Bigotry
Platform bigotry hacks me off.
It's because I'm a long-time Mac user that I have absolutely no patience for people who feel the need to proselytize others. I was an evangelist in my younger days, and I fully expect to do karmic penance for it. To all of you who have heard me utter the words, "Macs are better, you should get one," I humbly seek forgiveness.
Whenever I write an article about Microsoft, some wiseass feels the need to respond with a snarky comment about monopolization, about the quality of the company's products, about Bill Gates' personal hygiene. Their witty banter is usually peppered with clever turns of phrase like "Micro$oft" or "Microsloth."
I could say a lot about what I think of these people, but I think the boys at Penny Arcade pretty much summed it up definitively.
This was most recently made evident when I published an article about graphics chip maker Nvidia Corp. settling legal arbitration with Microsoft over how much Nvidia was getting paid for the NV20 chips it makes for Microsoft's Xbox console. The ensuing firestorm has had everything to do with which game console people think is better and nothing to do with Microsoft and Nvidia.
It's shit like this that drove me from GameRanger. Quite literally. I was in the midst of the fourteenth platform war of the day when I finally just threw up my hands and said, "Forget it. You fucktards win."
I quit the app, deleted it off my hard drive, and haven't spent more than a minute back there since then.
I'm thoroughly convinced that platform evangelism is ultimately little more than extroverted buyer's guilt. People feel the need to know that they've done the right thing -- invested in the right box -- and bitching at others about their choice of what computer or game console to use is their way of doing it. Same thing happens with Ford and Chevy owners; BMW and Mercedes people; East coasters and west coasters.
Comments
Evangelism - be it gaming console, computer platform, or gaming news site - ties back into the clan mentality more than anything else. I've never seen so many people divide themselves up into silly little groups and decide to go to war for...what? Given that the majority of the people in those sort of fights are 16 and are using what they got from their parents, it's not like they have the income to go out and buy something else, even if they WERE to make concessions and "lose" the fight.
To quote the patron saint Bill Hicks - People suck, and that's my contention. I can prove it on a scratch of paper and a pen. Give me a fucking Etch-a-Sketch, I'll do it in 3 minutes. The proof, the fact, the factorum, I'll show my work, case closed. Tired of this back-slapping art humanity made bullshit - we're a virus with shoes, okay?
Closing thought: Whoever came up with the wonderful "Arguing on the internet is like running in the Special Olympics" picture deserves a medal.
Posted by: Dan Dickinson | February 7, 2003 01:20 PM