasurable feeling from belonging to a group. If you will notice, this same force exists in politics. Political affiliation and discussion is more divisive and rude than it has ever been, and this is very much by design.
It's the proverbial "sour grapes". They can't afford Apple products so they become zealots about the alternatives they can afford. As if they're fooling anyone.
That's frakking awesome, Ed. What if that really were the case? We already posses the technology to track what people view and use on the web, so it would be an easy extrapolation to have a War of Advertisement track losses and gains, casualties, lost or gained territory. Ooo! This has got more gears spinning in my head than a Steampunk Convention.
Woo. This is warming up very nicely indeed. Newbies who want to know where story ideas come from? You Are Here...!
Guilty as charged for starting that thread. But I must say that I am not a fanboy of either console (and generally not a fanboy of anyone or anything), as I just want a console that plays games in the best possible way. There are however fanboys out there that will buy a product just because it's produced by a certain company.
My iPhone is playing up so I've decided to get a new phone. I thought I'd get the Samsung S4 as I fancied a change from the iPhone. This has created fierce debate amongst my friends. The ones who own iPhones actually seem upset with me and are warning me not to do it, as if I'm about to attempt to rock climb without a rope. I honestly couldn't care less what phones they own. I don't get why people are so passionate about product wars. I can understand supporting your sports team. You want them to win. You want them to beat their rivals because it means something. But I've known people to show off because the console they own is selling better than the one I own. So what? Its not like you're getting any of the profits. As long as you like the product that's all that matters.
sorry guys, I had to google 'fanboys', think I've been living in deepest darkest Brittany for too long. Now that I know, I have no clue why people would sleep rough outside apple stores for the next best thing or why someone would gloat their X brand phone over someone else's Y brand phone. For the record I don't even have a phone. There is a little video on youtube (I think I can mention all 3 without fear of being accused of advertising) "samsung v windows v apple wedding commercial" you may see why - its hilarious and explains a lot to mentalities and fanboy antics.
That's a nice phone. If you want to try a change, I think you'll be happy with it. I like to hop around - this last time I got a Nokia Lumia 920, which is a Windows phone. Also very nice, fast, integrates well with work, and has nearly 30 gigs of space on it. Next time around I'll probably go with another Android phone, or if Canonical has the Ubuntu phones out by then, maybe I'll try that.
What does it mean? That individuals from your region (this is only for non-proffessional sports) can move a ball around a field better than individuals from another region?
Not quite. Sports (and especially group sports) are a sublimation of war, it's one of many mechanisms humans developed over time, in order to decrease physical violence which naturally occurs between groups. This is why it plays such an important role in society, especially amongst males.
Generally when you follow a sport you have favourite team or player, so you'd obviously route for them to win. When you follow them week after week you obviously feel a connection to their success or failure. And if there's a team fighting for the same title as them you will want that team to lose. I can't feel the same about Xbox vs Playstation though. I have an Xbox but if someone told me that their outselling the PS it wouldn't bother me at all. The difference is that my sports team winning does affect me as you want them to win. Do I want Xbox to beat Playstation... I don't care as all that matters is that I enjoy my console. Its the same as when reading a novel. You obviously grow attached to characters and want them to succeed. If you don't care about their fate then that would suggest you don't care about the book.
