Fanboyism

Fanboyism really irritates me.

Let’s face it, there are a lot of fanboys out there. There are some that believe Windows is the best product ever, some that think Linus Torvalds (the guy who made Linux) is God, some that go nuts over Opera, etc. And they’re just as bad as religious nutcases when they get in an argument.

Take Internet Explorer fanboys. They just love to point out how various other browsers had three exploits in the last year (even though they’re all patched, vs. IE with its many unpatched) and make statements that ignore the obvious. Sure, they may like IE because of its user interface or something (it’s personal opinion) but that doesn’t mean they can go and throw logical fallacies at all of the other browsers to make them look bad. (No, I won’t go into details, because that’ll just get people arguing even more. If you’re enough of a skeptic to be reading this, you should be capable of looking up the facts. And no, facts don’t include that Firefox Myths page.)

But then we go to the other side. Sometimes, Linux or Firefox or whatever fanboys can be just as bad. Sure, they might actually be arguing for a product that is better (I’ll avoid specifically saying that they are better but say “might”), but that doesn’t mean they can throw out-of-context statements and logical fallacies at the worse product. I’ve seen a lot of flamewars on discussion forums where neither side has any idea what they’re talking about, and it gets old fast.

And no, I’m not targeting products or people specifically. There are all sorts of fanboys out there, and they’re all irritating.

(Note: this is skepticism because I’m targeting people that like to use logical fallacies and half-truths.)