Haters Gonna Hate: The Argument Against Fanboys

Haters Gonna Hate: The Argument Against Fanboys(blog.travisbloom.me)

21 points by TBloom 14 years ago | 20 comments

jrockway 14 years ago |

What I don't understand about fanbois is how most of them have no skin in the game. It's OK to argue passionately about the merits of iOS if you designed and implemented it. It's a little weird when all you've done is paid $599 for a phone that uses it.

Define yourself by what you do, not what you've bought.

mechanical_fish 14 years ago | |

In what sense does a person who has just paid an engineer $599 for something "have no skin in the game"? Seems to me they have just anted up $599 worth of skin. Indeed, unless they return their new phone within a short period or the thing breaks under warranty, they're holding the bag. If they decide three months later that the phone sucks, it's not the engineer that feels sad. The engineer has made a profit.

There's an old saying about paying, pipers, and tunes that seems appropriate here.

jrockway 14 years ago | | |

Let's say the average iPhone user makes $100,000 a year. That means the $599 iPhone is about 0.599% of that person's income. If they work 40 hours a week, out of a total of 168 hours in a week, that means they spent 0.143% of their year working to get the phone. But the person who designed the phone spent 100% of their working on the phone.

So the average user spent less time on the phone, and they didn't design the phone, they just gave AT&T a tiny bit of their money once a month.

GHFigs 14 years ago | |

Is it OK to complain about something you didn't make, didn't pay for, and don't use?

Derbasti 14 years ago | |

Stockholm Syndrome.

neutronicus 14 years ago |

Can we purge the word "fanboy" from our collective lexicon?

I don't think I've seen a single discussion enriched by its use. It's just a catch-all insult, like the "fag" of the twenty-first-century tech scene.

(Don't even get me started on "fanboi")

makmanalp 14 years ago | |

Really? To me it pretty plainly sounds like a term reserved for people who are dogmatic adorers. Zealots if you will. That's a very specific meaning, and not catch-all at all.

InclinedPlane 14 years ago | | |

Use the term zealot then, or something even milder (like "supporter"). The problem with a term like fanboy in a serious discussion is that it is heavily derogatory, and derogatory terms typically shut down debate.

Yhippa 14 years ago |

I feel that gadgets can be a proxy for people to feel superior to each other like with cars, sports teams, and purses. I don't know what people hope to get out of arguing about it other than entertainment perhaps.

cageface 14 years ago | |

Skillful marketing encourages people to define themselves by the things they buy. Apple in particular is very good at this.

GHFigs 14 years ago | | |

How does Apple encourage people to define themselves by the things they buy?