Fan (fanboy) is an abbreviation from FANatic. Indeed, we
shall no longer fool ourselves. That is where this word is coming from. I
shouldn’t remind you that fanaticism carries a burden of negative connotations
and righteously so. Throughout history we’ve encountered many form of
fanaticism. Fanatic can act uncritically with great zeal or passion on many
different areas. Religious (God wills it, thus we shall purge heathens by holy
flame), nationalistic (Germany before WW2), racial (Ku Klux Klan). In our modern
society we developed new form of fanaticism: sports (which can be stretched to
e-sports as well) and products, I’ll take a closer look at the last form.
Of course there is many kinds of products,
however we won’t be discussing disputes between Coca-Cola and Pepsi (because
everyone knows Pepsi is much better). Do you see what I did there?
Instead we rather focus about something we
care about, which is games.
In general fanboys claim they love one game
or game genre and hate everything else. Is it because they just spend 60 $ and
they are trying to prove before themselves and whole world they didn’t waste
money on that purchase. Or it’s just “my way or the highway” thinking (which is
completely wrong, because I’m not [nor is anybody else] affected in my choice
of favourite games by anyone else tastes). It is not for me to judge narrowed
opinions of fanboys (which seem to occupy this page as well, looking at
reaction to my recent blog).
Despite their motives, fanboys will plague
comment sections, chat rooms and forums just to prove some genre or game is
better than another in every possible way. I’ll use Starcraft and League of
Legends as a example of a quarrel between two groups of fanboys.
Both games are very well known on e-sport
scene, being ones of most popular games when it comes to competitive play.
However despite the fact Starcraft and LoL can coexist, some groups of people
seem to think (however I’m not sure if they are capable of actual thought
process) otherwise. The main argument against LoL is that it doesn’t take as
much skill as Starcraft, but does it really take less PERSONAL skill then
Starcraft? Certainly does. Does it take less skill in general then Starcraft?
Probably yes, however communication and teamwork are very important skills and
main factors deciding whenever game is won or lost. So it may seem less skilful
for you, without a doubt. You may say: “I don’t enjoy it because it is not at
skilful as SC2. “But do you really hate this game? It’s only a game after all
and hate and love are opposite, but they are the strongest emotions human can
feel. So next time when you think: I love this game, consider if it’s really
love. How would you describe feelings for your family/partner/friends then? I
know sometimes people tend to colloquially state: “oh, I love it”, however they
don’t really mean it. Real meaning of this colloquial expression would be more
like: I really enjoy it, and I think it is great. It goes the same way about
hatred, it’s just the opposite. Of course you don’t even have to use word
“hate” to drop shitbomb on some game (quotes from Hydramist comments): “There
is nothing worse in the world than LoL” or “Hydramist covering LoL? Your
heading the wrong way, this is the way of pathetic people”.
If you can’t be more open minded about
topics we write about, you may as well stop visiting this page, you’ll be
better off without us, and we will be better off without you.
For example I don’t like sports and racing
games, main reason being I rather play football in real life instead of doing
it on computer. However I’m far from saying I hate sports games, I hate Fifa
and everything connected with it. If Hydramist would start covering Fifa (it is
an WCG title after all) I could:
a) Skip the article, because topic doesn’t interest me at all.
b) Read the article, because I like blogger or general Hydramist way of
doing things. However I wouldn’t leave comments like: “omg, fifa sux, fire the
writer, he is shit, stop covering this pathetic game” or “Omg, fifa again, I
quit hydramist foreva” instead I would just remain silent or say something like
“While I don’t enjoy fifa as a game, it was good read, you made interesting
points/I enjoyed your coverage of recent tournament”
Both A and B are good option of doing
things. However if you would write “shit article, I’ll never visit your page
again” our reaction would be like:
a) Bye
b) We don’t care cause we have hundreds of thousands readers and one
person leaving wouldn’t make a different
c) We would rather enjoy smaller but smarter and more open minded community
Looks like I went a little bit off-topic
here L FML
To the point then,
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