Fanboys?

Hi all,

I'm (vaguely) interested in the origins and uses of words. Being a bit new to the world of modern smartphones and their forums, the word "Fanboys" that I see puzzles me. Is the term derogatory? That is, is a Fanboy someone who sides with something to the exclusion of all else through blind faith, and so could be regarded as being incapable of contemplating anything other than that something, or is a Fanboy merely someone who has a preference of one thing over another with an acceptance of others' preferences too? Well, it is the Off Topic Lounge, isn't it! I wouldn't want to dis' anyone here by using the word incorrectly, would I?

GraemeT.

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Originally Posted by GraemeT

Hi all,

I'm (vaguely) interested in the origins and uses of words. Being a bit new to the world of modern smartphones and their forums, the word "Fanboys" that I see puzzles me. Is the term derogatory? That is, is a Fanboy someone who sides with something to the exclusion of all else through blind faith, and so could be regarded as being incapable of contemplating anything other than that something, or is a Fanboy merely someone who has a preference of one thing over another with an acceptance of others' preferences too? Well, it is the Off Topic Lounge, isn't it! I wouldn't want to dis' anyone here by using the word incorrectly, would I?

GraemeT.

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A Fanboy someone who sides with something to the exclusion of all else through blind faith, and so could be regarded as being incapable of contemplating anything other than that something.

fanboy - Wiktionary

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Originally Posted by GraemeT

is a Fanboy someone who sides with something to the exclusion of all else through blind faith, and so could be regarded as being incapable of contemplating anything other than that something

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Yes.

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Originally Posted by GraemeT

merely someone who has a preference of one thing over another with an acceptance of others' preferences too

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That's just a "fan" of some product/company.

Warning: Slightly long opinion piece here...

In tech blogs, comment sections on most sites, and forums, fanboy seems to be used/seen as derogatory for the most part. When I see someone write "He's an apple fanboy" for example, I might immediately think of someone who blindly purchases all Apple products without a second thought, making excuses for nearly every shortcoming they may have or mistakes they may make, may be seen publicly "defending" Apple products and the brand as aggressively, word-twistingly, or blatantly as they can (sometimes the truth, sometimes an exaggeration, or sometimes only believing/hearing and regurgitating what they want to see), over exaggerating the usefulness of any minor new feature/product/update and... basically... defending them against all odds.

It may seem a little extreme, but I feel that is what many think of when they think of a "true fanboy". It extends beyond smartphones, OEM's, and Apple/Microsoft/Google/RIM... a "COD/Call of Duty" fanboy would be someone who blindly purchases every new Call of Duty game... and defend it against other competing shooters such as Battlefield.

Either way, I think there are varying "levels" of fanboys. Aside from the "true fanboy / extreme fanboy" mentioned above, there are the people who are simply loyal to a company but know its faults and shortcomings and accept it hoping for improvement - maybe even getting actively involved in a petition or something - but they will still usually buy many of their products. Then there are those who may be loyal to a company but accept that they can put out some crappy products that aren't for them so they get what does work for them - even a competitor's product - yet still publicly defend the company for which they are loyal to and hope for the best. Oh, and then you have the fanboys that aggressively defend their company of choice until they find something that really pisses them off about a new product. After some whining, they pledge their allegiance to another company who "never would have made a product like that" and they may or may not stick with that one either :P

Finally, you have the "casual fanboys" who are usually just defending their purchase because - c'mon - you don't want to look like the doof who spent money on a crappy product. As an example, my mom turned into a "casual fanboy" of the Android platform because all of her friends and everyone she talked to would not stop raving about Android (same with my dad, actually) so she bought one. When I got my first WP last November my mom asked how I was enjoying it, but every feature I figured would be awesome to demo she would retort with, "Oh yea, my Android does that" and it got annoying... can't I be excited about my new phone? I would show off a feature that Android can't do natively without an app - or that I think WP does better - and I will get the "Well, I'm sure Android can do that, I know there are a lot of things I don't know about the phone" speech. Of course, after her phone started getting sluggish and slowing down, the attitude changed a bit. I reminded her that, with Android, she'll have to get the top of the line phone to ensure a smooth, non-laggy experience... a bit fanboyish of me, but hey, I experienced that on my old Android phone :P I also reminded her that there are other smartphone platforms out there, and each has its faults.

All my opinion of course, based on my observations in the tech community and the general public's growing allegiance/loyalty to companies and their products. . I don't think the word "fanboy" will always carry a negative connotation. As an example, I casually refer to myself as a geek but if I say that in front of my father he gets upset and tells me not to insult myself like that. Then again, geek can still be used negatively depending on how someone says it or in what context. So can any word.

By my definition, a fanboy is somebody who glosses over or defends the shortcomings and trashes the opposition without giving it a fair shake. Close-mindedness is the key trait here...

As ever, thanks everyone. Particularly Mystictrust, for your fanboy thesis! It was very good of you to offer such a response to my rather idle question. So as I gauge it, generally derogatory (although that might change over time and usage) but should always be taken in the context that it was meant (although that could be subjective). Actually, in its milder interpretation, I'm probably becoming a bit of a WP8 fanboy myself!!!

IMHO a fanboy is a close-minded *****.

Fanboys are the spice of internet forums! I love sitting back and watching IOS vs android vs WP fans go at it. Pretty damn entertaining!

Especially when people go ape #$%& for something as simple as a cell phone. Classic!

I am a fanboy of pizza.

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Originally Posted by etphoto

I am a fanboy of pizza.

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I'm with you, man... Chinese food is for saps! lol

I'm a fanboy of quality hardware. I don't care how much I love an OS, if its on sh*tty hardware, I won't buy it. That's why, although I loved webOS, I never owned a device running it, but was planning on grabbing a Pre 3 (before it ended up never launching). Its also why I used OSX for a while. There were no PC's available with the build quality of my MacBook.

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Originally Posted by jdevenberg

There were no PC's available with the build quality of my MacBook.

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You also paid twice as much for that quality - so it's a wash.

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Originally Posted by crystal_planet

You also paid twice as much for that quality - so it's a wash.

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Used (but looked brand new) on Ebay for $500. I'd rather have a used BMW than a new Kia. At the time I got it, ultrabooks were still $1000+ and non ultrabooks were generally cheaply built.

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Originally Posted by jdevenberg

Used (but looked brand new) on Ebay for $500. I'd rather have a used BMW than a new Kia. At the time I got it, ultrabooks were still $1000+ and non ultrabooks were generally cheaply built.

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not the Asus Zenbook UX31. Too bad it had a terrible trackpad and non backlit keyboard.

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Originally Posted by crystal_planet

You also paid twice as much for that quality - so it's a wash.

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Paid twice as much for a decent unit that I can't get to crash on Windows 8! Whereas my desktop (custom built) randomly locks up frequently on both Win7 and Win8... I know which one I'd rather have, even when you factor in the price!

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Originally Posted by crystal_planet

You also paid twice as much for that quality - so it's a wash.

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The price also includes much superior customer support - when one of my friends had a major issue with his MacBook Pro, he brought it to local Apple store and they took care of the rest of diagnostic and repair process, without forcing him to spend 2 hours on a phone with "George" from South Asia ;-)

^^PC hardware has been ****ty for a long time. Vizio is the first company I've ever seen create hardware as gorgeous and high quality as Apple. Going to the store and see all these laptops and desktops running Windows 8, all I can think of is look how ****ty these devices look compared to the modern OS that is on them.

There is a reason MS made the Surface. So OEMs will see how they SHOULD be making these devices.

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Originally Posted by Alex Kj

The price also includes much superior customer support - when one of my friends had a major issue with his MacBook Pro, he brought it to local Apple store and they took care of the rest of diagnostic and repair process, without forcing him to spend 2 hours on a phone with "George" from South Asia ;-)

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Who cares if it's George from Oregon or Yorge from India. Tell you what, at the same price, I'll get two Wintel laptops and use one for a spare. My downtime will be less than your friend's.

The owner of our company took his macbook to the apple store. Over a week and a new hard drive later, not to mention 2 years worth of e-mail lost, they never could tell him what happened and what was wrong. I think I'll pass on that kind of customer support.

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Originally Posted by stmav

The owner of our company took his macbook to the apple store. Over a week and a new hard drive later, not to mention 2 years worth of e-mail lost, they never could tell him what happened and what was wrong. I think I'll pass on that kind of customer support.

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I would be hesitant to just peg the entire whole as incompetent from one bad experience. Sure, its not something you want to hear just in case you happen to one day experience such a thing. I've experienced really shi#$y customer service with places just as much as I've experienced really good. I don't know of any business/service that has perfect customer service.

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Originally Posted by TonyDedrick

I would be hesitant to just peg the entire whole as incompetent from one bad experience. Sure, its not something you want to hear just in case you happen to one day experience such a thing. I've experienced really shi#$y customer service with places just as much as I've experienced really good. I don't know of any business/service that has perfect customer service.

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It really should be perfect though if you are paying 3 or 4 x cost for it. Even if they give you a new one, they are still making 2 or 3 x the cost, so no excuses really. I am sure there are more than one bad experience and that is just too many for the price. You are effectively buying a really expensive extended warranty when you purchase an Apple product so there are no excuses for them to be worse than say a Best Buy PSP or some of the other warranties.

Other companies have a legitimate excuse, they make no profit or lose money on their products. So if they replaced everyone's laptop for a really lame reason, they would go out of business. So of course it makes sense for their warranties to be more difficult. They have to take measures to weed out the unreasonable warranty requests or go out of business.

Apple is simply raping people left and right and should take care of their bi t ch es. No excuses.

To the OP. There are plenty examples of fanboys in this very thread. Mainly Apple ones but I think the entire WP central forum and some of the editors here are total Windows Phone fanboys. At least, in my opinion. No one here seems to be able to objectively judge any other operating system besides Windows Phone 8 and occasionally IOS. Black Berry and Android? There is obvious hate towards those two in these forums. A lot of people here simply just make things up about those two operating systems.

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Originally Posted by baseballbert

Fanboys are the spice of internet forums! I love sitting back and watching IOS vs android vs WP fans go at it. Pretty damn entertaining!

Especially when people go ape #$%& for something as simple as a cell phone. Classic!

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Where can I find these threads it forums?
Sent from my SGH-i677 using Board Express

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Originally Posted by WasteSomeTime

Where can I find these threads it forums?

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I'd say look in Windows Phone forums for a "This is why Windows Phone sucks" thread. You could also make it really easy on yourself and wander in to an article at The Verge talking about Windows Phone... actually, just about any article on The Verge involving Microsoft, Google, or Apple... particularly phones though ;)

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Originally Posted by Paladinleeds

Paid twice as much for a decent unit that I can't get to crash on Windows 8! Whereas my desktop (custom built) randomly locks up frequently on both Win7 and Win8... I know which one I'd rather have, even when you factor in the price!

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Clearly you have a problem with your custom, but I'm running an i3 laptop with first win 7 then 8 and I have never had a single problem.

Just like any ad: "Results may vary"