fanbois and fandroids - counterproductive

This topic was created by dogged .

[dogged]

fanbois and fandroids - counterproductive

Been reading the Reg for a long, long time. It's always been a place where linux was regarded as obviously the single best OS for everything, where Microsoft was the Beast of Redmond and where Apple was regarded as the tech world's equivalent to Scientology.

And there's some justification for all of this. None of it's all true but there's enough to truth there to amuse everyone.

The real problem I have with it nowadays is the lengths some people will go to over it. I'm going to assume that this is not new and that I've just got old, tired and contrary because otherwise it'd be a "kids these days" rant of the Daily Mail variety and anyone who knowingly posts that shit should have their fingers cut off. So let's assume it's just me. But let me show you what I mean.

Take any article about Windows 8. Take a look at the comments. Exhibit A - Bob Vistakin telling us all over and over and over how it's a massive failure. Before it's ever released.

Take any article where iOS is compared to Android. Exhibit B - a whole load of little penguin icons telling us how bad walled gardens are. As if people were unaware of the walled garden.

Take any article about XBox or WP7. Exhibit C - Barry Shitpeas wanting them both nuked from orbit, seemingly convinced that competition is a bad thing.

And exhibit D - Mikel actively inventing FUD about existing handsets not upgrading (note - MS staffers confirm that this is a lie) and refusing to give sources, with the tag line "if you want something more open, you know what to do". And a penguin.

Now, I can't speak for anyone else but this puts my back up. Every instinct I have says "fuck you, don't ever try to tell me what I can and can't use". And then there's the competition thing too - I approve of competition. I want RIM and webOS to do well too, however unlikely that may be. Because the thing is, if Apple wins or if Google wins or if Microsoft, wins, I lose. We all lose.

Reading those comments and those posts which seem deliberately designed to hurt the prospects of any item or company to succeed actively makes me want to go buy that product.

And it also puts me off the products they evangelize. Because if those products have such an appeal for fucktards like this then they must be as crass and brain-killing as those fucktards themselves are.

Every time you spew hate about something that's not "your team" - and it's really not your team, those companies do not give a flying fuck about you - you make me want to support whatever it is you hate. "Fuck you," I think. "Whatever you tell me is exactly what I won't do".

You bastards, you're even making me dislike my debian installs and I've had those since Bruce Perens took over from Murdock. Don't make me nuke them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: fanbois and fandroids - counterproductive

Barry Shitpeas is certainly a character...

I don't get the hate either - and I also think that portraying Microsoft as the enemy is out-dated.

Could there be a religious narrative? Probably not but it amused me to write this up a couple of years ago.

[SiempreTuna]

FUN

I think the title pretty much sums it up: it's kinda fun to diss Apple or Microsoft or anyone. Even El Reg (e.g. the retarded global warming denial of some writers - note the deliberately provocative use of the word "retarded" there).

If you're after serious, balanced discussion, I'm not sure the El Reg comment pages are the best place to go look for it.

[dogged]

Re: FUN

Not so much balanced discussion - that's the kind of idiocy has people reporting views from lunatic homeopaths on actual medical issues - but perhaps a bit more sanity?

Logically speaking, what is the point of actively wanting a product to fail? What is the point in wanting to reduce competition and thus reduce quality and increase costs?

Win8 is a good example here because I know you've sneered at it yourself. I'm using it right now. Hit the Win button to launch the Metro launcher, open application, forget about Metro launcher. The sky is not falling. Like it or hate it - and either is perfectly valid - it is not the end of the world and if history teaches us anything at all, it won't be the end of Microsoft. So why pretend that it is?

Because self-delusion, that ain't fun. That's genuinely retarded.

[blem wit]

Re: FUN

Aye. This gentleman gets it.

Competition is good.

[Steven Roper]

Well, speaking as a hater

I'll give my side of the story.

As anyone who has seen my comments in the article threads can attest, I express an almost pathological hatred for all things Apple. I've been more than slightly acerbic in my opinions of "fanbois" and positively rabid about the doings of the company itself. I've copped my share of downvotes for some of my more irrational rants, but I have my reasons for doing so.

Firstly, I am very passionate about computers. They've been my life since I was 16 years old and got my first Sinclair ZX81 back in 1982. I was part of the Commodore 64 and Amiga demo scene and I've built my career as well as my hobbies on computers. I have no S.O., no kids, because the lifestyle choices I have made centred around computer technology more than people. That's my nature, that the passion most men give to their wives and children, I give to what I do and what I create with computers.

In all this time, I've grown up and lived with a culture of relative openness in computers. I've become used to the concept that a computer I've bought and paid for is mine, to do with as I please. And part of that is writing programs and sharing them with people. The feeling I get when I see someone using my software and knowing how it impacts their lives is awesome. Even more awesome is when I see someone expand on my idea or program, and they show me their improvements. That's been the way I've worked since the old demo swap-meets and copy-parties of the Commodore 64 days.

As you can see, these things matter to me. A lot. I've lived my life around them, and I have strong feelings about them.

So when a company like Apple starts locking down everything in sight, and by showing other companies that users are willing and even eager to have control of their own computers snatched away from them , those companies follow suit. You mention people going on about walled gardens and I can understand your frustration with the repetition, but for those like myself whose mentality was founded on building a greater whole on shared ideas this mentality is utterly repellent.

It's not only the app-store lock-in, it's things like the ability to reach in and delete software from your computer - a trend started by Apple, and quickly followed by the likes of Amazon, Google, and now Microsoft as well. It's all this corporate control-freak mentality that I didn't really see before Apple brought out the iPad. Yes, Microsoft was the tyrant du jour of the pre-Apple era, but even they didn't impose restrictions on the distribution of software - until Apple did it. And add to that the endless ridiculous lawsuits, where it's getting to the point where I'm almost afraid to continue programming in case I tread on someone's IP toes. I feel that I'm being told I'm not allowed to use my brain for what I do best because some corporation owns some vague general concept behind what I've come up with myself. And Apple, with their sue-everyone-for-making rectangles mentality, have come to exemplify this kind of control.

And I'm sorry, but that really, really, pisses me off. When I feel afraid to develop new ideas because "sorry, Apple/Google/whoever have the patent on that already", that makes me want to throw things and scream. But polite society understandably does not allow me to do these things, because the expectation is that we stop throwing tantrums somewhere around the second or third year of life.

So I vent. I let off steam. I rant and rave on a forum, to a bunch of people I don't really know and have never met. I do so knowing that some of them share in my anger, and knowing that others are angry about the same things I am is strangely comforting and soothing. I do so knowing that still others will be angered, offended or even amused by my rantings, and we'll let off at each other until you'd be terrified to leave us all alone in a room together. Yet if we all met down the pub, I really believe nary a harsh word would pass.

You see, at the end of the day, it's Internet rantings. And I believe that's why a lot of us do it. It's what psychologists call a coping mechanism - a means of anger management, a way of letting out pent-up frustration with the way the world is, in a manner that is essentially harmless, because only a fool takes everything you read in these forums (or indeed on the entire internet) seriously.

To my way of thinking, it's far better to explode all over a Reg comments thread with pathetic curses against "retarded fanboi sheeple", than to act like a complete ass in real life. That is why I sometimes carry on the way that I do, and I think it is a sentiment shared, if not always fully understood, amongst other commenters.

[Tim Parker]

Re: Well, speaking as a hater

"To my way of thinking, it's far better to explode all over a Reg comments thread with pathetic curses against "retarded fanboi sheeple", than to act like a complete ass in real life."

I don't see any particular reason not to behave the same way in both.

"That is why I sometimes carry on the way that I do, and I think it is a sentiment shared, if not always fully understood, amongst other commenters."

I am from a very similar epoch to yourself, by the sound of it, and also with a long standing interest in computers - my first real hands-on was when the school bought the innards of a RM380Z in the late seventies. Personally, I don't share that sentiment but I am probably guilty of thinking that that sort of behaviour was typically of the "young'uns", and not from people who have been around a while and/or should know better.... or even those that you'd have thought could indulge in joined-up thinking... perhaps that's simply not true or at best an wild exaggeration.

For me, the ranting and rabid polarizations in the comments was one of the main reason for spending a lot less time here than I did - great for page impressions, pretty useless for anything else (apart from a coping mechanism for some folk I now understand). It invariably reminds me of the end of a well-known passage from MacBeth..

"it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing."

That's just me however - each to their own.

[Trokair 1]

Re: Well, speaking as a hater

As I age I find more and more often my ire is raised faster and faster through the internet and even email now. Earlier on I tried being polite and helpful and to subdue my urge to scream at someone when they are making an obviously flawed argument but are so set in their stupidity that they cannot see it in spite of being smacked in the face by a 40 foot wall of facts to the contrary. Now I find my fuse shorter and shorter and by my perception the amount of stupidity higher and higher.

Most of the "fandroid" this and "isheep" that is generalization at its worst which pisses me off to no end. Then again, who would be a big enough douche to patent a rectangle with smooth corners? Better yet, who would be stupid enough to award such a patent. Perhaps I am jaded but common sense seems to be in short supply the last 10 years or so. With no good outlook for the future.