pg points out on Twitter that haters are rarer than fanboys
I wonder if it is rarer, or that haters are caused by a reaction to fanboys?
It seems to me that haters often start off reacting to the uncritical nature of fanboyism, and then that reaction slowly slips into hate directed at the person.
(Not always though - maybe this is one particular type of the fanboy/hater relationship)
> I wonder if it is rarer, or that haters are caused by a reaction to fanboys?
Most ventures fail. Startup ventures fail even more often. If your goal was to be right most often, you would just bet that every new thing would fail. So there's something inherently illogical about being a fanboy about anything. A fanboy is definitely doing more than just looking at the odds and making a rational decision, they are putting their faith in something.
Because a fanboy derives their enthusiasm from more than simple reason and the odds, they become a threat to anyone that eschews emotion and solely uses traditional valuation models. Fanboys are hated not because they believe in a product or idea, but because they ignore tradition.
> Look at Apple fanboys. They seem to cause haters because of their uncritical boosting of anything Apple.
Apple haters have a point: Apple hardware is far more expensive than similar performance on other systems. So using a traditional objective metric such as performance per dollar, Apple is objectively worse.
However, most Apple Fanboys know they are paying a premium. They love Apple for other, less quantifiable reasons, such as design quality, beautiful integration, good marketing, and the vision of making a more human machine.
The metrics that Apple fanboys value are at complete odds with many traditional computer enthusiasts, who value specs and raw performance power.
Therefore, a "fanboy" of anything (whether that's Apple, Tesla, or the startup of the day), is not necessarily being uncritical, they are just using less commonly accepted metrics of value.
I wonder if it is rarer, or that haters are caused by a reaction to fanboys?
It seems to me that haters often start off reacting to the uncritical nature of fanboyism, and then that reaction slowly slips into hate directed at the person.
(Not always though - maybe this is one particular type of the fanboy/hater relationship)