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Can you smell it? I can. The fresh smell of glue that emanates from a pristine stack of manuals. The aroma of silicone and styrofoam all mixed together to form the sweet salad plate that is electronic product packaging. I open a box of the stuff, I take the first whiff. It's even better when whatever you buy is more expensive! The smell becomes more potent and it gives you a hint of how many hours will be spent revelling in front of your newly acquired marvel. A new DVD is merely a popper while a new console system provides ecstasy for the whole evening, maybe more. They smell like what an 8 ball of coke should smell.
Short of the new car smell, the joy knows no equal.
And we are going to be smelling a lot of it since Santa is about to pelt us with a few new consoles before and after Christmas. We are going to enjoy unwrapping the plastics that hold our dear new machines, we are going to do jolts on new un-heard of games as we tear down the security stickers that permit us to pop some whiffs, we will enjoy doing this like we enjoy opening a newly printed book in a library to get a sense of that new book smell.
Oh yes. Good times are ahead.
... Wait dude... that's a shitbox 360! It's got nothing on the PS3!
fuck you dude, my Sexbox 360 is better than your PSUX3!
MORONS! Myamoto is GOD and thanks to his vision we will killzap the commercial gamers of the west with our powerful new joystick/wands. You shall burn in the purgatory of un-imagination hell!
And the conversation will last forever. Shitheads are the reason why I have difficulty enjoying the new onslaught of fresh consoles that will arrive my doorstep.
Here's a list of things that are pissing me off.
1- Unless you are a PR spokesperson or that you are paid to do something similar, there is no reason why you should be endorsing a company that is selling you a product in the first place. They don't owe you anything; you don't owe them anything (save the money you you’re actually paying for the product). It's even more ridiculous when you base that kind of behavior around fanatism. Fanatism! Have you ever seen a guy run around the streets preaching about how Kool-aid is better than whatever you are drinking and that you suck if you don't like it? No, because it's what an INSANE PERSON WOULD DO. When people are already criticizing how bad the idea of branding can be, it's nothing short of alarming to see what fanboyism can do. This is just a very strange form of advance branding that involves mostly the younger population, brainwashing them to make them think that leaning towards a certain brand of product will make you cooler/smarter than other people and then ask you to spread the word. No product launch has ever warranted a launch party (Microsoft has rented an airplane hangar and organized a two day party for the event) or overnight line-ups to the store (people camping in the streets in the cold month of November, no less). Guess what, you only do that if you happen to live in a country where the store has only a very limited supply of the food you need to feed your family. This super materialism makes absofsckinglutly no damn sense at all.
2- You could look at problem number one from another angle. People are only backing up what they are buying because they want to be sure that whatever they invest in was the right thing. Since there’s competition for the said product, it's only natural to see other people start bragging to the enemy (ie. people who did not make the same choice you made) about why their choice was a better one. This of course is all done with a biasness to your purchase, most probably because it was either very costly or because (like in most cases) you can't afford such a thing in the first place anyway. Humans are like that. Whether you did something good or something bad, it always feels more reassuring when you know that you are amongst others who did the same thing you did (church. AA. You name it).
Ever noticed how passionate some of these arguments can get? Car owners, PC vs. MAC users and other materialistic based arguments of competing products often get out of hand and barely logical in the end. Why? Economics and self-esteem, two reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of your purchase. Canon vs. Nikon is a good example; both companies make the best cameras and lenses there is out there, yet people like to argue about how their product is an inch better than the other one. You almost never hear about the little fact that how you use your gear is more important than how good it is.
PC vs. MAC? Sony vs. Microsoft? Stop arguing and start using. THEN complain.
Notice how people who CAN afford that kind of stuff never really care about such arguments. At the very least they don't get bothered by the little details like how much Anti-Aliasing can the console handle and so on. Someone who can afford more than one console will not defend one or the other, at least not in the sense that the fan boys will be fanning about.
History always repeats itself. A new console is about to come out, a bunch of kids get on the internet and start treating each other like shitheads because they think they know best about something they never even seen. Meanwhile those who have more than a few console launches under their belts have already seen all this before (some of them even fell prey to the gimmicks back then) and simply shut up. There is some fun in getting a new toy in the home; it might even make you skip work to check things out really early. That's personal fun right there. But everything else seems that revolve around a console launch tends to be just chocolate with a thick coating of grade A shit.
The poorer you are, the more you aspire to things you can't get. The more you aspire, the more chances you have to fall prey to branding gimmicks and help the companies to produce golden marketing potential. So I don't think it's a coincidence that these people try to sell things to kids that only an adult with a good salary could actually afford. I don't think it's a coincidence that they also limit the number of consoles that are available either. I also see how much they appreciate the die-hard clientele by making as many people pre-order in advance to later only favor those who bought the most stuff in bundles first. Notice that everywhere the console was being sold, the ones who put up the money first where not necessarily the favored ones? Companies just want your money, and they want you to make your neighbours and your friends do the same. What do you get in exchange?
What do you get, exactly?
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