Fanboyism: A Tale of 2 Coins (Next Gen)

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Xsnipd

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#1  Edited By Xsnipd

(I also Posted this on roosterteeth.com cause I am also heavily invested in that community too.)

NOTE: DO NOT MAKE IT AN ANGRY FANBOY WARZONE. I want to have an intelligent conversation within the community of gamers. I want to have some insightful thought not some trashy fanboy talk. Whoever is an admin/mod, close the thread if you feel if it has gone way out of hand.

I always scratch my head when I hear the word Fanboy. At a glance, the word doesn't seem harmless and the definition (from Merriam-Webster) for the word says "a boy (or girl) who is an enthusiastic devotee".Fanboys always are excited of the game or system that they are aligned to which is kinda cool for a newcomer to be a part of community of __________ (gamers in this case). Sometimes, they try to sway you to be part of this community by just trashing another community in order to be the supreme community for gamers or in "Nazi" (sorry, I had to go there) terms, The Master Race which is kinda bad.

This rolls into the next gen console war(s), PS4 vs Xbox One (maybe vs PC but I am not putting this into the equation cause it is in a different league of its own). I have seen the fanboyism that happened on the internet and TBH, I am disgusted with fellow gamers all around. They are sometimes saying deogatory names in which I hear the racial f-word and n-word. I have seen the gifs where a said console is better and the other one gets "destroyed on" within a movie reference. We have seen the namecalling (Xbots, PeeSuckers, etc.) and the arguments. In reality, is this necessary? If I was speaking to you in real life, I would not be saying "Oh my God, your PS4 is going to brick because the power source is inside the console not like the X1." or "Damn! That Xbone is going to be a paperweight because the PS4 is the legit console." cause that might hurt the person. I feel that the internet is some again the catalyst of this, just like the PS3 vs 360 but now we have twitter, facebook, Neogaf, reddit and definitely *heavy sigh* Youtube which amplifies the situation. I have understood internet hate but fanboy hate has always scratch my head. Why the hate because if fanboy hate exists, a newcomer can be turned off to a community that they so want to be a part of. That happened to me when I was very young (I'm 20) and one of the reasons why I stopped gaming for five years (Gamecube got me back to gaming) and I do not want to see it happen to other newbie gamers.

So what do we do from here? How can we have gaming back to a chill pad for a community of gamers? How can we be a "Fanboy" without all the hate because to me a true gaming Fanboy is where a person loves gaming regardless of the console of choice. Make your response great and thoughtful like I did with this insanely large post about fanboys

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Sterling

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This isn't going to end nicely.

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evanbower

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#3  Edited By evanbower

Wait, you are 20, and got out of gaming for five years until the GameCube won you back. Since that released in 2001, you were between the ages of 2 and 6 when fanboys scared you away from gaming.

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Justin258

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#4  Edited By Justin258

racial f-word

There's a racially-charged f-word?

Internet smartass-ism aside, there's something called the "Online Disinhibition Effect", which I prefer to call by its true name, "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory". It simply means that if you give an average person complete and utter anonymity and an audience, they will become a complete fuckwad. Or jerk, dickhead, asshole, etc. You can see this in full effect whenever flame wars and the type of fanboys you're talking about get on the internet to raise hell about whatever their preferred console is, or anything else really.

Is it disgusting? Yes. Is it going to stop? No. Luckily, here on Giantbomb, the mods tend to control that behavior pretty well and the community is, generally speaking, more concerned with discussing what is and isn't sexism.

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Xsnipd

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#5  Edited By Xsnipd

@believer258: the racial f word is how I say faggot cause I feel that the word kinda hurts somebody but I understand that kind of inquiry. (Man what is up with me and big words today).

Still we are almost again at another console launch. Fanboyism is always amped up when the new consoles are coming soon. That is the reason I made this post because when I joined the Xbox community with the 360, I saw the negative fanboyism more prevalent than the positive especially during the launch window years (first 5)

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Xsnipd

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@evanbower: I got back into gaming in 2003 and I was ten at the time when I came back. Oddly enough, my parents brought me back to gaming, weird huh.

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Blu3V3nom07

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#7  Edited By Blu3V3nom07

Round here you get called "a fucking M$ shill." So yea, fanboy doesn't get used too much as shill, but ahm. Yea, all games is good. Funny that, whenever I see "All I need is PS4 and a PC," I'm like, "Well no. You don't NEED shit. Every single one of these are luxury consoles you don't need."

And what annoys me most is when I have to comment every next-gen article with "I'm buying both."

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Justin258

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#8  Edited By Justin258

@xsnipd said:

@believer258: the racial f word is how I say faggot cause I feel that the word kinda hurts somebody but I understand that kind of inquiry. (Man what is up with me and big words today).

Still we are almost again at another console launch. Fanboyism is always amped up when the new consoles are coming soon. That is the reason I made this post because when I joined the Xbox community with the 360, I saw the negative fanboyism more prevalent than the positive especially during the launch window years (first 5)

But it's not racist. It's homophobic. A terrible word either way, in its current meaning anyway.

Anyway, If it bugs you, you'll have to stay off the internet, because even here there are some users that will be assholes about their favorite consoles. Talking about it here won't really do anything for anyone.

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audioBusting

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#9  Edited By audioBusting

@believer258 said:

Internet smartass-ism aside, there's something called the "Online Disinhibition Effect", which I prefer to call by its true name, "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory". It simply means that if you give an average person complete and utter anonymity and an audience, they will become a complete fuckwad. Or jerk, dickhead, asshole, etc. You can see this in full effect whenever flame wars and the type of fanboys you're talking about get on the internet to raise hell about whatever their preferred console is, or anything else really.

Seeing terrible Youtube and Facebook commenters with real names and photos, the GIFT doesn't really hold up anymore. It correlates with the disinhibition effect but anonymity is just one factor. Anyway, I think it's a combination of that disinhibition and a vocal minority. Most people who don't care for the console wars wouldn't leave comments or create threads about it.

(To be honest, I don't think this disinhibition is always bad. I don't think I would've been able to say the things I posted on these forums if the feeling of detachment isn't there. There was an interesting study done about the effect of this on psychotherapy, but I guess this is getting too off-topic to write more about here.)

Oh, this is a bit nit-picky, but "A Tale of 2 Coins"? Wouldn't one coin (with 2 sides) make more sense? (Though I admit that A Tale of 2 Sides of the Same Coin doesn't really sound better.)

edit: And yeah, I forgot to mention that you should just stay away from those communities. The only "safe" communities I know is here and Something Awful, where I think that's an offense that would cost you a $10 ban.

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BabyChooChoo

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#10  Edited By BabyChooChoo

@xsnipd said:

I have seen the fanboyism that happened on the internet and TBH, I am disgusted with fellow gamers all around.

I know the feels, bro. I am fucking sick and tired of it all. I mod for a semi-popular gaming website/twitch stream (mostly focused on PC gaming) and it drives me fucking insane how many people seem to actively hate consoles. And I mean people who straight up go, "ugh, keep these console kiddies away from game plz," "lolz my PC is already 5x more powerful than a stupid console. master race for life!," "anyone who plays on console is obviously an idiot," and so on and so on.

I don't mind that they don't like consoles. That's whatever. It's just this absolute disgust they seem to have for things they don't like that drives me insane. Some dude on those forums actually made this long detailed post blaming consoles for the decline of MMOs or some shit. I dunno. All I remember is that it was dumb.

And I lost my train of thought and ending up ranting more than anything else haha. Anywho, can we fix it? Nope. I'm sad to say, it's beyond repair. Forget platform fanboys and look at a news story any time CoD, WoW, or something of that nature is brought up. 90% of the replies will inevitably "fuck that piece of shit" or something along those lines. Most vocal hardcore gamers seem to have forgotten you can not like something without hating it. There's simply too much blind hate, elitism, and just general ignorance going around for the online, forum-going gaming community at large to simply be a chill place.

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Xsnipd

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#11  Edited By Xsnipd

@audiobusting: My bad on the title. I was going to say a tale of two sides but then I thought about coins for some odd reason.