In our day to day lives we find ourselves surrounded in a virtual cornucopia of advertising and brand recognition. From the moment we open our eyes and spot the glow from our Timex alarm clock and are greeted by the aroma of Eight O'clock coffee brewing in our Mr. Coffee brand maker we are bombarded with name recognition. Branding is EVERYWHERE! Granted we all have our favorites but do we ridicule or refuse to associate with our neighbor or coworker that uses the Phillips Alarm clock instead? No? Let's take a closer look then at fanboys and what makes the tick.
Fanboy (also spelled fanboi)" is a term used to describe an individual who is devoted to a single subject in an emotional or fanatical manner, or to a single point of view within that subject, often to the point where it is considered an obsession" according to Wikipedia.
Now I can understand the devotion to ones country or family, religion or friends, even school or some other special hallowed place like your childhood home. These are all honorable and admirable. However, the devotion to an inanimate object or product whose company could care less about the consumer and is only interested in their ability to pay is simply amazing. But in order to illustrate my point lets look at some of the fanboy ravings from around the web.
"Bioshock is terrible, and all the reviewers are biased because all media outlets got paid by Microsoft to make Sony look bad. Bioshock is terrible with no multiplayer; IGN will give it the TRUE rating it deserves because they aren't biased."
5 minutes later Bioshock happens to get a 9.7 on IGN.
"360 can't do 3d graphics"
"the wii is crap and almost all of it's games are for casuals and children."
"pc gamers have higher standards"
Also be sure to add in any number of Apple vs. MS arguments or Iphone versus any other cell phone brand. And probably one of the biggest displays of fanboyism out there is the "Zune Guy" considering he got the logo of an mp3 player tattooed to his body and later switched to another brand of mp3 player!
So now that we have an outline of what a fanboy is and some of the passion they are capable of displaying we'll dive into the very psyche of the fanboy mind and try to understand why they behave the way they do. However, that will be saved for next time in the 2nd part of this post.
Till then, Wegank.
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