Unthinkability

Ever meet a fanboy of a particular brand of paperclip?  Or of a wire coat hanger company?  Unlikely, as these are ubiquitous commodities.  They are interchangeable, and their sales are driven by price and availability.  Sure, I have used some pretty nice paperclips before, but I have never gone out of my way to buy a certain brand.  I have never gotten into an argument about which brand of paperclip is better.

I realized that I am treating everything like a commodity now, and that even my iPhone has become just another generic hammer in my toolbox of “crap I use to do the job.”  I wrote this post as a deconstruction of Fanboyism and how I have seen its decline over the past 30 years.

We all know someone who is a Fanboy of something.  He might be a sports fanatic, or an Intel CPU fanboy (versus an AMD fanboy), or an XBOX fanboy (versus a Playstation fanboy).  These people are different than regular fans; these people are staunch supporters of something diametrically opposed to a competitor.

From the Fletcher Unabridged Dictionary: “Fanboyism” describes a phenomena wherein an individual holds unwavering positive feelings of a passionate and persistent nature regarding a particular product, company, or other concept.  Individuals exhibiting “Fanboyism” become especially fervent when the the precepts of their beliefs are criticized.   “Fanboyism” results from the natural desire to defend and justify one’s personal investment (time, money, reputation, associations) in a particular and primary choice, wherein the choice represents a commitment to a specific subset of subsequent choices.  “Fanboyism” is most often observed in consumers of products and services that involve a mutually-exclusive choice and subsequent investment based on that choice.

For example, Apple Macintosh computer hardware and software is [generally] not compatible with Microsoft Windows hardware and software.  A consumer of computer products must make an initial choice between these two platforms/brands.  Once this initial choice is made, the consumer is locked into purchases that are only compatible with the chosen brand.

An individual’s personal investment (of time, money, reputation) is accounted directly to the initial choice of “Mac or PC.”  That investment cannot be recuperated if the individual later changes his mind.  If that person were to change his mind and switch to a different computer platform, he would essentially lose his investment of thousands of dollars and hundreds (upon hundreds) of hours.  The longer the person remains committed to the initial choice, the deeper the investment, and the more difficult it becomes to change his mind.

Fanboysim is complex.  It runs much deeper than mere pride.  I have seen fanboyism mimic religion, with the members of the its congregation actively trying to convert non believers, attempting to increase the size of their flocks.  It seems like a crazy thing to be so emotionally invested in a computer brand, but there it is.  I am currently having a very similar feeling about quitting cable.  There seems to be a strong desire for validation in Fanboyism; having others reassure you that you made the right decision, reinforcing your beliefs that your choice was superior to the alternative.

Brand loyalty is not Fanboyism.  I have a particular brand/model of ink pen that I absolutely love.  They don’t make them anymore.  It is the Bic Exact Tip Roller Ball Pen 0.6mm Needle Tip first manuafactured in the year 2000.  I signed my Last Will & Testament with one and fell in love with it instantly.  I asked my lawyer if I could have it, and he said “absolutely; you paid for it.”  I bought these pens over the next two years, and then bought two cases of them in 2003.

I gave most of those pens away to people, saying that “this is the best pen you will ever use.”  99% of the recipients agreed.  I was glad to give these pens away because I was sharing “the joy of writing.”  It was a ridiculously good pen.  My last pen ran out of ink in March 2005.  I still miss them.  I’ve been looking for a replacement for five years, and still hold out hopes for finding one as good as the Bic.

I was not a Fanboy of the Bic Exact Tip Roller Ball Pen.  I did not get into arguments about which pen was better.  I was not so emotionally and financially invested in the choice that I couldn’t change to a different pen later.  I did not have hundreds of dollars in pen accessories, nor did I have special paper that was only compatible with my favorite pen.  It was simply the most awesome pen ever made.  (Now that I think about it, I kind of feel the same way about this stapler.  Hmmm.)

Fanboyism is a telltale sign of competition and innovation, whereby two competing commercial entities strive to capture the same pool of customers while differentiating their products from their competitor’s products.  Ultimately, the customers’ needs would be met by either company, but the customers are isolated into two separate product silos created as a result of the two companies’ efforts to differentiate their products.  More often than not, these two silos are explicitly designed to be incompatible so as to lock in existing customers and to prevent their migration to a competitor (and to avoid paying licenses for technologies invented by someone else); Proprietary technology as a business model.

Proprietary lock-ins do not guarantee fanboys.  The fanboy phenomenon requires a competitive marketplace with at least two similarly capable products from two or more companies.  In contrast, Cable companies have exclusive arrangements with cities/municipalities that prevent competition, and cable companies are hemorrhaging subscribers at an alarming rate as customers seek out better experiences with online offerings.  That makes American cell phone companies one of the last bastions of proprietary silos, preventing customers from migrating their favorite cell phones to the network of their choice.  There are millions of iPhone fanboys, but very few AT&T fans.

Fanboyism thrives in times of luxury, wealth, and prosperity, and does not apply to commodities.  It is a sign that we are enjoying a time of plenty.  Otherwise, we would be fighting over food, not which video game system was better than the other.  I must tell you that I am running out of energy to devote to such tiresome ideological pursuits.  I am also at a loss to name any new product that meets the requirements.  No, I do not find myself getting fired up about the iPad, and I could give less of a shit about the Kindle.

Over the past 30 years, the innovation-to-commoditization cycle has gotten tighter and tighter, shortening the window for proprietary systems’ dominance in the mainstream space.  Even iTunes has dropped their DRM lock in, making the iPod a plain old (insanely well-designed) mp3 player with a user experience that differentiates itself from its competition.  In the end, however, it is just a music player with an online music store.

We have seen crazy innovation in the past 30 years.  VCR, CD, PC, TCP/IP, WWW, DVD, MP3, LCD, HDTV, 3D… The format wars keep getting shorter and shorter, due in no small part to the lessons that we learned in the VHS-vs..-Betamax years.  I mean, honestly, how many people bought a Blu-Ray player while there was still a chance that the HD-DVD player might win?  No one was willing to make that mistake.. again.

There are very few fanboy venues left in the realm of technology.  Speaking for myself, personally – I will wait for the commoditized/standardized version of [insert product name here] before I get in line.  Even then, I’ll probably buy it used on eBay.

I suspect that this is what it means to get old.  I need to tell those kids to get off my lawn.  Is there an app for that?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 2:10 am and is filed under A Geek Dad's Life, Blog Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.