Comment Re:No sympathy for WoWGlider's author (Score 1) 229
1a. and that brand is managed for the market and the market alone. Genuine aesthetic decisions come in second at best, always. Those brands will be managed to generate the optimal revenue stream, always.
1b. this dependent relationship makes you rather powerless. Most fans will engage in a lot of apologetics for the franchise, brand, or producer that has earned their loyalty, and sometimes it even leads to advocacy of questionable policy if it is in the interest of their brand."
WTF? You're seriously trying to intellectualize someone's taste in geek entertainment and make a case for it as a bad thing?
Response to 1: What's the dependency you're refering to? Seems to me unless we're talking brand loyalty to a smack dealer, he's free to walk away from the relationship at anytime - namely, when something better comes along. He's no slave to anything, the brand needs him, and not the other way around.
1a: a product is absolutely managed for the market, you're 100% correct. Beyond that, the statement you're trying to make here is oversimplified to the point of being absurd. Every product has a market they're trying to reach, and every product wants to appeal to that market. Whether the revenue stream is measured in paid subscriptions (in the case of WoW) or increased community support (in the case of FSF projects), it doesn't matter. As for "genuine aesthetic decisions" not driven by market demand, well, unless we're discussing pure art, they're best left second to function. Again, it puzzles me why you say all these things as if they're bad.
1b: on the contrary, the consumer has all the power. As I said, the marketer needs you more than you need it. As for questionable policy, that's all about personal values, isn't it? I like Oreos and am willing to share when I have some. Some eat my Oreos, others don't because Nabisco uses animal products in production of Oreos. This is objectional to some, but not to me, because I am not a vegetarian. Does this mean I deserve to be slapped with some kind of label with negative conotations, such as neanderthal carnivore, because I don't share these beliefs? Or should I be free to call the vegetarians a bunch of hippy-dippy nut jobs because they don't think like I do? Neither, I think.
"2. It puts your role as "consumer" in front of an identity as "citizen," "thinker," "producer," or "critic." The "fan" is a very strange post-modern creation: it joins consumption with a kind of religious or spiritual devotion, or loyalty. It isn't exactly religion per se, but if consumer goods are the most dynamic and visible things in our environment - and I think they often are - then it isn't surprising that they can generate these kind of feelings. I find that troubling."
2: It sounds to me like you've spent waaaaay too much time in a graduate Humanities program. It's extremely presumptous (not to mention arrogant) of you to assume you know this person's motivations for purchasing and enjoying a video game. Personally, I fail to see how someone being a "fanboy" of Blizzard makes any kind of statement on their ability to think, reason, or act responsibly as a member of society. Even in the sole context of making a purchasing decision regarding a MMO video game, you assume this person hasn't played any other MMO games, read any reviews of other MMOs, or done any introspective thinking into what he actually enjoys spending his leisure time playing. He simply must've heard "Blizzard!" whispered to him in a dream, and out of pure compulsion, gave in to the irresistable urge to buy their products, and play their game!
"3. While one may have become a fan due to a positive experience of a product, the transference of value from the experience to the brand may make you resistant to experiences from outside the brand. An investment into the brand is made that is disproportionate to the value of that experience. An example: fans going to see, repeatedly, Star Wars films that they know and admit are bad, while independent films of substantially higher quality (like Gattaca) are neglected.
3: To more than a few, especially when talking about movies, bad may still equate to entertaining. Most films with a loyal "cult" following are considered terrible by professional critics. If you want to talk about value derived from experience instead of wrongly associated with brand, your example does little to prove your point: most pure Star Wars "fanboys" can trace their loyalty back to the experience they had going to see the first films in the theaters as children, citing the experience as a decidedly remarkable one. Even so, the bottom line is you're trying to impose your value system on others. You say "...transference of value from the experience to the brand may make you resistant to experiences from outside the brand." Maybe, but then again, we all have our pair of comfortable shoes, so to speak. It's a matter of tastes and comfort zones. Nothing wrong with that, if that's how some choose to live their lives. In the case of Blizzard, they do have a known and widespread reputation for quality with everything they've released, so it's not exactly unreasonable for the brand name to carry loyalty.
FYI, Gattaca was nominated for a slew of awards, hardly neglected. Also hardly independent, as Jersey Films is pretty damn mainstream. Look up their filmography sometime. But, that doen't really matter, what matters is that you're assuming the Star Wars fan wouldn't also see or enjoy Gattaca. I imagine if a Star Wars fan were choosing between one or the other to watch, they'd likely choose Star Wars, but then, a supporter of FSF may not choose to try Windows Vista, or someone who likes bananas may not choose an apple when offered both. I don't see how this implies disproportionate value. It may be disproportionate to you and your value system, but someone else's experiences may mean more to them.
But in the end, calling someone fanboy on slashdot just amounts to one geek calling another geek a geek for enjoying geek things. Why you'd throw this psuedo-academic bullshit out there in some attempt to make yourself the better geek is beyond me. There's nothing wrong with being a fanboy, and there really isn't much of a case you can make that won't sound like knocking someone simply because they like something more than you do.
