05.06.06
On Being A Hater And Why It Works (and why it shouldn’t)
I’m a pretty laid-back guy. At least, I think so. I know what I like and I like what I like. Some of my likes happen to be some moderately ‘controversial’ things in the tech and gaming industry, like products from Nintendo and Apple. As a matter of course, being around other people– be it in a face-to-face context or in an online context– I tend to express my support when the opportunity arises. Someone asks me for a recommendation, I tell them my preference straight up. Simple. It’s only when they realize that my preference runs to Apple or to Nintendo that they start pooh-poohing me as the stereotypical ‘fanboy’.
Now, bear this in mind– I’m not bitching about being called a fanboy. I deserve the ridicule at times because, yes, I do get a bit zealous and I’m often basing my suggestions on my own personal experiences with the products. All things considered, though, personal experience counts for a lot in the industry. If I wanted to go from a purely objective standpoint, I’d say that Windows was a better OS simply because it has more users and as a result more software which runs on it. However, I feel that OSX offers me a better experience– it’s more fun to work with than Windows (most of the time– let’s face it, no OS is going to be candy and roses all the time).
That’s getting off the point. The point is, in an online context (and, to a lesser degree, in face-to-face situations) the zealot (or ‘fanboy’, but I’d rather not use that word) for the alternative choice often winds up getting shouted down by proponents of the norm. A few years back it would spark a discussion on the relative merits of each OS and their flaws. It might get heated but it was still civil and it was still done on a foundation of good arguments. Today, even whispering the word Apple brings about attacks not on the product, but on the proponents of the product. It drowns out the original discussion and renders any hope of civility completely void. The people who decry the folks standing out wind up getting some kind of positive reinforcement from this– I’m not sure how, exactly, but they must be because they try it again, and it works again. Nobody posts in an Apple thread to talk about whatever product or move the company has made, they post to complain about the people who like Apple or to bitch that Apple gets carte blanche where Microsoft would get an anti-trust suit. Apple threads devolve into petty flaming all too quickly. I wonder why that is?
One possible solution could be the recent proliferation of ‘viral’ marketing. Something cool on the internet? Heaven forbid! Quick, everyone rush to your Linux boxes and find out who’s trying to sell you what with it! To be honest, amusements which are used to sell things are absolutely nothing new. They go back to the days of radio serials and probably even before. What has brought on this backlash against them these days has been the intentional concealing of the product being advertised. Witness 2004’s ‘I Love Bees’ phenomenon. After a couple of weeks it was apparent that it was a marketing effort for Halo 2, and once this was determined, the interest in it dropped considerably. People had invested thought and energy into an advertisement, for shame! By the same token, that’s really no different than spending time doing the crossword in the newspaper– the crossword exists to sell papers, so it ought to count as an advertisement. ILB isn’t the most recent example of a viral campaign, admittedly, and I’m as guilty as anyone of being disappointed that some really neat puzzle or site that just plain looks cool exists just to shill stuff.
I’m also going to say right out that the kind of viral marketing that involves posing as a participant in a forum, building trust, and then dropping a thinly-veiled press release as a ‘trusted recommendation’ is just plain evil. We already have enough forum drama, thanks. We don’t need more emo teenagers committing suicide because the MySpace buddy they spent the last four weeks pouring their heart out to turned out to be nothing but a marketing drone for acne medicine. Because of this, anyone who posts positively about a product is automatically assumed to be getting paid for it, which somehow magically invalidates their point and the point of anyone else who agrees, independently or not.
What I am saying is that separating the message from the medium is rapidly becoming a lost art in the world, let alone separating the preferences from the person. Say you’re a Mac person and your opinion becomes invalidated on everything. That shouldn’t be. It’s probably a result of the whole “Red State/Blue State” thing we went through six years ago– at least, that’s America’s excuse. Seeing things in black and white isn’t the natural tendency of humanity, it’s just the tendency we’re being conditioned into. Rhetoric– real rhetoric, that is, the art of communicating and debating properly– truly is a lost art. We all fall back on gut reactions and snap judgements.
That’s why people are haters. It works because when the predominant mindset is “guilty until proven innocent” the only points which are believed are the negative ones. I’m not innocent of this. When I was shopping around for a new host this past month, and Lunarpages looked like a good choice, what did I search for? “Lunarpages complaints”. I kid you not. I didn’t want to hear what people liked about Lunarpages, I wanted to hear what people hated about it. Fortunately, I found more in the first category than the second. That seems to be a rarity. If a positive opinion isn’t going to be read, why bother writing it?
The fact is, negative opinions get more attention because people see them as attacks, things which have to be answered. If nobody answers them, they’re seen as ‘right’ and not simply as ‘this guy’s a crank who hates everything’. That can easily wreck a community like Digg or Slashdot, where the haters wind up outnumbering the good writers and rhetoricians and win just because they flood the boards with crank crap. Unmoderated boards make the best case for mildly moderated boards.
That’s probably the best way to turn things around. Forums with even-handed moderators who can see both sides of an issue and can accept that folks are allowed to express dissenting opinions, without allowing a conversation to descend to the level of pissing match, are pretty rare simply because the moderators can often fall victim to a polished troll. Not to invalidate this whole post (as if mentioning Apple and Nintendo didn’t already do that), but I like to think I’m a good moderator. See, a moderator’s role shouldn’t be censor and moral guardian– the moderator should exist to facilitate the discussion, and make sure that trends which threaten to derail good discussion get shut down quickly and with a minimum of disruption. The moderator also has to balance this against respecting the participants’ freedom of expression (within the rules of the forum– remember, the first amendment only applies to the government; everywhere else, it’s “my turf, my rules”). In reality, the only difference between me and the Something Awful forum mods is our definitions of “good discussion”. They are a great deal more inclusive in their definition than I am; whether this is good or bad depends solely on your definition of “good discussion”. The reason that SA’s managed to attract so many members might be due to the content, but the members stay due to what they feel is good moderation, and that’s something I respect.
I don’t really know what else to say; basically it all boils down to being fair and being able to understand other folks by what they actually say and not necessarily how you feel about what you think they’re trying to say. And yeah, it helps to put your two cents in without being a jerkhole about it. Maybe I’m hoping for too much from folks, but I can at least try to do what I can to save discussion.