Fanboys
by Lee
I apologise for even including this. It's one of those "you can never unsee it" moments.
Fanboy ‘noun’
Pronunciation: fan-boi
Definition: see below
My research into the term “fanboy” hasn’t yielded much in the way of reliable information. I know that its first use could have been as early as 1919 but I have no idea as to what context. At a guess I would have gone with comic books but the comic book format was first seen in 1934 so it’s not the “Batman’s better than Superman” thing. The treaty of Versailles had been signed that year so the best I can think is that a Serbian kid was poking fun at an Austrian kid about how his hoop and stick was better than the other kid’s hoop and stick but I can’t find it written down anywhere.
The word “fanboy” doesn’t have an actually have an entry in the dictionary; I know it’s a word. I called my mate in the Sony Centre it yesterday, although to be honest I always found the instructions for a dictionary confusing and it’s completely possible that I just can’t find it so I’ll turn to the hitch hiker’s guide that is Wikipedia. It describes a fanboy a few different ways but this is the one that applies to us.
“Fanboy is a term originating in the United States, used to describe a male who is highly devoted and biased in opinion towards a single subject or hobby within a given field.”
Well that’s my Serbian/Austrian kid theory killed off, however my favourite definition comes from the second entry on urban dictionary:
“1. A person who is completely loyal to a game or company regardless of if they suck or not.
2. A pathetic insult often used by fanboys themselves to try and put down people who don’t like whatever it is they like.
3. See fool or SEGA.”
My bag's better than your bag. That is all.
I don’t know what SEGA have to do with anything, maybe that kid had a SNES when he was growing up and is still in denial about the Mega Drive being the better console. If anything that last sentence I wrote sums up the whole fanboy thing better than the previous two; I know at least one of you agreed with me and the rest of you just went “wha?? Shut up” then went into a whole internal monologue about how wrong I am. Sorry guys but it’s true – the Mega Drive was better.
There are a few different types of fanboy:
Fanboy Prime
Fanboy Primes, although having the coolest sounding title, are widely regarded as the worst kind of fanboy and normally arseholes to boot [note to editor: can I say arsehole?]. It’s straight cut with them; it’s pure “I’m right and your wrong”, no middle ground, no reasoning and more often than not they are misinformed.
Fanboy Arbiter
These are the fanboys that often get in the middle of when other fanboys fight. They would never claim to be fanboys and love everything – DC & Marvel, Xbox & Playstation, there isn’t a difference to them. This just winds up all the other fanboy groups. Arbiters will try to resolve disputes with reasoning and will often try to take the moral high ground with statements like “the consoles are the same it’s the games that are more important” and “why can’t we just live in a world were both consoles are accepted for what they are, brilliant.”
Fanboy Heretic
The traitors of the fanboy world. They will be incredibly passionate about their beliefs in much the same way as Primes are; they call others that don’t agree with them everything under the sun only for them to cave and go out and buy a Wii when they think nobody’s looking.
Fanboy Collector
The friendlier of the bunch. The collectors tend to go through phases and prefer gaming universes and different IPs than things like hardware .They’ll read up on back stories, they’ll buy the games, the shirts, the hats, the comics and collect everything they can before they get bored and move on to the next. Occasionally they won’t tire of a particular IP, continue collecting with a passion and won’t care much what anybody else thinks, neither are they afraid to try new things.
Fanboy Corps
The hardest of hardcore fanboys, these are the ones that have made their own MJOLNIR battle armour. Under no circumstances should you mock a man dressed as the Master Chief, no matter how polite or jittery they may be outside the suit, when he has that armour on as far as he’s concerned he’s the chief and he will punch you in the face. I got beat up by stormtroopers once at the NEC, should you ever meet Kenny Baker, ask him about it.
The ultimate fanboy balloon!
I sit quite firmly in the “collector” group of fanboys. I’ve picked up all sorts of crap over the years and those which haven’t got the George Lucas seal of approval, are very much gaming related. Most of it seems to be from Halo and I don’t have a problem with being labelled a Halo Fanboy. It seems to be common knowledge that the anti Halo is the Modern Warfare franchise, I hate to break it to you COD heads (hehe COD heads, I just made that up) but it’s a casual game that has done nothing new for gaming other than get dads online… ohhhhh I feel your rage building youngling, but before you even manage to start spitting words of fire at me might I point you in the direction of Counterstrike? Oh yes that’s right, it’s been done before. Eleven years ago and it was done better. Now if this was an actual fanboy fight you could come back at me with things like “err yeah but the graphics” and “yeah and the story” but this isn’t a fanboy fight it’s me writing so we’ll leave it at “I’m right and your wrong”.
I know I normally do that thing when I’m writing where I have a punch line that somehow ties into the start of the post, its normally by pure accident to be honest. I don’t have one this time round but I will say this. Batman would kick Superman’s arse. Let me know below what type of fanboy you think you are, and if you want have a flame war.
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The truth is, idiots have always gotten too attached to their purchases ever since the 8-bits.
Things have never been as bad as they are now with the PS3 fanboys. I’ve seen them rip into a site for giving a PS3 exclusive a 9 and my site got invaded when we gave the wholly-average Killzone 2 a 7. Despite giving other PS3 games 9s and 10s they still said we were Microsoft-owned.
You can’t bargain with them, or reason with them, and they absolutely will not stop… being c*nts.
@rich lol thats pretty extreme and i want that sega mega drive bag!
Great piece Lee
Some breeds of fanboy seem to be more rabid than others and from all the nasty comment threads I have read, it usually seems to be the PS3 fanboys who take home the ‘Gonad Trophy of Blind and Venomous Devotion’.
Shit like this has gone on since the days of the Speccy/C64/Oric through the console generations to where we are now. I guarantee that in fifty years time if our species is still stamping around the planet, there will be MS and PS27 hologram fanboys scrapping over whose SexDroid hologram is better, or whose PRICK suit (Proto Reality Integrated Console Kit) is the superior one.
your right about the ps3 fanboys they do seem to be worse than the others, i wonder if they think the same about xbox fanboys though.
nobody said what sort of fanboy they are yet either
I don’t really think I AM a fanboy to be honest, I think everything deserves merit where applicable. We have a PS3 and we have a WII but we only use our XBox 360s… but I don’t think that would constitute being a 360 fanboy because if something worthwhile came along on either the PS3 or the Wii (yet to happen!) then I’d happily boot them up and play away with a smile on my face. I HAVE got into arguments over the Oric and Spectrum though, with Spectrum fans calling the Oric the “poor man’s Spectrum” (even though it was more expensive than the Spectrum) and not willing to listen while I explain to them WHY the Oric was better… never from opinion though, always from hard facts. The Oric WAS the better machine, but it didn’t have the buying power behind it that the Spectrum had and so it had less games than the Spectrum… doesn’t make it a lesser machine though. Everyone knows how much better than VHS the Betamax system was (again, based on facts!) and how superior HD-DVD was to BluRay but it comes down to marketing weight… whichever corporate entity has the most weight behind it will inevitably win out in the end.
I suppose, if it came to it, I’m a “Fact Fanboy”… those who have no intrinsic leanings and go with emperical evidence rather than preference. While the PS3 may be a more powerful machine than the XBox 360, I’ve not been swayed by any of the PS3 exclusives enough to warrant purchasing them and so I’ll stick with my substandard XBox 360 until such times as a kick-ass PS3 exclusive tempts me away from it. That said, however, my leanings are more towards the PC these days anyway as I hate judder and screen tearing.
I think I’m somewhere inbetween Arbiter and Collector, in that I collect shit, but I collect most, shit, and consequently get into arguments to tell both sides they’re being a bunch of silly bastards. I refuse to conform to strict definitions! Yeah! Or something.
That said, the PS3 pisses me off so much, like no console has since the Saturn ruined SEGA (you were right, the Mega Drive was better hardware, and had a much more comfortable controller, even though I had it and a NES and liked both, because both had great exclusive games) , that I do find myself being an Arbiter between the Wii, PC and 360 fans, but when the PS3 fanboy speaks up I just call him a c*nt.
This is far too complex a social condition for your cleanly defined labels! I’m just going to say what I said a few weeks back. Everyone shut the fuck up, and enjoy their games, and play nice. I’m getting too old for this kind of nonsense.
By the way, this cheered me up no end. First thing I’ve laughed aloud at for a couple of days.
glad you liked it guys and true rock n roll comment preacher – stick it to the man!
Reading the titles of the fanboys I got the impression you were a Halo fan before you mentioned it. Going by your definitionsm, I would be more of the Arbiter (moreso because of the last line in that description). However, I wouldn’t try to help resolve to arguing fanboys.
I’ve owned Commodore, Nintendo, Sega (only the Dreamcast), Playstation and Xbox. I don’t go in for the whole my consoles is better than yours as every console will have games that are just a joy to play. And as long as you enjoy playing games, then who cares what console you have.
I’m still waiting for my Better Than Life console complete with groinal attachment.
Batman can’t kick Superman’s arse. Are you mad? Do you not know that Superman is just about the most powerful being in the DC universe? N00b.
Oh wait. I see what you did there. I am clearly Superboy Pr…, I mean, Fanboy Prime.
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