Why are you so angry?
Aaron Baker, the director of content and partnerships for tech news organization PhoneDog Media recently received a disturbing tweet:
Did you mention on your Lg G2 vs S4 comparison on youtube that the LG has NO MHL LINK????? I’m searching for you with a shotgun!
Anonymous Fanboy (Twitter)
The threat was in reference to a cable that hooks into your TV — apparently the person was apoplectic that Baker hadn’t mentioned it.
Tech journalists, including Baker, typically love gadgets. It’s often why they get into the biz. But many say they can’t understand how you could go from being a phone fan to a phone fanboy — that is, someone who actually gets violently worked up over Nokia’s abandonment of Symbian.
We’ve entered an era of heightened belligerence, brought on, paradoxically, by the fact that phones are becoming more alike
Brian Klug, senior smartphone editor for tech news site AnandTech, points out that gadget reviewers like himself who get free phones to review will never truly understand the mindset of somebody who has to pay real cash for theirs.
“People become less objective once they’ve made an investment. They’re smart. They’re savvy. They’ll defend their purchase,” says Klug. It produces “the most rabid fanboy kind of attack.”
Aaron Baker, who received the shotgun tweet, has another theory. He thinks we’ve entered an era of heightened belligerence, brought on, paradoxically, by the fact that phones are becoming more alike.
It used to be that phone debates were solely about specs: which device had the most processing power, better battery life, highest screen definition, and so forth. Now, he says, we’re entering a time when phones have mostly achieved the same benchmarks on those fronts. The competition is becoming: Do you like the way the touchscreen works? The colors of the interface? The size of the device?
Baker believes that as phones’ differences move into more subjective arenas like design and “user experience,” the debate becomes by its very definition more emotional.
“That’s where it descends into personal attacks,” says Baker.
Holy shit man, you sound like such a bitch. Hope you haven't run out of Kleenex yet. If you like the damn Maxx... GET THE DAMN MAXX AND STFU ALREADY! For crying out loud.
Anonymous Fanboy (Android Central)
Of course the internet’s cloak of anonymity can bring out the worst in people, too. Trolls come in all flavors, including fanboy. But while the classic troll is an anarchic trickster, looking to wreak mayhem and rack up lulz along the way, an enraged fanboy can be something more conflicted.
Thorne, the Microsoft fanboy, is devoted to a podcast series about technology — he listens to it in the background at work. He used to comment on the show while it was in progress in an adjoining chat room. His ne plus ultra was when one of the podcast’s hosts quoted one of his comments on air.
“It proves your passion is worth it, if you will,” says Thorne.
The problem was that Thorne had a hard time being taken seriously.
“Being a hardcore troll doesn’t get you that power,” he admits. “To be listened to by others … it’s about having an open mind.”
He’d try to stay level-headed, not call people names. It turned out that wasn’t possible.
“I get fired up reading comments and my fingers go nuts on the keyboard,” he says.
Thorne’s struggle to achieve respect through striking the right tone echoes what American literary critic Kenneth Burke described as a kind of search for solidarity-through-rhetoric. As humans we attempt to escape our existential isolation through identification with others. And the classic way of achieving this is by pointing out our similarities through language, e.g.: a politician saying to a farmer, “I was once a farm boy like you.” In Thorne’s case, it was by appearing to be open-minded. However, Burke wrote, solidarity can also be achieved by disagreeing.
“There’s a sense that we’re cooperating by competing,” says Clarke Rountree, chair of the Communication Arts department at the University of Alabama in Hunstville and president of the Kenneth Burke society. “If you don’t have someone on the other side arguing with you, then you’ll be a lone voice.”
Recently, Thorne forced himself to, as he put it, step back and “look in the mirror.” This is making you stressed out and irritated, he said to himself. So why do it? He began downloading the podcasts so he wouldn’t be listening to them live and the temptation to send flame-y comments would be diminished.
But the road to belonging and acceptance through levelheaded discourse was just too long and lonely to bear. And so he chose the alternate route identified by Burke: dissention. He logged on to Twitter and let it rip.
Oh what a shock…another smug Apple douche with his head so far up their ass his opinion means zilch.
In this world, his fingers are free to go as nuts as they want. He has found solidarity: he belongs to the world of fanboys.
*Some names and identifying characteristics have been altered
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