Beware the Fanboys

In Wanting More Than Anger, Bruce Baugh, line editor of Gamma World tells us some of the things he dislikes about fanboy behaviour.

I've been thinking lately about the extent to which fandom - any fandom - seems to be about providing reasons to be angry. If you're a fan of something mainstream (in terms of the hobby in question), you can get angry whenever it changes and whenever something new comes along and gets any popularity. If you're a fan of something less popular within the field, you can be angry at the mainstream for not getting the obvious merits of your clearly superior thing. If you're into the history of the field, you can be angry at how everyone else is neglecting treasures of the past, and if you're trying to create something new, you can be angry at all the traditionalism and stuck-in-the-mudness. And of course wherever you are on questions like that, you can be angry at the public at large for marginalizing this wonderful thing (or worse, depending on how much you feel like indulging a persecution complex).

Many reviewers have been harsh on Gamma World, and there's been a lot of vitriol on the boards of Pyramid Online and elsewhere. Most of the nastiest comments have come from people that liked one of the earlier incarnations of GW, and hate what Bruce has done with this one. At the end of the day, it's only a game. Nobody is forcing anyone to buy it at gunpoint.

I find there's something pathological about more extreme fanboy behaviour. I feel that anyone for whom the continuity of a movie franchise or comic book series is a crucial part of their identity has a serious need to get a life. It extends to music as well; one reason I no longer read many bands' mailing lists is the constant hate between different sects of fanboys. The Marillion one was particularly bad. I was on that list at the time Anoraknophobia came out, and there were terrible flamewars between the sect that believed it was the best album they'd ever done, and those that believed it was a betrayal of everything the band stood for.

It even extends to model railways. Every time any major manufacturer releases a flagship new model, there's a chorus of people on lists like Demodellers condemning it's inaccuracies. "It's 2mm too wide!", they cry, "The cantrail is all wrong". For the people that don't like Gamma World, look at this; scroll down to the Monday evening - 03/11/03 entry. (Bah! no permalinks!) Has anyone torn up a copy of GW, photographed the result, and posted it to the net?