Fanboy Complex : Drawing Parallels Between Gaming Nerds and Jesus Freaks

"One day, two days before the game [The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess] released, it was reviewed by a man named Jeff Gerstmann on Gamespot, who gave the game a score of 8.8 out of 10. Not content with the game getting a good score, fanboys across the internet erupted in anger at how 'low' of a score the game had gotten, despite never having played it.

Something dawned on me today: Opinions don't matter anymore. . . .

You see, hearing dissent to their finely crafted opinions being posted on a major website is not only insulting to their opinions, but to their egos. According to them, this dissent is equal to somebody having the nerve (the nerve!) to call them wrong. This phenomenon, which I like to refer to as "Fanboy Complex" is hardly exclusive to the gaming community, as it pops up in just about every type of topic which can result in an internet discussion, ranging from favorite music to politics and much more."
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I would like to talk today about what has been described above as "Fanboy Complex." Not just because it's an appropriately demeaning term for a dangerously arrogant subsection of fan, but because such a phenomenon is rampant throughout all organizations, all products, all religions.

I'll admit it, I'm a Google fanboy. I have good reason to be. Since the advent of GMail I'd been fascinated with what Google would come up with next. And without fail it would come up with something else and then another thing and then Google Calendar and then Google Maps and then Google Spreadsheets and then Blogger Beta. My experience with Google has been one of discovery after discovery after discovery and not only have these things been new, but they have been incredibly functional and user-driven. "Don't be evil" is their motto, but it seems like "wouldn't it be nice/cool if . . ." is their mantra.