Please, Don't Be A Fanboy [Column]

Before I say anything else, I would just like to mention that the original Portal is now free on Steam. Until Monday. So, all of you cheap asses who couldn't afford it before (myself included) best start downloading it. Right now. So, without further ado, here's some writing in italics:


This is a column written for eGamer.co.za, where I have an internship. If you want to see it on eGamer instead, for some weird reason, click here.

Before you read this, I would like to point out that this is probably the strangest thing I've ever written, and the strangest thing which I am likely to write for a while. Oh well. That's what happens when you write columns at 4:30am.

Were I a lesser man this would usually be the point where I once again hate on Adam for being a Durbanite and stealing my column ideas. Luckily for Adam, however, I am not a lesser man, and everyone already knows that he is a Durbanite. He also didn't happen to steal my column idea, but that's more of a peripheral issue.

What isn't a peripheral issue, however, is the epic story of how I got given a flying high-five by Tarryn van der Byl of NAG/MyGaming via Twitter. Yes, that happened. I'm going to tell you the aforementioned epic story now. Before you say anything, bear with me here – I swear I'm going somewhere with this.

I can't actually tell you the epic story in question, however, before we give it a bit of context. So, here's some context:

I've been an avid NAG reader since about Grade 7 (which isn't as long ago as some of you may think), and when Tarryn started writing for NAG I began to follow her writings on an almost religious level. Every time I got my shiny new edition of NAG, I would open at the back to read her column, before working systemically through the previews and reviews to find which ones she had written, prioritise them in order of relative awesomeness, and then read them. And then read the rest of the magazine.

Some of you who might be feeling a little creeped out by my obsession devoted interest at this point (#pedobear?) will be glad to know that my pseudo-religious following of Tarryn has calmed down a bit over recent months. It may be more a product of a lack of this resource called cash monies than a regression of my aforementioned devoted interest, however.

The question I'm sure we're still asking here, however, is what did I find so appealing about Tarryn? I'm going to have to call 'inb4 bcoz gurl' really quickly, 'cause if anyone actually manages to get biologically interested in a gaming column because it is written by a girl, they should probably seek the attention of a specialist. Unless it happens to be of the vaguely NSFW variety, in which case you'd probably be afforded a fair trial.

But I digress.

The point I'm making here is Tarryn van der Byl was and still is one of my personal legends of gaming journalism. She wrote (and still writes, I'm sure) about some of the most arbitrary, awesome stuff ever. She uses a lot of words which sound really cool, which I don't understand at all, and she was (is) funny besides. I really just dug (and continue to dig) her style of writing.

So, imagine my surprise when on Thursday (also known as yesterday), after getting Twitter the day before (also known as Wednesday), I found out that not only did Tarryn have Twitter, but our good old friend, Caveshen, followed her. And knows her. Virtually.

It goes without saying that when I found out that Cavie knew (on a virtual level) one of my personal heroes of our games journalism generation and idols in terms of writing, I had to get out of my chair and do my little Jig of Awesomeness, which I choreographed a while back to celebrate moments like those which I just described.

Story even shorter, Cavie totally twitterduced us (like 'introduced', but via Twitter), and Tarryn totally tweeted me a (and I quote) 'FLYING HIGH FIIIIIIIIVE!'. Needless to say, my Jig of Awesomeness following this was significantly longer and more energetic than my previous one.

What am I trying to say here? Tarryn van der Byl, one of my most admired writing idols, totally tagged me in a tweet. It was awesome.

What's the point I'm making? A good question; we should move on to that, shouldn't we?

You see, while I may regard Tarryn as a quasi-deital figure, and herald her writings as text of near religious value, at the end of the day I'm still a noob who has hardly earned the write to call himself a gaming journalist, let alone say that I'm part of the South African gaming journalism community. The thought of Tarryn van der Byl actually being human only really occurred to me yesterday.

Other people, like Caveshen for example, who are part of this South African gaming journalism community, might actually know her on a semi-personal level. They probably aren't as likely to idolise her as much as I do, because they're less starry-eyed about pretty much everything to do with games and South Africans who write about them.

Yet still other people might hate what Tarryn writes, comparing it to things like stomach bile and the proverbial turd on metaphorical toilet seat of life. I'm not sure why they would, I think it's pretty awesome, but there you have it – views differ.

“So wait, Duncan, what are you getting at again?”

Fanboys, dear Martin (that's my hypothetical reader, just by the way), fanboys.

As you may or may not have noticed, over this last week eGamer has been covering the Modern Warfare 3 versus Battlefield 3 debate pretty extensively (and, in my subjective opinion, pretty objectively as well), in an attempt to be able to wash our hands of this nonsense for the next little while. At the moment, the MW3 vs BF3 debate is probably the most fanboy-rife one out there, although luckily none surfaced on eGamer (who lived to tell the tale, that is).

What we learnt in the process of doing research for the articles in question, however, is that fanboys suck. They have this innate ability to degrade every comment section on the interwebs to the most deranged, facepalm-tastic flame war you're ever likely to see. Sure, they may have their benefits, and I'll talk about those in a later column, but some of them just deserve a good punch in the face (even more so than dolphins, in some instances!).

Loving something (whether it be a game or a writer) and engaging in an intellectual manner about the pro's and con's of it are, contrary to popular fanboy belief, not mutually exclusive. You can do both and, believe it or not, you won't defy any laws of physics in the process.

Like I said, I really dig Tarryn's writing. Not only do I enjoy the style, but she's been an idol to me for a good few years now, and I'm not just going to turn my back on that. That doesn't mean that I can't accept the fact that she has faults and that her writing may not be the best the world has ever seen in the history of forever, but it does mean that I stand by her and I stand by my advocation (that is totally a word. I swear) of her despite those things.

So, all you fanboys (if any are reading this. If not, please just go to a BF3 vs MW3 thread on reddit and then link them to this, so that there are fanboys reading this). Instead of loving something and crapping on, from a dizzying height I might add, everything that isn't the thing you love, how about loving something and replying to those that differ from you with something that doesn't start with a public display of your homophobia or of your intimate biological relations with their mother (she's probably like, thirty years older than you anyway – if you need to hit something that old, you should probably start rethinking your life).

Hell, it's just a thought. But then again, so is Einstein's Theory of Relativity.