Lemmings and Cows and Sheep, Oh My!

Yeah, I think I over did it with the Wizard Of Oz reference. Anyway, people love to label things. This is no mystery and anyone familiar with gaming culture might recognize what these 3 animals mean. Basically, lemmings are Microsoft fans, cows are Sony fans, and sheep are Nintendo fans. I've seen this shit explode before my own eyes and thankfully the terms are becoming taboo but, the mentality that spawned them hasn't died. If you have any bias towards anything at all, you're automatically a "fan boy". You know what, fanboyism (or fangirlism if you have a vagina) was totally okay until insecure crybabies made a big deal out of being "objective" and it's shit like this that prevents gamers from being taken seriously. You wanna know something else...this is politics all over again.

You know how Republicans are represented by an elephant and Democrats are represented by a donkey. Have ever wondered why that is? Each animal is more or less a symbol of their groups ideals and characteristics. Think about elephants for a minute. They're big, powerful, and they never forget (supposedly, I'm not a zoologist). Mice, which are tiny and weak by the way, scare the shit out of them. Now look at donkeys. They're stubborn, considered to be generally ignorant, and it better hope no one calls you one because that's considered an insult. Come to think of it, how the hell is a donkey a positive symbol for anyone? You'd think that would send the wrong message. Maybe it has something to do with donkeys not taking any shit. It's really hard to force those things to do something (again, not a zoologist). Granted, the reasoning behind these symbols and their origins have very little to do with the actual parties themselves. Hell, neither party really chose their animals, they were assigned to them by cartoonist. Either way, the point is, no matter what animal you are, these are simply labels used to generalize groups for the sake of convenience. You know the kind of convenience that creates ridiculous stereotypes.

You see, the reason I'm so fucking terrified by the idea of voting is because I can't trust either party. Why the fuck would I? Politics is a glorified game of poo-flinging. The "elephants" talk shit about how the "donkeys" are ruining America and the "donkeys" go on about how the "elephants" are destroying the country and once the song and dance is over, practically nothing changes (for the better anyway). This is what smear campaigns are all about, making the opposing side look as terrible as possible so you can win people over. Hence, you have people throwing around words like "terrorist" when referring to Barrack Obama. That's pretty scary considering how influential a lot of these voices are whether they're members of congress or just some random people pulled off the street. As a  result, we're constantly at each other's throats regarding our differing opinions on politics despite the fact that we mostly share a common goal; we just want what we think is best for our country.

What could all of this possibly have to do with fanboyism? Well, when you have a bunch of gamers dividing themselves into smaller and smaller groups in an attempt to prove which systems, franchises, etc. are "just", all you get are gamers attacking gamers for having different opinions on video games which something all gamers love. If they didn't, they wouldn't be called gamers. The cruel irony of "fan boy" hunting is that we're essentially calling people out for having preferences in video games. Funny thing is, there are still people out there demonizing us for playing video games altogether yet, we expect them to stop attacking us when we can't even stop attacking each other. This is something I've always disliked about being "objective". Your interest in genre, consoles, franchises, etc. have to all be put aside so you can judge a game "objectively". I understand this to an extent. We shouldn't let our bias stop us from trying new things or seeing a honestly good/bad game for what it is. The problem is that "objective" usually translates into "least offensive opinion" or "opinion your supposed to have". This is probably why games score 8s and 9s so easily because anything lower turns the comments section into Lava Reef.

It doesn't take a genius to tell you that most of this madness stems from insecurity. We have the this need to feel reassured by other people, usually our peers, in regards to damn near everything so when it comes to whether or not we have "good taste", we need a seemingly endless amount of reassurance so we can feel like our opinions are justified. That's understandable. I know how it feels to be an outcast for the most ridiculous reasons. The way I look, talk, walk, act, etc. were all bashed to hell and back when I was a kid so that feeling of shittiness when everyone and their mother calls me an idiot for having an opinion that differs from the majority isn't new but, it still doesn't feel good because now I have to deal with a sense of wrongness. After all, if thousands of people believe something and you don't, those people couldn't possibly be wrong, right?

Well, they could of fooled me with the kind of asinine justifications and flat-out excuses for why the majority is magically right just because it's the majority. I'm not saying majority opinion is always wrong but, if thousands of idiots believe something that one genius doesn't, the genius is still right. The problem here is that people nowadays can't even dream of giving clarified and logical explanations for their beliefs. So instead, we form groups with people who share our specific views and either attack the shit out of anyone who disagrees with them or play the "it's just your opinion" card so we can still basically ignore any criticisms and nobody gets their feelings hurt (a mentality that embodies everything that's fucked up about political correctness).

This is why voicing your opinions on anything (god help you if you're in the minority) is one of the most seemingly hopeless and terrifying things you could do, especially over the internet (which apparently isn't stopping me) because you have no way of knowing if you'll be loved for your insightful views or condemned for being wrong about everything. By "condemned", I mean emailed various death threats. Now, I wouldn't suggest that people simply cower in fear of each other's judgemental views on their opinions but, this does explain why some people (including myself a while back) prefer to keep to themselves rather than risk the internet's cruel and usually nonsensical rejection.

Funny thing is Lemmings, Cows, and Sheep (also Hermits but, nobody today seems to give a shit about PC gaming) are nicknames mostly exclusive to GameFAQs but, you know what, that doesn't matter. Just replace the animal names with the term "fanboy" and you'll see this shit pretty much occurs on practically every gaming website imaginable in some way or form. Why do you think Youtube comments are so...well...like Youtube comments? Just to clarify, this issue isn't exclusive to gaming one bit. You're bond to have similar discourse arise over movies, books, music, etc. However, none of those mediums are still fighting for the right to be seen as "art" and if we ever expect gaming along with gamers to not been viewed as children, we all need to acting like children. I guess as a big fan of video games, I'm naturally going to see general issues like this as if they only apply to gaming which they don't.


All I know is when the original Halo: Combat Evolved came out and I started talking shit about it to my associates. They were not happy. I said it was generic, boring and even said that Japanese people were easily entertained by shit like Halo which exampled its success. That was of course one of the most uneducated and downright stupid (and pretty racist too but, I was in middle school back then of course was some kind of stupid) things that have ever escaped my lips. They're respond to this was pulling out a candle lighter and threaten to set me on fire. I apologized, took back what I said about Halo and the Japanese (which was made all the more embarassing when I found out Bungie was founded in America) and I finally agreed to play Halo with them like were begging me to. I still didn't enjoy it and I don't understand what's so damn great about Master Chief. More disturbingly, I'm left wondering to this very day if their sky-high voices and threatening me with a lighter was just a joke or if I had insisted that Halo was still shitty, would they have really set me a blaze?


My point is that while I was definitely in the wrong for having such a misguided view of the game, these guys decided that instead of giving a well constructed counter-arguement to correct my uneducated opinion of the game, they threatened to perform a real-life "flaming". I did mention this happened in real-life and not over the internet right? So next someone gets shot for believing in the "wrong" god or gets their teeth smashed out for liking the "wrong" flavor of ice cream, keep in mind that some guys (who I obviously don't talk to anymore) threatened to set me on fire for saying Halo wasn't a good game. Somehow, XBox Live being filled with assholes makes a lot of sense now.